ATHENS, 13 August 2003 — Athens organizers have backed down from their outright rejection of Australia’s plans to protect their athletes at next year’s Olympics with their own security force.

Hours after saying Greece was solely responsible for safety at the 2004 Games, ATHOC said in a statement yesterday that any guards deployed by national squads should abide by Greek laws.

“In all other Olympic Games — even in cases where national teams were accompanied by security personnel — the laws and rules of the host country were enforced. The same will happen in Greece in August 2004,” the ATHOC statement said.

Earlier an Athens 2004 Olympics spokesman ruled out the deployment of any foreign security force on its soil after Australian Olympics chief John Coates had said his team would be accompanied by their own protection unit.

“Greece is a sovereign state and it will guarantee the safety of the Games,” said spokesman Serafim Kotrotsos.

Coates had told Melbourne’s Herald Sun newspaper his team would use its own security force because of the “peculiar spread of venues in Athens” and might ban athletes from leaving the Olympic Village.

“The sorts of things which worry us are not the venues themselves, which is the responsibility of the organizing committee, but what happens downtown,” Coates said.

He said the decision was taken even before the Sept. 11 attacks. Australian security guards were present to protect Australian athletes at the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Games.

Kotrotsos said Athens’s $600 million security plan, headed by 2000 Sydney Games security chief Peter Ryan, was so good it had convinced the US basketball team to stay in the athletes’ village for the first time since the Barcelona Games of 1992.

“I would like to remind you of comments made by the NBA Commissioner David Stern who said the US basketball team will for the first time since 1992 stay in the Olympic village and not separately in a guarded hotel,” Kotrotsos said.

Aware of the huge security task they face in view of the spread of global terrorism since Sept. 11, Athens organizers have formed an international committee to advise on security matters.

The eight-nation committee is made up of Greece, Britain, the United States, Israel, Spain, France, Germany and Australia — all countries regarded as high profile targets.