6th April 2007, 05:23
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Rep Power: 2  |  Beijing taps Athens, Sydney on Olympic security
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Beijing taps Athens, Sydney on Olympic security
By Nick Mulvenney
BEIJING, April 4 (Reuters) -
Beijing organisers have taken advice from the security chiefs of the last two Summer Games on how to keep the 2008 Olympics safe, an official said on Wednesday.
China has made much of relying on its own security forces for next year's Olympics and believes it can deliver a secure Games for a fraction of the $1.8 billion that Athens paid in 2004.
Liu Shaowu, head of the security department at the Beijing Organising Committee for the Olympic Games (BOCOG), told a news conference on Wednesday, however, that foreign consultants were being hired to help plan the huge operation.
"Last month we invited Peter Ryan from Sydney to discuss with us about some particular security problems," he said. "We learnt valuable experiences from them."
Liu said Major-General Vassilios Constantinides, who headed security for the 2004 Athens Games, had been consulted in addition to Ryan, commissioner of New South Wales police during the 2000 Sydney Games.
China has had few problems with terrorism in recent years, although police said in January it had killed 18 people in a raid on what they described as a terrorist camp in Xinjiang.
The far-western region borders Central Asia, Pakistan and Afghanistan and is home to 8 million largely Muslim Uighurs, who were blamed for several bombings and assassinations in China in the 1990s.
Liu declined to name any specific organisations they feared might target the Games.
"We have to guarantee the safety of the athletes and spectators at the Games," he said.
"Anyone who threatens our guests, no matter what that group is or where they come from, is the target of our prevention."
Qiang Wei, the overall head of Games security, has just been appointed Communist Party chief of remote Qinghai province. Liu said his successor in the Olympic job had yet to be decided.
| Of course they could do it cheaper, they are already an authoritarian state to begin with. Athens and Sydney have more open societies, not a dictatorship. |
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