Thailand scrambles to keep Asian Games in Bangkok

Thailand scrambles to keep Asian Games in Bangkok

BANGKOK (Reuter): Thai sports officials, fresh from running
the Southeast Asian (SEA) Games, said yesterday they were
scrambling to keep the 1998 Asian Games in Bangkok after Games
officials threatened to hold them elsewhere.

Somchai Prasertsiriphan, governor of the Sports Authority of
Thailand, said in an interview that the Olympic Council of Asia
(OCA) was not satisfied with Thailand's preparations for the next
Asian Games, and had given Bangkok until Jan. 5 to prove it was
able to run the sporting event.

He told Reuter Thai sports officials were doing everything
they could to revamp current committees and make the needed
changes to show the OCA that Thailand was serious about hosting
the Games.

Somchai said a visit by top OCA officials in November was
positive and he did not know they were dissatisfied with the
preparations until he returned from the Chiang Mai SEA Games this
week.

"We got a letter from the Sheik (Ahmed Al-Sabah), the
president of the Olympic Council of Asia, after we got back from
Chiang Mai," Somchai said.

The letter said the OCA would accept offers to host the Asian
Games from other countries if Thailand did not submit a full
progress report by Wednesday. That deadline was later extended
until Jan. 5, Somchai said.

Local media reported the OCA was frustrated with the lack of
information given by the Thais on their level of planning and
preparation for the games, which are held every four years.

"We have been taken for a ride and we are not going to stand
any more nonsense," Muthaleb Ahmed, managing director of the OCA,
was quoted as saying in the Bangkok Post yesterday.

"The 44-member nations are up in arms and the members of the
executive are angry," he said. "Now it is time to act. The OCA
will not tolerate this ridiculous situation any longer."

The OCA was upset that Thailand had still not appointed
complete organizing committees to oversee the games, although it
has had five years to prepare since being awarded the games.

Somchai said most of Thailand's senior sports officials had
been tied up with organization of the SEA Games and were unable
to present a cohesive progress report on the Asian Games as
quickly as the OCA wanted.

"I think if we reorganize the composition of the organizing
committee that should satisfy the Olympic Council of Asia,"
Somchai said. "We have to solve this matter, then I think there
will be no problem."

But OCA Treasurer Santiparb Tejavanija, who is from Thailand,
said OCA members were shocked by Thailand's "lackadaisical
attitude" and he was not confident the games would stay in
Thailand.

"In the past five years Thailand has been too slow in
organizing the games to Asian Games standard," he told a local
radio station yesterday. "How can one expect anything to be done
in the standard way in the next three years?"

The Bangkok Asian Games have been dogged by controversy since
they were awarded in 1990 with several governments and companies
bickering over which would construct the stadium, athletes'
village and expressways needed to hold the games in the Thai
capital.

In addition, a mass-transit system, slated to be partially
completed in time for the games to help ease some of Bangkok's
notorious traffic congestion, has barely begun construction.