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)
