Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen has accused members of the country's
National Olympic Committee of freeloading, and vowed to divert any funds raised
for the sports body to the Red Cross instead.
His major gripe concerned the bloated entourage that travelled to overseas
events, which he said frequently outnumbered the competitors.
"I am going to stop helping them," Hun Sen said at a rice planting ceremony
in the southeastern province of Svay Rieng on Tuesday.
"I have launched fund-raising campaigns to support the Olympic committee, but
they spent it all over the place -- nearly US$1 million."
The funding freeze is likely to lengthen the odds of athletes from the
impoverished southeast Asian nation, which is still recovering from Pol Pot's
"Killing Fields" genocide, mounting the winners' podium in the international
arena.
To date, one of its few sporting highlights was winning a silver medal in the
women's petanque at the 2005 South East Asian Games in the Philippines.
Cambodia missed its turn to host the regional games in 2003 because its 1950s
national stadium -- optimistically called the Olympic Stadium -- had fallen into
disrepair during nearly three decades of civil war.
Hun Sen announced in March that it would also skip staging the event in 2011
due to prohibitive costs.
