South African Committee Gets OK : Olympics: IOC executive board conditionally recognizes interim, desegregated sports leadership group.

South Africa moved another step closer to regaining international acceptance in sports after more than three decades on the sidelines Monday when the International Olympic Committee’s executive board conditionally recognized the country’s interim, desegregated Olympic committee.

Judge Keba Mbaye, an IOC vice president from Senegal, expressed optimism that South Africa will meet conditions required to receive full recognition as the IOC’s 168th member by July, enabling it to send athletes to the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, Spain, and perhaps even the 1992 Winter Games in Albertville, France.

“I am personally convinced that the conditions will be met in time to see South Africa at Barcelona and even at Albertville for next year’s Winter Games,” he said at a news conference during the IOC’s executive board meeting in Barcelona.

The board will meet again Wednesday with officials from international sports federations to begin coordinating South Africa’s return to pre-Olympic competitions.

Mbaye said it is “very probable” that South Africa will return to international competition at track and field’s World Championships, Aug. 24-Sept. 1, in Tokyo.

Mbaye, a judge at the World Court in The Hague, also announced the IOC will send $2 million to the South African federations for technical assistance, scholarships and other programs.

South Africa has not competed in the Olympics since the 1960 Summer Games in Rome, although it was 10 years later before the IOC officially banned the country because of its government-sanctioned policy of racial separation, known as apartheid.

But recent reforms, encouraged by South African President F.W. de Klerk, caused the IOC to reconsider the issue. De Klerk assured an IOC delegation last month that the government would adopt legislation by the end of June to abolish apartheid.

After that IOC visit, five factions representing blacks and whites consolidated to form the Interim National Olympic Committee of South Africa. That was the first step toward meeting the IOC’s other major condition, which requires the establishment of integrated federations for each Olympic sport.

Another IOC delegation will travel to South Africa in May, followed by a meeting inJuly between IOC and South African officials in Lausanne, Switzerland.

Mbaye said he believes South Africa could be readmitted before July 25, when the IOC will send invitations for the 1992 Summer Olympics. The deadline for entering the Winter Games has passed, but Mbaye said it could be extended.

“In an exceptional case, we can take exceptional measures,” he said. “Nothing would stop (South Africa from competing in Albertville and Barcelona) as long as it meets the conditions.”

The IOC’s program commission recommended including women’s softball and women’s modern pentathlon as official sports at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta.

The men’s team event in modern pentathlon would be eliminated. At the request of synchronized swimming officials, the program commission also recommended that an eight-member team event replace solo and duet competitions.

The executive board will consider the proposals before passing them on to the entire IOC for a vote in June.

A 120-member U.S. Olympic Committee delegation, headed by vice president George Steinbrenner, returned Sunday from a tour of Havana, the host city for this summer’s Pan American Games.

“The question is whether they’re going to have all the facilities completed,” Steinbrenner said. “We said, ‘You’ll never make it.’ They said, ‘Yes, we will.’ I believe them. They’ve got 2,000 people working around the clock.”

He also said USOC concerns over whether drug testing will be adequate were alleviated when the Cubans purchased state-of-the-art equipment from Japan.

In light of the Cubans’ recent purchase of 750,000 bicycles from China because of gasolineshortages, the USOC presented Fidel Castro with a trail bike. Asked when he had last ridden abicycle, he patted his stomach and said, “Seventy pounds ago.”