International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) President Lamine Diack dismissed suggestions that Russia might be prevented from sending athletes to the Olympic Games as "a joke".

A German television programme made allegations that doping was organised throughout Russian sport, and said almost all Russian athletes doped. The IAAF ethics commission and the World Anti-doping Agency (WADA) are investigating the evidence and researching whether Russian officials ran such a programme.

But Diack on 21 April said Russia would not be banned from international athletics over the allegations.

"They are in! They are in," he told reporters at a sports convention in the Russian resort of Sochi.

"I think that was a joke that there was a declaration in Russia there are 99% doped and so on. I said what was exaggerated was ridiculous. We organise here in Russia the Winter Olympics last year. We organise a world championships. It would signify that we are all wrong.

"The IOC says there are some who doped. We will catch and sanction. I think we ought to do in Russia like they did in the United States. We used to have a lot of problems with the United States in the nineties."

The IAAF president said the key to stopping doping was the use of WADA with the backing of governments.

"You want to solve doping in the world now, we are in a better position because we have WADA. WADA is the sport movement in the government," he said.

"This is something that can only be done by the government. Not by the internals, by the federations. The government can say at the customs 'open your box'. The government can be at your hotel and say 'open your room, I want to check.'

"No federation can do that, so if we want to succeed in this fight we ought to use WADA, we already have WADA. In WADA the government must pay its contribution but sometimes WADA has a problem because IOC makes a check but the government did not pay."

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