Make doping a crime in Russia, says leading official

MOSCOW (AP) The Russian Olympic official in charge of resolving the country's doping crisis has called for athletes who use banned substances to face criminal charges.

Gennady Alyoshin, the point man in talks between the Russian Olympic Committee and the IAAF over readmitting Russia's banned track and field athletes, told a Russian parliamentary committee that making dopers criminally liable under Russian law was inevitable.

The state-run Tass news agency quoted Alyoshin as saying that ''it's clear that now we have to implement criminal responsibility and that you can't cope without that.''

Alyoshin also called for doped athletes to be publicly shamed with the creation of a list of all who have been handed doping bans.