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| Athletes arriving in Britain [Photo:Reuters] |
The first wave of Olympic athletes and visitors began pouring into Britain on Monday as officials played down fears that a packed London would buckle under the pressure of its biggest peacetime security and transport operation.
An embarrassing shortage of security guards, fears over airport queues and questions about the capital's creaking transport system have overshadowed preparations for the Games.
Extra soldiers and police were mobilised to help guard the Games after private security firm G4S said it had run out of time to train all its newly recruited staff.
Less than two weeks before the opening ceremony on July 27, Prime Minister David Cameron said the G4S shambles would not compromise Britain's largest peacetime policing exercise.
"We had contingency plans, we are using those contingency plans and we will do whatever it takes to deliver a safe and secure Games," Cameron told a news conference.
The security fiasco dominated headlines and Cameron's coalition government was forced to defend itself in parliament from media accusations it had known for months of G4S's recruitment problems.
"In fact, G4S repeatedly assured us they would overshoot their targets," Home Secretary Theresa May, the minister responsible for domestic security, told MPs.
"G4S only told the government that they would be unable to meet their contractual obligations last Wednesday," she added, the day before May announced Britain would deploy a further 3,500 troops to make up the shortfall.
Police said personnel from eight forces across Britain had been deployed earlier than planned because of G4S's failings as part of a force that will peak at 12,500 officers on Olympics duty a day.
Shambles
The police staff association condemned G4S, a company they see taking jobs from its members as forces look to the private sector to cope with spending cuts.
"What is unacceptable is that the officers I represent have to have their plans changed at such short notice to back fill for what is a shambles by a private company G4S who failed to deliver," West Midlands Police Federation Chairman Ian Edwards told Sky News.
Shares in G4S fell to the lowest level in more than six months on fears the fallout from the botched contract could hurt its chances of winning work in Britain and abroad.
Security chiefs said they were prepared for threats on the scale of the September 11, 2001, attacks. Four British Islamist suicide bombers killed 52 people on three trains and a bus in London on the day after London won the Games in July 2005.
The private guards, police and soldiers are being backed up by fighter jets and missile batteries placed on the top of apartment blocks near the Olympics site in east London.
The International Olympic Committee said on Monday safety levels had not been compromised by the G4S glitch.
U.S. transport officials will also be based at London's main Heathrow Airport and some other British airports for the duration of the Games, as part of a separate security arrangement that has nothing "whatsoever to do with the G4S issue," a UK Department of Transport spokesman said.
"The Department for Transport is in regular contact with the U.S. Transportation Security Administration and we have been planning Olympics liaison arrangements with the U.S. for several months."
The spokesman would not comment on reports that the U.S. officials will help U.S. carriers and also assist British carriers travelling to and from the United States.
