Sport and Tourism Minister Dr Jim McDaid said yesterday that drug cheats should be sent to jail to cleanse international sport before next year's Sydney Olympics.

McDaid was speaking in Sydney after a meeting with his Australian counterpart Jackie Kelly. McDaid went on to say that sending drug cheats to prison may be the only deterrent. "I believe it will send a strong, clear signal to all those who promote and facilitate the use of certain performance-enhancing drugs that they will, in future, be committing a criminal offence and be subject to the full rigours of the law, including jail terms," he said.

McDaid also outlined Irish Government plans to include certain performance-enhancing substances under its general drugs legislation later this year.

"The success of the Sydney 2000 Games will not be determined by the size or cost of the spectacle that is staged," McDaid added. "Australia is hosting the Olympics at a time that is a crossroads in sporting history. The world is looking to Australia for assurance that international sport can again be safe and fair."

McDaid also said he would be making recommendations to an inter-governmental conference on drugs in sport that Kelly is hosting in October.

Meanwhile, former United Nations secretary-general Javier Perez de Cuellar and former White House chief of staff Howard Baker have been included on an ethics panel designed to help improve the Olympic movement's tarnished image.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) said in a statement that the pair would sit on an eight-member panel established after the Salt Lake bribery scandal.

The other non-IOC members on the panel are French politician Robert Badinter, former Swiss president Kurt Furgler and 1984 Olympic 4x400 metres relay silver medallist Charmaine Crooks of Canada.

The IOC said three of its own members would also sit on the panel - Kevan Gosper of Australia, Chiharu Igaya of Japan and Senegal's Keba Mbaye.

Former world 1,500 and 3,000 metres champion Mary Slaney is suing the IAAF and the US Olympic Committee (USOC), seeking to halt an arbitration hearing against her and end the organisations' use of a testosterone ratio as proof of doping by women athletes.

The lawsuit, filed in Indianapolis, also accuses the IAAF and USOC of negligence and fraud in the handling of her 1996 doping case and seeks unspecified damages. It also accuses the USOC of failing to ensure that Slaney's 1996 urine sample was properly stored.