Townley was a violent right-wing militant who grew up in Chile in the 1960s and spread propaganda against Neruda's great friend, Marxist President Salvador Allende, in early 1973. But experts said Townley was in Florida at the time of Neruda's death on Sept. 23, 1973, just 12 days after Gen. Augusto Pinochet's military coup ousted Allende. And contrary to the self-serving story put out by Pinochet's spy chief, Townley was never a CIA agent, they said.

There's a long paper trail including a Florida driver's license, a new U.S. passport and salary receipts from a garage where Townley worked as a mechanic that proves he was in Florida in September 1973, said John Dinges, a journalist who covered Chile for The Washington Post and wrote about Townley in two books, "The Condor Years" and "Assassination on Embassy Row."

Peter Kornbluh, the author of "The Pinochet File, a Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability," also discounted the idea that Townley was worth looking into.

"We all want to see this case solved, but false leads are not going to bring us any closer to arriving at the truth of Pablo Neruda's very untimely death," Kornbluh said.

Both spoke with The Associated Press in phone interviews from the United States on Monday.

Neruda had been suffering from cancer and the disease was listed as the official cause of his death, but the poet's driver and others close to him have long suspected foul play.

Nearly 40 years later, Judge Mario Carroza is formally investigating the cause of death of the Nobel Prize-winning poet, who would have been one of Pinochet's most forceful critics if he had escaped Chile. His body has been disinterred for chemical tests, and Carroza is seeking any evidence available.

A key witness has been Dr. Sergio Draper, who attended Neruda at the hospital. Draper said in the 1970s that he was at Neruda's side when he died. But Draper recently told the judge a different story that a "Dr. Price" took over Neruda's care just before he died, and disappeared shortly thereafter.

The judge ordered a police sketch based on Draper's recollections to help identify this mysterious figure, and the AP obtained a copy of it Monday. Police notes below the black-and-white sketch describe the subject as about 28 years old, with blue eyes, white skin and short blond hair.

Draper treated both Neruda and former President Eduardo Frei Montalva, another Pinochet critic who died under suspicious circumstances while hospitalized. He has long denied any foul play in either death, and publicly insisted that Neruda was brought to the hospital near death from metastatic cancer.

Communist Party attorney Eduardo Contreras, who pushed for the Neruda investigation and has access to the closed-door testimony, told the AP that Draper's description of "Dr. Price" could match either Townley or Harmutt Hopp. He said he wants Interpol to authoritatively determine where Townley was in September 1973.

"During the dictatorship many people entered and left Chile without their movements being registered," Contreras said.

Unlike Townley, who had light brown hair, Hopp was a doctor, and blond. Hopp was sentenced in absentia in January to five years in prison for sexually abusing minors at Colonia Dignidad, a compound led by a former Nazi that doubled as one of Pinochet's torture centers. But Hopp remains free after fleeing to Germany, which refused Chile's extradition request.

Townley, who joined Chile's DINA intelligence agency in June 1974, has said he acted on the orders of Pinochet's spy chief, Manuel Contreras, when he planted bombs that killed critics of the dictatorship, including Gen. Carlos Prats in Buenos Aires and Chilean Ambassador Orlando Letelier in Washington.

Eduardo Contreras, who is not related to the ex-spy chief, repeated the often-told story that Townley was a "double-agent" who worked for the CIA as well as DINA. But both Dinges and Kornbluh said that the CIA twice turned down Townley's efforts to join the agency and that Pinochet's spy chief sought to divert culpability for his crimes by putting out the false story that the CIA had planted Townley inside Chile's secret police.

"This is a story that Manuel Contreras has been putting out consistently since the death of Letelier: that Townley was not working for DINA but for the CIA. And the left falls into the trap again and again, because they want to throw mud at the CIA," Dinges said.

