NAIROBI, Jan 12 (AFP) - Kenya will mount a long-shot bid to host the 2016 summer Olympic Games, the country's sports minister said Wedneday in comments that surprised the visiting chief of the International Olympic Committee.
Sports minister Ochilo Ayacko said the bid would be made to honour an unmet 1968 pledge by one of his predecessors, Ronald Ngala, an independence hero, that Kenya would host the 2000 Olympics.
"But I would say without budging or blinking an eyelid that we are serious in hosting the 2016 games," he said at the ceremonial opening of the new headquarters of the Kenyan Olympic committee.
"We have the will and, with the resources, we are sure to succeed," Ayacko told a crowd that included IOC president Jacques Rogge who is in Nairobi to mark the 50th anniversary of Kenya joining the Olympic movement.
Rogge reacted politely to the remarks, but admitted to being "surprised" and cautioned the minister that Kenya would have to complete large-scale infrastructure improvements if its bid is to be taken seriously.
He also said a successful bid would require the committment of vast tracts of land the Kenyan government does not currently have available.
In a more positive vein, Rogge, who has stressed the need for a balance between continents in hosting the Olympics, noted that Kenya has four years to prepare its bid as the IOC will not vote on the host for the 2016 Games until 2009.
No African country has ever hosted an Olympics and only four nations -- only Australia, Japan, South Korea and China -- outside Europe and North America have ever won a bid for the Games.
Five cities -- Paris, London, New York, Madrid and Moscow -- are now bidding for the 2012 Olympics, The winner is to be announced at the next IOC session in Singapore on July 6.
01/12/2005 17:36 GMT - AFP