RIYADH
(Reuters) - Saudi Arabia will enter women athletes in the Olympics for
the first time ever in London this summer, the Islamic kingdom's London
embassy said on Sunday.
Human rights groups had called
on the International Olympic Committee to bar Saudi Arabia from
competing in London, citing its failure ever to send a woman athlete to a
Games and its ban on sports in girls' state schools.
Powerful Muslim clerics in the
ultra-conservative state have repeatedly spoken out against the
participation of girls and women in sports.
Under King Abdullah, however,
the government has pushed for them to have better education and work
opportunities and allowed them to vote in future municipal elections,
the only public polls held in the kingdom.
"The kingdom of Saudi Arabia is
looking forward to its complete participation in the London 2012 Olympic
Games through the Saudi Arabian Olympic Committee, which will oversee
the participation of women athletes who can qualify for the games," said
a statement published on the embassy website.
In April the head of the kingdom's General Presidency of Youth
Welfare, the body that regulates sports in Saudi Arabia, said it would
not prevent women from competing but that they would not have official
government endorsement.The IOC said on Monday that talks with the Saudis were "ongoing" and that "we are working to ensure the participation of Saudi women at the Games in London."
Top Saudi clerics, who hold government positions and have always constituted an important support base for the ruling al-Saud royal family, have spoken against female participation in sports.
In 2009 a senior cleric said girls risked losing their virginity by tearing their hymens if they took part in energetic sport.
Perhaps the most likely woman
candidate to compete under the Saudi flag in London, equestrian Dalma
Malhas, represented the kingdom at the junior Olympics in Singapore in
2010, but without official support or recognition.
Physical education is banned in
girls' state schools in the kingdom, but Saudi Arabia's only female
deputy minister, Noura al-Fayez, has written to Human Rights Watch
saying there is a plan to introduce it.
(Reporting by Angus McDowall and Asma Alsharif; editing by Andrew Roche)
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