Townley testified in the United States against Manuel Contreras, who is serving multiple life sentences for kidnappings and murders during the 1973-90 Pinochet dictatorship. Townley himself served a six-year sentence in the U.S. for the Letelier bombing and then was put into the witness protection program.

U.S. federal investigations showed that Townley fled Chile months before the coup because he feared arrest for murdering a homeless man who got in the way of an anti-Allende operation. Dinges said Townley didn't return to Chile until Oct. 18, 1973, carrying the same false passport that he would later use to enter Argentina and kill Prats.

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Associated Press writer Marianela Jarroud reported this story in Santiago and Michael Warren reported from Buenos Aires, Argentina.

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TNT will showcase one driver per week in an "All Access" segment during its pre-race coverage. First up will be Denny Hamlin, who will be followed by the network from the time Sunday's race at Dover concludes all the way through next Friday's qualifying at Pocono.

TNT will follow Hamlin and his Joe Gibbs Racing team through their weekly preparations.

"We're hoping fans get a deeper, insightful look at the driver, the teams and what goes on week-to-week," said Craig Barry, senior vice president and executive creative director, Turner Sports. "I think that this type of television, this all-access, fly-on-the-wall type television is becoming more and more prevalent in what we do."

TNT will then do the same thing with Brad Keselowski leading into Michigan, Juan Pablo Montoya before Sonoma and Kurt Busch before Kentucky.

It could make for compelling television as teams are generally hesitant to give too much of a glimpse of their preparations for risk of revealing strategy. Barry said TNT is aware teams could find the process invasive as cameras follow them for a week, but "we were very forthcoming in telling them what we expected, and giving them examples of what we were looking for" in recruiting participants.

The network also plans to televise one feature each week highlighting a driver away from the track. The spotlight will be on Dale Earnhardt Jr. before Pocono as reporter Ralph Sheheen visits NASCAR's most popular driver at his "Whisky River" property and "Car Graveyard."

The network will use analysts Kyle Petty, Wally Dallenbach and Larry McReynolds in the booth with play-by-play announcer Adam Alexander, who will also host the 60-minute "Countdown to Green" pre-race show. Reporters Sheheen, Marty Snider, Matt Yocum and Chris Neville will patrol pit road before and during each race.

"These guys have worked together for us for a long time that is a really important aspect," Barry said. "We take a lot of time to create a situation that the announcers and the talent can play off each other and build their chemistry."

Indeed, Turner is entering its 31st consecutive year of NASCAR coverage. The network's "Summer Series" of six races is part of a television package shared between Fox and ESPN. The current contracts all run through the 2014 season, but Fox has already renegotiated its extension.

NASCAR chairman Brian France last week said "there's a lot of interest, that's a very good thing," about the remaining portion of NASCAR's 36-race schedule. But France also indicated he'd like NASCAR to stay where it is on the television guide.

"My hope is to renew with the incumbents," France said. "But that's why you have negotiations and discussions. We'll have to see how that plays out."

TNT declined to comment on its position regarding upcoming NASCAR negotiations.

The network also declined to discuss fan criticism over the amount of commercials packed into a NASCAR broadcast. Fans have grown increasingly frustrated with all three networks, arguing too much time is spent on advertising at the expense of at-track action.

TNT was the first network to adopt side-by-side coverage by going "Wide Open" during its July race at Daytona and splitting the screen between the commercial and the on-track action. It's not known if the network will use the feature this year.

"I feel like we really haven't completely decided on that," Barry said. "We are looking at a bunch of different scenarios."

TNT will not use an overhead camera in its coverage, but made that decision before a cable from Fox's "CAMCAT" camera snapped during last Sunday's race at Charlotte. Several cars suffered heavy damage and 10 fans were injured when a part of the rope landed in the grandstand.

President Barack Obama underlined Tuesday that investigators do not know if the twin bombing the day before that killed three people and wounded more than 170 was carried out by an international organization, a domestic group or a "malevolent individual." There has been no claim of responsibility.

