After years of being lambasted for leaving preparations too
late, organizers said Thursday that Athens has delivered the goods:
a security all-clear for the Olympic Games.
The latest security reports from the world's leading
intelligence agencies show no online or telephone "chatter" among
terror suspects nor any other evidence of a possible strike on the
Games, according to Greece's Public Order Minister, former commando
George Voulgarakis.
He believes that spending four times as much as Sydney on
security was a good investment, saying, "We don't have any
identification of any threat against Greece."
Security personnel outnumber athletes seven to one at the
biggest sporting event on earth. A fifth of the budget has been
spent on security at the first Summer Games since the September 11,
2001, attacks in the United States.
Olympic chief Jacques Rogge gave Europe's biggest peacetime
security operation a vote of confidence, saying Greece had done
"everything humanly possible."
With the nation's adrenalin flowing, Athens put the finishing
touches to its first Olympics in more than a century. Gianna
Angelopoulos-Daskalaki, president of the Athens 2004 Organizing
Committee, stated, "Our people are ready."
"The whole world will discover that modern Greeks have the same
ambitions and abilities as the ancients who gave us the Olympic
Games," she said as the final countdown began for the six billion
euro (US$7.3 billion) extravaganza.
But national pride was dented by an embarrassing TV blackout in
the middle of the soccer qualifiers.
Vowing zero tolerance, the government sacked two senior managers
at a state broadcaster and pledged that today's high profile
opening ceremony -- being beamed to billions worldwide -- would not
be affected.
Dozens of world leaders are expected to join 10,500 athletes for
this evening's opening ceremony. They are protected by a
70,000-strong Greek security force along with troops, ships and
aircraft from NATO allies.
(China Daily August 13, 2004)