Doping and Kenya

René Bouchard, the chairman of the organization's compliance review committee (CRC), said Kenya's drug testing agency had been declared "non-compliant with immediate effect."

Last month, Kenya passed a law making doping a criminal offense, but the WADA committee has deemed not enough is being done. The agency has told the East African country what areas of the anti-doping law needs to be changed to meet requirements.

"WADA have attached the areas of the act which they want to be rewritten or rectified for us to regain full compliance ASAP," said Sports Minister Hassan Wario in a statement sent to Citizen TV and other media outlets.

Thursday's statement raises the threat that athletes from the African track-and-field powerhouse could be prohibited from competing at this summer Summer Games in Rio de Janeiro. But the International Association of Athletics Federations and the International Olympic Committee will have the final say on the issue.

Earlier the chairwoman of WADA's athletes committee said that Russian athletes should be banned from competition unless there were guarantees that they were competing fairly.

"Athletes strongly feel that if there cannot be a guarantee that athletes there from Russia are clean and not involved in doping activity that they should not be there," said Canada's Beckie Scott, the 2002 cross-country Olympic champion.

Scott originally came in third in the event in 2002, but was later awarded the gold medal after two Russians were stripped of their medals for doping offenses.

Also on Thursday, the New York Times newspaper reported that dozens of Russian competitors at the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics, including at least 15 medal winners, were part of a state-run doping program. Russia is currently suspended from participating in international athletics events.

jc/dv (Reuters/AP)