A person briefed on the investigation told The Associated Press that the explosives were fashioned out of pressure cookers and packed with shards of metal, nails and ball bearings to inflict maximum carnage.

The relative ease of constructing such bombs and the powerful punch they deliver has made them attractive to insurgents and Islamic extremists, particularly in South Asia. They have turned up in past bombing plots by Islamic extremists in the West, including a plan by a U.S. soldier to blow up a restaurant frequented by fellow soldiers outside Fort Hood, in Texas. One of the three devices used in the May 2010 Times Square attempted bombing was a pressure cooker, according to a joint FBI and Homeland Security intelligence report issued in July 2010.

Al-Qaida's branch in Yemen gave a detailed description on how to make a pressure cooker bomb in the 2010 first issue of "Inspire," its magazine that only appears online, in a chapter titled "Make a bomb in the kitchen of your mom."

"The pressurized cooker is the most effective method" for making a simple bomb, the article said, describing how to fill the cooker with shrapnel and gunpowder and to create a detonator using the filament of a light bulb and a clock timer.

"Inspire" magazine has a running series of such training articles called "Open Source Jihad," which the group calls a resource manual for individual extremists to carry out attacks against the enemies of jihad, including the U.S. and its allies.The magazine is targeted heavily at encouraging "lone wolf" jihadis.

An issue last year reprinted an older article by a veteran Syrian jihadi Abu Musab al-Souri addressing would-be jihadis proposing a long list of possible targets for attacks, among them "crowded sports arenas" and "annual social events."

Notably, Army Pfc. Naser Jason Abdo, who was convicted and sentenced to life in prison last year for the Fort Hood restaurant bombing plot, was discovered to have a copy of the "How to build a bomb in the kitchen of your mom" article, according to the FBI. Investigators found bombmaking materials in his hotel that included a pressure cooker and gunpowder, according to testimony at his trial.

The SITE Monitoring Service, a U.S. independent group tracking militant messaging online, noted that Islamic extremists are not the only ones paying attention to the al-Qaida magazine: White supremacists have also circulated copies on their web forums. They found "Inspire" and "other al-Qaida manuals beneficial for their strategies," it said.

Over the course of 10 issues the past three years, "Inspire" has given detailed instructions with diagrams and photos on how to use automatic weapons, produce remote control detonators, set fire to a building or create forest fires. In the most recent issue, put out in March, it described how to set fire to a parked vehicle and how to cause road accidents with oil slicks on a road or tire-bursting spikes.

The chapters, including the one on pressure cooker bombs, were compiled into a booklet titled "The Lone Mujahed Pocketbook," released on Islamic militant web sites in March, according to SITE.

Al-Qaida's Yemeni branch, known as al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, has repeatedly tried to carry out direct attacks on U.S. soil, once by dispatching the would-be 2009 Christmas bomber of a U.S. jet whose attack failed when the explosives hidden in his underwear failed to go off and then the following year by trying to mail explosives to the U.S. in packages that were intercepted.

The pressure cooker bomb's most frequent use seems to be in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nepal and India in attacks against police or the public. This year, local press reports in Pakistan have reported several such bombs found planted on streets, including in the city of Karachi, where multiple militant groups operate.

In 2010, suspected militants attacked the U.S.-based Christian aid group World Vision in northwestern Pakistan, killing six Pakistani employees with a remotely detonated pressure cooker bomb.

That same year, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security put out a warning about such explosives, noting their frequent use in South Asia.

"The presence of a pressure cooker in an unusual location such as a building lobby or busy street corner should be treated as suspicious," it said.

__

AP correspondents Cassandra Vinograd and Paisley Dodds in London and Eileen Sullivan in Washington contributed to this report.

Many Buddhists and Muslims stayed locked inside their homes and shops were shuttered after Tuesday's violence in Lashio town, near the border with China, the latest region to fall prey to the country's spreading sectarian violence. The rioting in Lashio was sparked by reports that a Muslim man had set fire to a Buddhist woman.

