Doping will remain a criminal offense during the Turin Olympics, allowing for possible police raids on the athletes' village.
Weeks of dialogue between Italian officials and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) finished on Monday without any changes to Italy's tough drug law. The IOC maintains, however, it never asked for Italy's law to be weakened.
"The IOC is not above the law and has never expected or requested to be," IOC spokeswoman Giselle Davies told reporters. "From the IOC perspective that has not been where our focus was for the whole process."
Italian law calls for criminal prosecution of sports doping offenders. Under IOC rules, athletes can be disqualified and stripped of their medals but face no criminal liability.
"Raids in the village could happen for a number of issues. The IOC certainly respects that," Davies said, treating the issue as a "hypothetical" and not expected.
Mario Pescante, Italy's government supervisor for the games, had sought to get the Italian parliament to suspend the law during the Feb. 10-26 Winter Olympics.
The IOC was concerned about three other doping issues, which have been resolved:
* The IOC will be in charge of testing and will delegate the procedures to Turin organizers and the World Anti-Doping Agency.
* The 2006 WADA list of banned substances will be used, ending worries that the list for this year would still be in effect.
* Hyperbaric chambers, which are banned under Italian law but not specified in the World Anti-doping Code, will be prohibited in the Olympic village.
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