Talks on Safety at Athens Olympics

NATO representatives are also attending the meeting to look at the organization’s unprecedented role in helping protect the games which take place in the Greek capital in less than three months time. Greece has asked NATO to provide security for the Olympics.

With its long coastline, Athens would like the organization to help patrol the sea. Twelve of its Airborne Early Warning Aircraft (AWACS) will also be on standby to help Greece with air surveillance. NATO troops and a Czech NATO squad specializing in nuclear, biological and chemical catastrophes will be on high alert.

The games in August are the first since the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States in 2001. In light of the Iraq war, the bombings in Madrid and Istanbul in the last year and the ongoing war against terrorism, the Greek government is spending over €1 billion ($1.2 billion) to keep the event safe. That’s nearly five times the amount spent of security for the 2000 Games in Sydney.

Armed guards to protect athletes

Athens will deploy some 70,000 security personnel, roughly seven for each athlete who makes the journey to Greece. Armed American, British and Israeli guards will be protecting their delegations of athletes. Calls are being made for other countries with troops in Iraq to be able to provide their athletes with armed protection, a request that Greece has been reluctant to grant. An advisory panel with officials from the U.S., Britain, Germany, Australia, France, Spain and Israel is also in place to monitor Greece’s anti-terror plans.

All these different security forces and organizations have many observers concerned about the potential of confusion. A €300 million surveillance and communications network, with over 1,000 outdoor cameras and two-way microphones will only be able to be tested in the final weeks before the event, which takes place from Aug. 13 to 29, because of the extreme building delays. There are also concerns about Greece’s shared borders with Albania and Turkey.

The capital was given a wake up call 100 days before the event was due to start when three bombs exploded in a central district. No one was killed, and the attacks were blamed on a domestic extremist group. Greek officials are insisting the country will be ready to host the nearly 11,000 athletes, 21,000 world reporters and tens of thousands of foreign spectators that will flood the Mediterranean country, the smallest to host the event since the 1950s.