November 16, 2007 (Madrid, Spain) – Internal bickering, pitting Europe against the rest of the membership, is threatening the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) conference currently underway in Madrid and raises questions about the organization’s effectiveness in imposing a new anti-doping code reports AFP. This is part of the fall-out following Frenchman Jean-François Lamour’s surprise withdrawal last month from the race to succeed Dick Pound, a Montreal lawyer, as president of the agency. Without Lamour, the only candidate is John Fahey of Australia, but the European members of the WADA Foundation want to see a European president. They are now scrambling to find a new candidate and need time to do so.

Unless Saturday’s vote to choose a new president is postponed, the five European nation members of the WADA Foundation have threatened to abstain from voting. The other thirteen nation members are likely to support Fahey; Canada’s Secretary of State for Sport, Helena Guergis, has declared her vote is for the Australian. The complete AFP story, in French, can be found here.

The current power struggle is distracting from and perhaps even eclipsing WADA’s main objective in Madrid: the adoption of the new World Anti-Doping Agency’s code. International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge is at the WADA conference, urging member nations to speedily adopt the new code.

Meanwhile, Guergis announced today that a deal has been reached within WADA to keep the agency’s worldwide headquarters in Montreal through 2021 according to AP. The agency’s lease in the Montreal Stock Exchange Tower was to have expired in 2011 and Switzerland wanted WADA’s head office to move there. Click here for the complete story.