Australian Olympic Committee president John Coates yesterday promised that drug-cheating athletes who test positive at the 2000 Sydney Olympics will not be carted off to prison.

Coates said Australian proposals for tightening legislation against hard sports drugs were aimed at the illegal import and trafficking of banned substances and not athletes caught doping.

Speaking in Seoul, Coates was responding to comments from leading International Olympic Committee officials who do not want to see a repeat of the Tour de France where cyclists were arrested by police.

"Our submission was not properly understood. At no stage did we suggest athletes would be jailed," he said.

While Coates was defending Australia's stance, the four vice-presidents of the IOC Executive Board which is meeting in Seoul this week, spent much of yesterday preparing the groundwork for next February's World Conference on Doping in Sport.

With the 2000 Sydney Olympics looming large, the Australian Olympic Committee is considered one of the key players in the IOC's fight against doping and Coates is a leading advocate of tighter legal controls and stiffer penalties.

"The Australian Olympic Committee made a submission to the Australian government and our various state governments concerning the laws in Australia that deal with the import, export, manufacture, trafficking and possession of what we call hard sports drugs. We have not made any submission to the IOC," Coates said.

"What we are saying in Australia is you should have the same penalties for hard sports drugs as you have for narcotics and amphetamines."

Coates said his national Olympic committee can already impose fines on athletes who test positive.

"Athletes have to repay money to us, grant money, which could be as much as half a million dollars for some of our top athletes over four years. We have, with the government, a good education programme and the government also has a very good testing programme, the Australian Sports Drug Agency, which does a lot of out-of-competition tests, but we can't solve this problem without government and we need them to come and help us," he added.

"When we analysed all of the laws we found they were not strong enough. So we have identified what help we need. In two Australian territories, it is already an offence for the unlawful manufacture, sales distribution, possession of steroids. But the only time an athlete would ever find themselves in prison as a consequence of this is if they had a commercial or traffickable amount of drugs, more than just for their own use.

"We are not proposing that mere possession for one's own use would carry that penalty of jail."

Coates added he does not envisage drug-busting police invading the Olympic athletes village, but that civil authorities could act at custom control situations.