Iraq Takes Step Toward Games

Amid extraordinary security concerns, an Iraqi Olympic Committee was formally put together and its officers elected Thursday, a key measure in having an Iraqi team take part in the Summer Olympics in August.

A number of other steps remain before Iraq takes part in the Aug. 13 opening ceremony in Athens.

For one, the International Olympic Committee -- which last May suspended the Iraqi committee, led by Uday Hussein, son of Saddam Hussein -- must now formally recognize the new Iraqi committee. It may do so as soon as late February, at a meeting in Athens.

For another, Iraqi athletes must qualify -- or gain waivers -- to take part in the Olympics. A number of Iraqis have been identified as the most likely to make it to Athens -- probably in track and field, swimming, weightlifting and boxing, perhaps in taekwondo.

Ahmed al-Samarrai, a former Iraqi army brigadier general who defected in the early 1980s but returned to Baghdad last April from Britain, was elected president of the new Iraqi committee.

In an interview with The Times last year in Baghdad, al-Samarrai observed that electricity was undependable in Iraq, security inconsistent, the conditions of daily life regularly a challenge. He said, “Even though there are many priorities, many people want one of the priorities to be sport,” adding an explanation a moment later, “Sport gives people hope.”

For security reasons, the elections were held not in Baghdad, Iraq’s capital and the nation’s sports base, but at a remote resort in northern Iraq, about 45 miles from the town of Sulaimaniyah.