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Russia confident of ticking IAAF boxes for Olympic spot

The IAAF has given Russia a tight two-month stay of execution to get its anti-doping house in order, but Moscow insists it is confident Russian athletes will compete in the Rio Olympics. Russia was suspended in November after revelations of state-sponsored doping and widespread corruption, the IAAF setting up an independent taskforce to monitor the athletics powerhouse's compliance to the verification criteria for re-entry to international competition. Taskforce head Rune Andersen, a former World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) director, recommended to the IAAF Council that while Russia had made some advances, they simply were not enough for the moment. "The view of the taskforce is that there is significant work still to be done to satisfy the reinstatement conditions and so the Russian athletics federation should not be reinstated to membership at this stage," IAAF president Sebastian Coe said. Time is now ticking fast for Russian athletes ahead of the Olympic Games, not least because they have to attain Olympic-standard qualifying marks before teams are registered in the second week of July, with track and field set to kick off on August 12 in Rio. But the door was left ajar for Russia's re-inclusion in the IAAF family, Coe saying that an extraordinary Council meeting would be held in May, with Andersen and his team again reporting their findings before a collective decision is taken. - Strict criteria - Despite Andersen saying Russia's problem was one of a cultural change that, worryingly, could take years, one person in no doubt that Russia would tick all the boxes in the coming two months was Russian Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko. "I don't see any insurmountable obstacles that may prevent the closing of the issue in May," Mutko said. Mutko insisted Russia was doing everything possible to meet the strict criteria set by the world athletics ruling body but stressed that he believed the responsibility for doping code violation should be personal. "When we speak about doping there're no guarantees possible," Mutko said. "It's all individual, that's why we're talking that there should be personal responsibility for doping use." Coe, who has endured a tough time since taking over the IAAF from now-disgraced ex-president Lamine Diack last year, repeated his vows to crack down on doping on Friday. "My job is not actually to get as many athletes to the Olympic Games as possible," the British two-time Olympic gold medallist said. "The job of the IAAF Council is to make sure that those athletes who are going to the Olympics are clean and are in systems that are based upon integrity." Russia was banned in November following a sensational report by an independent commission of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) that found evidence of state-sponsored doping and large-scale corruption in Russian athletics. The IAAF said Russia could only be reinstated if it fulfilled strict criteria outlined last year, including compliance with all WADA and IAAF anti-doping rules and requirements The IAAF Council's decision was widely expected, coming just two days after influential anti-doping czar Dick Pound compared Russian efforts to combat doping in athletics to changing deckchairs on the Titanic. - 'Wake-up call' - Russia aside, the Council also fired out a warning to five other countries, including east African track giants Ethiopia and Kenya, saying they were in "critical care" over their anti-doping programmes. "The reform process has led to more information being shared and recommendations owed at Council level around the fight to protect clean athletes," Coe said. "To this end, our review by anti-doping teams has identified five countries who the IAAF Council have agreed are in critical care at different degrees." Coe said Ethiopia and Morocco had to "implement as a matter of urgency a robust and adequate national testing programme, both in and out of competition". Kenya, Ukraine and Belarus were also "put on an IAAF monitoring list for 2016 to ensure their national anti-doping programmes are significantly strengthened and their journey to compliance completed before the end of this year", Coe added. "There are no immediate sanctions, it's just a wake-up call at this point," the IAAF president said. "Serious sanctions, also provided for within IAAF rules, will only be considered if they don't comply with Council requirements."