RIGA - Deputy Prime Minister Ainars Slesers on March 30 announced that Latvia would not host the 2006 World Ice Hockey Championship unless the state and the city government took control of the project.
After weeks of intensive negotiations between the four parties, the announcement triggered speculation that Latvia would finally lose the chance to host the prestigious event.
Slesers also asked for the resignation of Kirovs Lipmans, head of Latvia's Hockey Federation.
Blame for the demise of the project also fell on Multihalle, the company that won the tender for the project.
"Multihalle did everything they could to stop the event from happening in Latvia," Guntis Ulmanis, head of the hockey championship organizing committee and former president of Latvia, told the Baltic News Service.
The four parties - Multihalle, the construction company Merks, LHF, and Riga City Council - could not reach an agreement over the construction of the arena despite continued deadline extensions.
By the time The Baltic Times went to press on March 31 the fate of the ice hockey arena was again unclear.
"You have to be a fool not to understand. You have to prepare your attitude so the federation does not go away. That does not mean that I will resign from organizing the world championships. I will fight till the end," Lipmans was quoted as saying.
Multihalle, however, denied Slesers' claim in a press release sent out later the same day.
"Multihalle is ready to sign an agreement to sign a four-way guarantee agreement," the company said.
The company also claimed that Slesers had been informed of their readiness to agree that morning.
But the Estonian-owned Merks claimed they had not seen the proposed design and feared that the project would cost well over the expected 26 million euros, a risky project given the guarantee of 2 million lats (3 million euros) the state was insisting on.
The long-troubled project has been the subject of a conspiracy theory involving Russian money to insure that the games would not happen in Latvia.
When asked about the theory, Slesers rejected it, saying, "I think that is nonsense. Russia will have the championship later on anyway. These are just rumors," he told The Baltic Times.
The Riga City Council's development department head Andris Amerks still was hopeful that the hall could be built but only if the city and the government could persuade the International Hockey Federation, whose head, Rene Fazel, is scheduled to visit Latvia on April 5 - 6 to give the final decision on championships.
The 2006 World Ice Hockey Championship was awarded to Latvia in 2001, contingent on hosting the games an 11,000 seat arena had to be built by September 2005, with an addition smaller stadium added later.
