WASHINGTON, Nov. 27 (UPI) -- President Bush on Tuesday turned down an International Olympic Committee request for a temporary halt to military strikes in Afghanistan during the Salt Lake City Olympics, a high-ranking Olympic official said.
IOC president Jacques Rogge said Bush instead would support a U.N. resolution calling for athletes to travel safely to and from the games.
Rogge said after his meeting with Bush that he was confident that the winter games would be secure.
"Involving the leadership of the U.S. Secret Service and the participation of other relevant agencies, including the U.S. military, security planning for the winter games has been underway for several years," he said. "This is why we are not surprised to find after a post-September 11 review that sufficient security strategies and planning were already in place."
Bush also met Tuesday with U.S. Olympic Committee president Sandy Baldwin, Chief Executive Officer Lloyd Ward, Salt Lake City Olympics Chief Mitt Romney and several Olympic athletes to discuss security for the games.
The 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City are scheduled for Feb. 8-24.
The Olympics arrived in Utah amid scandal over Salt Lake's selection. As a result, 10 members of the IOC committee were expelled or resigned for accepting cash, gifts, scholarships and other inducements from Salt Lake City bidders.
On Nov. 16, the bribery case against the city's bid leaders was dismissed. They had been accused of using $1 million to influence IOC members to obtain their bid for the games.
With the selection scandal over, organizers have shifted their focus to the possibility of a terrorist attack disrupting the event.
"These games should be an answer to violence and not a victim of it," Rogge said. "In all my travels across this country and throughout the world, everyone has been calling for the games. And everyone has been telling me that the games are needed now more than ever."
President Bush two weeks ago set aside an additional $10 million to help protect the Winter Olympics from potential terrorist attacks.
A total of $34 million in federal taxpayer dollars has been added to the $200 million Olympic security budget in aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks. Those funds were part of the $40 billion emergency anti-terrorism appropriation approved by Congress shortly after the attacks on New York City and Washington.
Olympic organizers hope to avoid incidents like the Israeli Olympic massacre in Munich in 1972, when eleven Israeli athletes were taken hostage by Palestinian members of the Black September Movement and later the terrorists and hostages were killed in a shootout with German police. In 1996, one person was killed and more than 100 wounded when a bomb exploded in Centennial Olympic Park during the games in Atlanta.
Meanwhile, the Deseret News reported Tuesday that Gov. Mike Leavitt is calling up the Utah National Guard to help with Olympic security in the largest Guard activation in the state's history. The 1,900 members of the Utah National Guard will serve from the first week in January through the Winter Games in February. They will be joined by up to 1,200 National Guard members from other states.
Col. Michael P. Jensen of the Utah National Guard told the newspaper the call-up will involve "primarily Army Guard" members.