Deadly violence between Buddhists and Muslims has occurred since last year in other parts of Myanmar, first in a western region and then in central towns. The new flare-up will reinforce doubts that President Thein Sein's government can or will act to contain the violence and crack down on racial and religious intolerance.

Wednesday morning was quiet, but by afternoon several hundred young men, screaming and waving sticks, roamed the downtown area on motorcycles near City Hall. A Buddhist monk was seated on the back of one of the motorcycles, waving a stick.

On another street, the crowd threw rocks at buildings. Many people were too afraid to step outside. Smoke could be seen over at least one area of town, and local politician Sai Myint Maung said a movie theater had been burned and that there were rumors that more troublemakers were gathered on the outskirts of the town.

"The situation has changed 180 degrees. It was quiet the whole day and all of a sudden there is a fire and the situation has changed," he said.

An officer from the No. 1 Lashio police station said police had been dispatched by truck to try to quell the new violence. The officer, who did not want to be identified because he was not authorized to release information, said at least four people were hurt.

"My family is staying inside. We are afraid of being attacked," said one Muslim resident, Ko Maung Gyi, who spoke by telephone earlier from inside his locked home in Lashio's main Muslim neighborhood.

"I never expected that such racial violence would erupt in Lashio," he said. "Our small town is multiethnic and we have lived in peace for a long time."

There were no reported fatalities after Tuesday night's violence in the remote mountain town.

Order was initially restored after authorities banned gatherings of more than five people. A dusk-to-dawn curfew was imposed and many shops and streets were empty, Sai Myint Maung said.

The government appealed for calm.

"Damaging religious buildings and creating religious riots is inappropriate for the democratic society we are trying to create," presidential spokesman Ye Htut said on his Facebook page. The message noted that "two religious buildings and some shops" in Lashio were burned, without specifying whether they were Muslim or Buddhist.

"Any criminal act will be dealt with according to the law," Ye Htut said.

A 48-year-old man accused of setting fire to a 24-year-old Buddhist woman was arrested, state television reported. It said the man, identified as an Indian Muslim, threw gasoline on the woman. The report appeared to put to rest earlier questions over the man's religion.

The man was charged with causing grievous injuries and arson, as well as drug possession due to stimulants found in his pocket, the TV report said. The woman was being treated for burns to her chest, back and hands.

The report did not mention whether any members of Tuesday night's Buddhist mob were arrested, an omission likely to fuel more questions over whether minority Muslims can find justice in overwhelmingly Buddhist Myanmar.

Minority Muslims have been the main victims of the deadly violence, but so far there have been no criminal trials against members of the country's Buddhist majority.

After Tuesday's alleged immolation, an irate crowd of more than 100 people, including Buddhist monks, gathered outside a police station demanding that the alleged attacker be handed over, state TV reported.

The crowd then rampaged through the town, setting fire to Lashio's largest mosque and several shops, the television report said.

The mob also set fire to a Muslim school and orphanage that was so badly charred that only two walls remained, said Min Thein, a resident contacted by telephone. Police and other witnesses confirmed the school burning.

Myanmar's sectarian violence first flared in western Rakhine state last year, when hundreds of people died in clashes between Buddhists and Muslims that drove about 140,000 others, mostly Muslims, from their homes.

The clashes seemed confined to that region, but in late March, similar Buddhist-led violence swept the town of Meikthila in central Myanmar, killing at least 43 people. Earlier this month, a court sentenced seven Muslims from Meikthila to prison terms for their role in the violence.

Several other towns in central Myanmar experienced less deadly violence, mostly involving the torching of Muslim businesses and mosques.

Muslims account for about 4 percent of Myanmar's roughly 60 million people. Anti-Muslim sentiment is closely tied to nationalism and the dominant Buddhist religion, so leaders have been reluctant to speak up for the unpopular minority.

