International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge said the fight against doping remained at the top of the agenda of the Olympic Movement.

 

"I would like to reiterate the IOC's total commitment to the fight against doping," Rogge told reporters in a teleconference on Wednesday.

 

Rogge said the IOC would soon adopt a law that would see athletes who had served a doping ban of six months or more being banned from the Olympic Games.

 

"This measure will be accepted at the next IOC congress in Beijing in August, just before the Games, meaning it will come into effect in time for the 2010 winter Games in Vancouver and the 2012 summer Games in London."

 

When asked about the reallocation of the medals of Marion Jones, who confessed last month to using banned drugs before the 2000 Olympics, Rogge said only "clean" athletes would be upgraded to get the medals.

 

"We will examine the potential upgrading of every athlete on her own merit. This is not going to be merely an automatic upgrade of all the athletes. The ones we want to upgrade, we want them to be clean," he said.

 

(Xinhua News Agency November 8, 2007)