Olympic officials, medical and anti-doping experts will meet today at International Olympic Committee (IOC) headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland to unify international standards on testing for the banned endurance drug EPO.

Patrick Schamasch, head of the IOC's medical committee, said technical approval by the experts today would open the way for "political approval" by international sports federations and the IOC in time for the 2002 Winter Games in Salt Lake City.

Sporting officials have long criticised the absence of common international procedures and standards for the anti-doping drive launched last year and say different anti-drug agencies in different countries applied varying codes. Common EPO testing standards are regarded as a first stage in unifying their approach.

"The doors of this meeting will only open when white smoke emerges to show that we have reached an agreement," Schamasch said.

The IOC said in a statement the meeting would focus on a single French-developed urine test for EPO, which was examined by IOC-approved laboratories recently in an attempt to minimise the incidence of false positive results.

Approval of the EPO standard would effectively mark a first step in establishing an overall global anti-doping code by 2003 and in time for the Olympic Games in Athens in 2004.

Meanwhile, top Italian cyclist Marco Pantani had his conviction for sporting fraud overturned by the Court of Appeal in Bologna yesterday. Pantani had been sentenced to a suspended three-month prison term for doping-related allegations surrounding the 1995 Milan-Turin classic but the court ruled that "the deed was not enshrined in law as an offence".