Thein Sein's administration, which came to power in 2011 after half a century of military rule, has been heavily criticized for not doing enough to protect Muslims. He vowed last week during a trip to the U.S. that all perpetrators of the sectarian violence would be brought to justice.

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Associated Press writers Aye Aye Win in Yangon and Jocelyn Gecker and Grant Peck in Bangkok contributed to this report.

(Reuters) - Salesforce.com Inc's quarterly earnings and outlook disappointed investors as costs rise following a spree of acquisitions, sending its shares lower.

Under Marc Benioff, Salesforce's CEO and founder, the company's fast revenue growth has made it a favorite with investors eager to own part of the growing trend among businesses to outsource their information technology needs - from servers to software, a phenomenon known as cloud computing.

But Salesforce has struggled to earn consistent profits. Its stock has underperformed the S&P 500 year to date but it still trades at 85 times expected earnings, compared to an average of 17 for its peers.

During the quarter ending in April, Salesforce's subscription and support costs rose faster than its revenue, pushing its bottom line further into the red.

Moving beyond "organic" expansion of the company, Salesforce.com made a series of major acquisitions last year that included a $745 million deal for Buddy Media, a social media marketing software company.

"They're moving from organic to inorganic growth. And inorganic is very expensive," said Bernstein analyst Mark Moerdler. "They're building out lots of sales organizations in lots of different areas."

Inorganic growth refers to expanding through acquisitions, in contrast to growth of existing business.

Considered the leader in cloud computing, Salesforce is facing rising competition from Oracle Corp , SAP AGand Microsoft Corp , which are intensely pursuing its customers and making splashy acquisitions to match Salesforce's product offerings.

Salesforce.com had a first-quarter net loss of $67.7 million or 12 cents a share, compared to a net loss of $19.5 million, or 4 cents a share, in the same quarter last year.

Salesforce said on Thursday its non-GAAP diluted earnings per share in the first quarter were 10 cents, in line with expectations.

It said it expects adjusted earnings in the current quarter of 11 or 12 cents, also in line with expectations.

"The guidance is just in line and we're used to seeing these guys raise," said Pacific Crest Securities analyst Brendan Barnicle. "We see this as a buying opportunity."

Salesforce.com also said full-year EPS would be between 47 cents and 49 cents, compared to expectations of 49 cents.

The seller of on-demand business software posted fiscal first-quarter revenue of $893 million, up 28 percent from the previous year.

It said revenue in the current quarter would be in the range of $931 million to $936 million.

Analysts on average expected first-quarter revenue of $887 million and current-quarter revenue of $934 million, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Shares of Salesforce.com fell 6.43 percent to $42.75 in extended trade after closing down 0.20 percent at $45.69.

(Reporting by Noel Randewich; Editing by Phil Berlowitz)

By Karolos Grohmann

LONDON, May 24 (Reuters) - World rowing federation (FISA) boss Denis Oswald became the fifth candidate for the International Olympic Committee (IOC) presidency on Friday, with the Swiss sports administrator citing his long experience as an asset.

Oswald, an IOC member since 1991 and member of the powerful executive board for 12 years until 2012, joins the race which already includes Germany's Thomas Bach, Singapore's Ng Ser Miang, Puerto Rican banker Richard Carrion and world boxing (AIBA) chief CK Wu from Taiwan.

"More than 40 years of service to the Olympic movement has provided me with a comprehensive understanding of the organisation and the movement as well as its role and significance in the wider world," he said in a statement.

"This knowledge and experience, together with the skills for which I have been recognised will enable me to advance the Olympic cause, and the IOC's authority as the leader of world sport."

The IOC will elect a successor to president Jacques Rogge, whose 12-year reign comes to a mandatory end, at their session in Buenos Aires on Sept. 10.

