The International Olympic Committee (IOC) president Jacques Rogge has cleared London of breaching the bidding rules in the race for the 2012 Olympics.

London bid committee found themselves caught by controversy after two Olympic consultants connected to the committee criticized a stadium in Paris at a press conference on Monday.

Their comments could not come at a worse time given that the IOC will cast their votes on the host city of the 2012 Games in just two days.

Under the IOC's rules on bidding for the Olympics, the candidate cities are not allowed to criticize their rivals.

While the stadium row is shaping up, Rogge stepped in by saying that no cities have "gone over the line".

"We have had no complaints from any city in Singapore," said Rogge at a press conference later on Monday.

"Had anyone gone over the yellow line I would have intervened. The fact I said nothing is a sign that nobody has gone over the line."

While clearing London of any breach, Rogge gave his thumbs-up to the Paris stadium Stade de France, one of the major venues for the 1998 France World Cup and also the planned Olympic Stadium for Paris' bid.

"If there has been criticism of the Stade de France, well, the IOC evaluation commission gave it a very favourable report."

Paris bid committee has ruled out any formal complaint to the IOC, saying that they would continue to focus on their bid and leave the IOC to decide whether to pursue the case.

"We will not react officially to the comments," said French Sports Minister Jean-Francois Lamour.

The stadium row was stirred early on Monday when architect Rod Sheard and Olympic consultant Jim Sloman were critical of the Stade de France, where Paris has planned to host the athletics competitions during the Olympics. London has to build a new stadium for athletics.

Sloman, former chief operating officer of the Sydney Games, said he didnot think it's an advantage for Paris to have the existing Stade de France as the Olympic Stadium.

"Sydney didn't have one existing stadium, Atlanta didn't," he said. "It (The Stade de France) has been built for football not for athletics and even though they had a world athletics championships in the last couple of years they still have sight-line problems."

Sheard, who was involved in the design of Sydney's athletics stadium, said: "Paris is a wonderful stadium, I like going there to watch rugby but unfortunately rugby is not an Olympic sport."

"There are fundamental compromises when you introduce other sports into an Olympic athletics stadium."

"Having seen the difficulties with the Paris stadium, we can build a stadium that is dedicated to athletics and has no compromises of sightlines or other operational difficulties."

But Lamour said that he was "a bit surprised" by the comments that the Stade de France was not built for athletics.

"The Stade de France was chosen by the IAAF (the world athletics ruling body) to host the world athletics championships which was a success in 2003," said he.

"The stadium was designed and developed with Olympic purpose inmind," he said.

London bid committee has tried to distant themselves from the stadium row, saying that neither Sloman nor Sheard was member of the bid team and didnot speak on the behalf of the bid committee.

The IOC will cast votes on the host city of the 2012 Games on July 6. London, Paris, New York, Madrid and Moscow are the five candidate cities.

Source: Xinhua