Europe's biggest and longest peacetime security operation went into force on Sunday when "no go" areas were imposed in Athens for the Olympic Games starting in mid-August.
With hundreds of athletes already arriving in the Greek capital for the world's largest sporting event, one newspaper warned Athens residents that the Aug. 13 to Aug. 29 Olympics would completely turn their lives upside down.
PHOTO: EPA
The No's of August, the Elefth-erotypia newspaper called the security measures and traffic restrictions that will reach into every corner of the city of four million.
Greek organizers have spent 1 billion euros, three times the amount for the last Olympics four years ago in Sydney, to guard the homecoming of the Games to their birthplace, with the fallout of Sept. 11, 2001 attacks and Iraq hanging over them.
The might of NATO, Patriot missiles, anti-chemical warfare experts, submarines, frogmen and an array of the most up-to-date surveillance equipment will be at the disposal of a 70,000-strong military and police force.
"This is the biggest operation by the Greek armed forces since World War Two," said Army General General Vassilis Giannopoulos.
"We've planned for everything," he added.
As well as guarding venues, troops will be stationed at power stations, waterworks, tunnels and bridges.
"We can have a plane in the sky in one second," Giannopoulos said of the air cover for the Games.
Some 1,200 surveillance cameras have been deployed throughout the city.
Frogmen and listening devices will guard cruise ships, including the world's largest, the Queen Mary II, where many VIPs will stay.
Intelligence organizations worldwide know of no specific threat to the Olympics, but the security operation dwarfs any previous one in Europe because of the need to sustain it for the entire month of August.
World leaders planning to visit the Olympics include British Prime Minister Tony Blair and French President Jacques Chirac. Former US President George Bush is also due to attend.
Greek newspapers said that as well as the official force, a "private army" of security consul-tants, many of them former special forces troops from countries like the US and Britain, would be on hand to protect VIPs.
"Foreign security companies operating in Iraq have won huge contracts to protect business leaders and others from the United States and other nations," said the Ethnos newspaper.
What has been billed by some as a "month of torture" for Athens residents began when the first vehicles took to the streets of the capital on Sunday with one lane of main streets closed for the exclusive use of Olympic vehicles.
Newspapers warned the lane closures -- on streets where at the most there are three lanes -- would test the patience of Athenians to the limit and could turn residents against the Games before they even started.
More than 10,000 police will be on traffic duty in a city notorious for its congestion.
Chief Olympics organizer Gianna Angelopoulos said Athens was ready to put its best foot forward after years of criticism over delays in construction of venues and other preparations.
"Everything humanly possible has been done [to make up for the delays]," she told the Kathimerini newspaper in an interview. "We have made up for lost time at the start and are ready for the last sprint."
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