The 66-year-old Oswald was head of the coordination commission overseeing preparations for the Games in London last year and in Athens in 2004. He is a three-time Olympian and won a bronze medal in rowing at the 1968 Mexico City Games.

The tough-talking Oswald has been a member of the coordination commission for all summer Games since the Sydney 2000 Olympics and was head of the association of summer Olympic international federations (ASOIF) from 2000-2012.

The deadline for candidacies is June 10 with Sergei Bubka, the former Olympic pole vault champion, also seen as a likely contender.

Oswald said he would hold a news conference next week to elaborate on his candidacy. (Editing by Clare Fallon)

HONG KONG (Reuters) - Lenovo Group Ltd's bold acquisitions in its flagship PC business, a foray into mobile gadgets, and a relatively light debt load are setting it apart from PC rivals as industry shipments take their steepest fall in decades.

Lenovo, a sliver away from unseating Hewlett-Packard Co as the world's top PC maker by shipments, posted on Thursday an estimate-beating 90 percent rise in quarterly profit, its fastest in seven quarters.

"They have been aggressive in acquiring several distributors in different regions such as Brazil, Europe and Japan over the past few years, so that basically gave them better distribution, as well as gains in market share," said Warren Lau, an analyst at Maybank Kim Eng Securities in Hong Kong.

The Chinese PC maker posted net profit of $126.9 million in the quarter ended in March, up from $66.8 million a year earlier, based on Reuters calculations using full-year and nine-month financial data.

That beat expectations of a $110 million net profit and was the fastest pace since the first quarter of the 2011/2012 fiscal year, when growth doubled.

Research firm IDC said global PC shipments fell 13.9 percent year-on-year in the first quarter of 2013, the biggest decline since it began tracking the market on a quarterly basis in 1994, as consumers switched to mobile computing and Windows 8 sales fell short of expectations.

With shipments unchanged in the first quarter, Lenovo is outstripping other vendors. PC shipments from HP, Dell Inc, Acer Inc and Asustek Computer Inc fell by 11-33 percent during the same period, IDC said.

The latest IDC data showed that Lenovo's market share was 15.3 percent, just 0.4 percentage points lower than HP.

Lenovo shares far outperformed those of its rivals last year. This year Lenovo, up 3 percent, is still beating Acer.

Dell and HP have staged strong recoveries, but Lenovo's quarterly net profit has risen consistently over the past few years. By contrast, HP's net profit was down 32 percent and Dell's was down 79.5 percent year-on-year, according to the companies' latest quarterly financial results.

For the full year, Lenovo's net profit rose by a third to $635.1 million, it said in a statement to the Hong Kong stock exchange, beating an estimate of $618.2 million in a poll of 31 analysts by Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

STRATEGIC BUYS

Lenovo has spent heavily over the past few years to strengthen its PC business, with purchases such as Brazilian electronics maker CCE last year, Germany's Medion in 2011 and IBM's PC business in 2005.

Its slew of acquisitions has also sparked market talk that it might be interested in IBM Corp's server business, as well as handset makers Research In Motion Ltd and Nokia Oyj.

Lenovo has declined to comment on the rumors.

Lenovo has cash totaling $4.5 billion, vastly outweighing debt of $423 million, and giving it the muscle for more buyouts.

HP and Dell have total debt of $28.2 billion and $7.2 billion respectively, compared with their cash balances of $12.6 billion and $10.9 billion.

"We expect Lenovo to remain acquisitive as it is hungry for growth and so despite high cash balances they will not hike the dividend," said Jefferies technology analyst Ken Hui.

The Beijing-based company has shed its staid image as the maker of all-business ThinkPads, and now churns out multi-colored IdeaPad Yoga convertible ultrabooks which have helped build its brand in China and beyond.

Though newer to smartphones than to its core PC business, Lenovo is the No.2 smartphone and media tablet vendor in China, a success it hopes to duplicate in other emerging markets such as Russia and India, where competition from Samsung Electronics Co Ltd, Apple Inc and others is fierce.

