The Greek prime minister has acknowledged room for improvement in security preparations ahead of the August Olympics, despite Athens spending £660-million on safeguarding the world’s most significant sporting event since the September 11 attacks.
In his first interview with a British paper, Costas Karamanlis conceded the system could be ”perfected”.
”We are doing the best possible in terms of committing money, people and resources, but of course that doesn’t mean that in the weeks to come we shouldn’t be vigilant and try to perfect the system,” he told The Guardian as he flew home from his first official visit to Washington.
”There will always be things that could be better.”
Karamanlis has taken personal charge of the crisis-plagued Olympic preparations ever since his centre-right New Democracy party’s landslide victory in March.
Less than three months before the August 13 opening ceremony, the focus is now on fine-tuning what has become the biggest security operation in Olympic history.
”I am very confident the Olympics will be successful and safe,” he said. ”After all, what better vote of confidence can you have than a [US] president sending a former president, who is also his father, to the Games?”
The 47-year-old leader’s implicit admission followed the FBI’s unexpected claim that over the last six months it had detected security gaps.
On Monday the Greek organisers called security arrangements ”second to none”.
George Bush Snr will head the US delegation, the president told Karamanlis, who also brushed aside concern over construction delays. He said most of the 39 Olympic-related projects were in place.
”Around 90% is already ready, there is a remaining 10% which will be completed within June. The real test is August 13.”
Asked if he thought the 28th Olympiad would help usher in a new era for one of the poorest EU members, Karamanlis was less sanguine: ”What I can say is that we have got to try our best that it will be understood as such.”
Few countries have been as criticised for their chaotic handling of such a major international gathering.
Athens has been forced to draft in some 70 000 security staff for the Games, four times more than Sydney in 2000.
On Monday, the 2004 Olympics chief organiser, Gianna Angelopoulos-Daskalaki, said the constant censure of the security plans played into the hands of militants seeking to undermine the event.
”I am concerned that we send a consistent message to those who wish us ill,” she told a three-day security conference of 350 experts with the 202 nations taking part.
”Telling them incorrectly that there are holes in Athens’ security procedures and our preparations can be circumvented — when all of our preparations are designed to achieve the opposite — is bad security strategy.”
Karamanlis admitted that ”at times” he, too, was ”not very happy” with the increasingly shrill media coverage.
”But I know that the real evidence is our job and particularly our performance … At the end of the day it won’t matter if people wrote negative things before.” – Guardian Unlimited