Iraq to Take Part in Games

The International Olympic Committee readmitted Iraq as a member in good standing Friday, ensuring that Iraqi athletes will march behind the Iraqi flag Aug. 13 at the opening ceremony of the 2004 Summer Games.

The IOC’s executive board lifted the suspension it had imposed in May, after reports of abuse in Iraq directed at athletes and coaches by Uday Hussein, Saddam Hussein’s son. Uday Hussein, for years the president of the Iraqi Olympic Committee, was killed in July in a firefight with U.S. forces.

The IOC’s move, which increases the number of national Olympic committees to 202, had been expected since elections Jan. 29 in Iraq seated a new national Olympic committee. Nevertheless, it was hailed here -- and in Baghdad, by senior officials of the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority -- as a triumph of international cooperation and a symbol of a democratic Iraq.

“Today’s unanimous vote to lift Iraq’s Olympic suspension is yet another example of Iraq’s return to the global family,” L. Paul Bremer, the chief U.S. civilian administrator in Baghdad, said. “Iraq is back.”

Bremer added, “Iraq’s athletes are now able to compete freely, without fear of being tortured by the former regime. These athletes will now be able to walk proudly, carrying the flag of a new and free Iraq.”

The IOC’s action does not solve the new Iraqi committee’s financial and logistical problems. For example, the country’s sports facilities, damaged or looted in recent months, must be rebuilt.

Ahmed al-Samarrai, president of the Iraqi committee, said here that estimates for such an endeavor ran to $25 million.

“We need a lot, especially in rebuilding facilities,” he said, “as much as we can get that would help.”

Iraqi athletes aiming for the 2004 Games are training, or expect to be training, in the United States, Japan, France, South Korea, Germany, Romania and Hungary, according to Tiras Odisho, the Iraqi committee’s director general.

International sports federations have also offered aid, he said.

It is not clear how many Iraqi athletes will compete in Athens. Some have been identified in track and field, swimming, weightlifting and boxing. Odisho said at least one athlete would be a woman, in track and field.

The IOC’s move caps months of behind-the-scenes work by U.S.-led authorities in Iraq, the IOC and others, including the U.S. Olympic Committee.

The IOC sent staffers on a number of trips to Iraq last year, aiming to document the extent of the war damage, identify Olympic-caliber athletes, assist in the drafting of the rules and regulations for a new Olympic committee and, perhaps most important, serve as witnesses for elections.

Sports clubs and sports federations undertook about 500 elections designed to install new leadership and identify officials who could serve in the assembly of a new national Olympic committee.

Coordinating it all, including the Jan. 29 election for the reconstituted Iraqi Olympic Committee, was the Ministry of Youth and Sport in Baghdad.

Mounzer Fatfat, who since September has served as senior advisor to the ministry, said Friday after the IOC’s action, “These were all straightforward, transparent democratic elections. These were the first democratic elections in the last 35 years of any kind in Iraq.”

Fatfat also said, “What happened today is not about a game, about sport. It’s much more than that. What happened today is about the Iraqi people proving to the world that they are capable in running themselves, that they are capable in running democratic elections, that they are capable of being on their own.

” ... Today is a historic moment for the Iraqis and really for the world -- a reminder that there is a world community and that the Iraqis have rejoined the good things in life.”