"They are in the right niche markets and hitting the right segments at the right price points. But this is not sustainable in the long run unless the mobility business steps up," said a Hong Kong-based technology banker.

(Additional reporting by Tripti Kalro in BANGALORE and Twinnie Siu in HONG KONG; Editing by Daniel Magnowski)

Rogge told The Associated Press that sports leaders who attended a summit at IOC headquarters in Switzerland concluded that better testing - rather than more tests - is the best way forward in the anti-doping fight.

Drug-testing strategies and the role of the World Anti-Doping Agency were discussed at a meeting of Olympic leaders Tuesday in Lausanne.

While the IOC declined to release details on Tuesday, Rogge said in an interview that all sides agreed on the need for greater unannounced out-of-competition testing.

''There should be more targeted testing with athletes that might be considered as being suspicious,'' he said by telephone. ''Top sports should be targeted more than others because of the effect of doping on their performances, and the prevalence of doping. All of that was discussed and definitely will lead to an implementation.''

IOC officials have expressed concern that, despite the large number of tests carried around the world, the system is failing to catch serious doping offenders.

''Quantitatively, there was no call to do more testing because there is already 250,000 tests a year,'' Rogge said. ''But qualitatively, (there was a call) to make better use of this testing, do more out of competition and definitely more targeting, both of the athletes and the sports.''

Rogge chaired Tuesday's meeting, which was attended by the four vice presidents of the IOC and leaders of international sports federations, national Olympic committees and other key groups.

The main topic was the role of WADA, which some sports bodies complain has gone beyond its mandate and unfairly criticized the federations. The meeting was requested by the summer sports federations in February following public spats between WADA and the International Cycling Union over the Lance Armstrong doping case.

''It was the opportunity for the members of the stakeholders - the NOCs, the IFs, the athletes commissions - to vent their ideas and their feelings,'' Rogge said. ''We decided not to make a press release because these were informal discussions without an official point of view.

''It was a very good atmosphere. People could express their views. I definitely think it will lead to very good collaboration with WADA.''

Pat McQuaid, president of cycling's governing body, and predecessor Hein Verbruggen attended. No WADA representative was invited.

WADA was set up by the IOC in 1999 to lead the global anti-doping fight. The IOC and Olympic movement provide 50 percent of WADA's annual budget.

WADA is due to elect a new president in November, replacing former Australian government minister John Fahey. The new president will be nominated from the Olympic movement.

''We are defining the wish list of the sports movement toward the fight against doping that we are going to give to the new leadership in November,'' Rogge said.

Last week, former WADA president Dick Pound submitted a report to the agency detailing the ineffectiveness of the current drug-testing system.

Despite increased testing and scientific advances to detect more sophisticated substances, Pound said drug cheats are getting away scot-free because of a lack of will among sports organizations, governments and athletes.

The report cited statistics showing that, of 250,000 drug tests per year, less than 1 percent produce positive findings for serious doping substances.

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Follow Stephen Wilson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/stevewilsonap

But Pakistani officials criticized the president for not announcing an end to drone strikes against Islamic militants in the country in his landmark speech Thursday, as they have long demanded.

Obama cast drone strikes as crucial to U.S. counterterrorism efforts but acknowledged that they are not a "cure-all." The president also said he is deeply troubled by civilians unintentionally killed in the strikes and announced more restrictive rules governing the attacks measures that his advisers said would effectively limit drone use in the future.

On Guantanamo, Obama implored Congress to close the detention center in Cuba, and tried to jumpstart the process by announcing a fresh push to transfer approved detainees to their home countries and lifting a ban on transfers to Yemen. The end of Yemeni restrictions is key, given that 30 of the 56 prisoners eligible for transfer are Yemeni.

An adviser to Yemen's prime minister, Rageh Badi, praised Obama's decision to lift the ban on the return of Yemeni detainees as a "welcome step" that would improve relations between the two countries.

