IOC URGED TO TAKE ACTION VS. DRUGS

NEW YORK (AP) The IOC must take strong action at next week's world drug
summit or risk further damage to an organization already reeling from a
historic corruption scandal, a top American Olympic official said Friday.

With Olympic bid practices the targets of at least six investigations and
calls growing for a change at the top of the International Olympic
Committee, any sign of weakness on doping would be crippling, U.S. Olympic
Committee executive director Dick Schultz said.

"If the perception is that they are backing off on the drug issue, it will
add fuel to the fire," Schultz said.

The IOC called the summit last fall, after months of headlines over
performance-enhancing drug use in cycling's Tour de France, top-level track
and field and even the Italian soccer league.

The situation boiled over when Samaranch, in an interview with a Spanish
newspaper, said the list of banned drugs should be sharply cut and
punishment limited to those cases in which the athlete is physically harmed.

At the time, drugs in sports was by far the biggest problem facing the
Olympic community.

But late last year, the issue was overrun by the scandal in Salt Lake City,
where officials said they offered scholarships to relatives of IOC members
to try to sway their votes for the 2002 Winter Olympics.

That scandal has since spread worldwide, with the IOC expelling five
members and four others resigning, the biggest purge in the committee's
105-year history.

At least three other members remain under investigation by the IOC, and
additional inquiries involve the Justice Department, the Utah attorney
general's office, the USOC and Olympic organizing committees in Salt Lake
and Nagano.

White House drug czar Barry McCaffrey, who will head a U.S. government
delegation to the summit, said this week that the bribery scandal may have
left the IOC unable to "successfully face this (doping) issue unless we
have some institutional reforms."

He said that could include the "need to examine the requirement for new
leadership to take us into the next era," although he stopped short of
calling for Samaranch's replacement.

Schultz, in a telephone interview from his Colorado Springs, Colo., office,
said drugs should remain the focus of the first-of-its-kind meeting of
international officials in Lausanne, Switzerland, on Tuesday through Thursday.

"In the world of sports, it's far more important than the other scandal,"
said Schultz, who heads the USOC delegation to the summit and who has been
closely involved in the scandal inquiries. "It's important for the world to
know that its athletes are clean and honest."

But Schultz said McCaffrey, who has pledged an unprecedented $1 million in
federal funds to pay for drug-testing research, was right to connect the
two issues.

"If the IOC takes strong action, it will be OK," he said. "If there is any
sign of weakness in not wanting to deal forcefully with this, then
McCaffrey will have been proved correct."

Schultz said the 10-member USOC delegation, which also includes former
athletes Frank Shorter, Bill Stapleton and Jonathan Fish, will present a
10- point plan calling for extensive international drug testing by a
well-financed independent authority, and adoption of uniform drug penalties
by the IOC, national Olympic committees and international sports
federations.