Beijing Games can be safe on the cheap - official

BEIJING, March 6 (Reuters) China will spend considerably less on Olympic security than recent host countries, but organisers said they were confident the safety of the 2008 Games could be ensured at a low cost.

Security expenses for major sporting events have soared since the Sept. 11 attack on the United States, but Beijing has maintained that it can hold a safe Olympics for a fraction of the 1.8 billion dollars spent on the Athens Games in 2004.

''I can only say that the money we will spend will be much lower than the amount spent at equivalent events in the past,'' head of security of the Beijing Organising Committee for the Olympic Games (BOCOG) Liu Shaowu said in an interview published on the Games Web site.

''We will stick strictly to the policy of being frugal in holding the Olympic Games, and we are confident the safety of the Games will be ensured at a low cost.'' Chinese media said organisers had budgeted just 300 million dollars for security in 2005 and a spokesman for Security Command Centre for the Olympics said on Tuesday that a specific figure had never been disclosed by the police.

Around 20 government agencies, from the two-million strong People's Liberation Army to the fire service, will be involved in the security operation supported by volunteers recruited from military and police academies, Liu said.

The resources available to China would enable them to avoid bringing in help from outside, as happened at Athens where NATO was closely involved in security.

''The personnel that we need for the Games are already in our police force,'' he added. ''Basically it is different from the contractor system in foreign countries and that can help us avoid large expenditure ...'' The security operation will not be organised in isolation, however, and in January a new department of the Beijing police was opened to liaise with foreign agencies to help prevent terrorist attacks.

''In the future we will hold regular exchanges with foreign police forces and the International Olympic Committee to get more support for our security,'' Liu said.

Security costs were negligible at Olympics until the 1972 Games in Munich when 11 Israelis died in an attack by Palestinian gunmen and a botched rescue attempt.

By the 1996 Atlanta Games, where a bomb killed one person, the bill had risen to just 150 million dollars.

The Beijing Olympics start on Aug. 8, 2008.

REUTERS PDS ND1844