Russia, facing possible Olympic ban, pledges to work with anti-doping authorities

[November 27, 2019]   MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia will fully cooperate with the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and international sports authorities after a WADA committee recommended imposing a four-year Olympic ban on the country, the Kremlin said on Wednesday.

A view through a fence decorated with the Olympic rings shows a building of the federal state budgetary institution which houses a laboratory accredited by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), in Moscow, Russia on November 11, 2015. REUTERS/Sergei Karpukhin

The WADA committee recommended this week that Russia be banned from the Olympics and world championships in a wide range of sports for four years after Moscow was found to have provided the agency with doctored laboratory data.

The committee's recommendations will be put to WADA's executive committee in Paris on Dec. 9.

"The Russian authorities have been, are, and will be highly open to cooperation with the international sports community as well as with WADA," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on a conference call.

Russian sports officials on Tuesday spoke out against the committee's recommendations, saying they were overly harsh and would hurt sport there.

(Reporting by Anton Kolodyazhnyy; Writing by Gabrielle Tétrault-Farber; Editing by Andrew Osborn)

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