"This is a responsible speech, especially about the closure of the detention center, which has been an insult to the U.S. more than to any other country," said Badi.

Obama's push to close Guantanamo was also welcomed in Pakistan, but the issue has less resonance in the country because there are fairly few Pakistanis left in the prison. Analysts also questioned whether Obama would be successful, given that he promised to close the prison during his first term but failed to do so, largely because of opposition in Congress.

Pakistanis were much more focused on Obama's comments about drone strikes since the country has been hit by 355 such attacks since 2004. The strikes have killed up to 3,336 people, according to the New America Foundation, a U.S.-based think tank.

It was the first time the president has spoken so extensively in public about the drone program, which is conducted by the CIA in Pakistan and considered classified. Drone strikes in other countries are carried out by the military alone or in cooperation with the CIA, as in Yemen.

The strikes are extremely unpopular in Pakistan, partly because of claims by government officials that the attacks regularly kill innocent civilians an assessment the U.S. has called exaggerated. Pakistani officials also regularly criticize the strikes as a violation of Pakistani sovereignty. Senior civilian and military officials are known to have supported at least some of the attacks in the past, but claim that is no longer the case.

Obama said in his speech that there was a wide gap between U.S. assessments of civilian casualties from drone strikes and those produced by non-governmental organizations. But he acknowledged civilian deaths have occurred and said they will haunt him and those in his chain of command "as long as we live."

"Obama has finally responded to the popular sentiment in this country, which is fiercely against the drones, and I think that shows a certain sensitivity," said Mushahid Hussain, chairman of the defense committee in Pakistan's Senate. "But for the people of Pakistan that is not good enough unless there is a cessation of drone attacks."

Pakistan's Foreign Ministry reiterated this point in a statement sent to reporters.

"The government of Pakistan has consistently maintained that the drone strikes are counter-productive, entail loss of innocent lives, have human rights and humanitarian implications and violate the principles of national sovereignty, territorial integrity and international law," the ministry said.

But it also praised Obama for mentioning the thousands of Pakistani soldiers who have lost their lives fighting extremists and for acknowledging that force along will not make the U.S. safer.

"This also has been Pakistan's longstanding stance that a comprehensive strategy was acquired to address the root causes that foster terrorism and extremism," the ministry stressed.

Even though Obama defended the use of drones, Pakistani officials and analysts thought his comments and new guidelines governing the attacks could create space for improving strained relations between the two countries, as a new government is set to take power in Pakistan.

"I think it puts the new government in a better position," said Imtiaz Gul, head of the Islamabad-based Center for Research and Security Studies. "The expectation will be that even if a strike happens, it will be a lot more carefully examined before the execution and will be more in coordination with Pakistani forces."

According to an unclassified summary of the new guidelines, the U.S. will not strike if a target can be captured, either by the U.S. or a foreign government; a strike can be launched only against a target posing an "imminent" threat, and the U.S. has a preference for military control of the drone program, although the CIA will continue to control the attacks in Pakistan.

Obama also said there must be "near-certainty" that no civilians will be injured or killed in strikes, and they are bound by respect for state sovereignty. Cooperation between the U.S. and Pakistan on attacks in the past has been hampered by pervasive mistrust between the two countries.

The number of strikes in Pakistan has dropped from a peak of over 120 in 2010 to around a dozen so far this year, although it's unclear whether the decline is being driven by decisions about targeting or the political sensitivity of carrying out attacks. A further decline in the future, as predicted by White House officials, would further help Pakistan-U.S. relations.

"In implying that the drone surge is coming to an end in this region, as al-Qaida has all but been neutralized, this opens space for more meaningful efforts to come to an agreement between the U.S. and Pakistan," said Maleeha Lodhi, a former Pakistani ambassador to the U.S.

Drone strikes are somewhat less controversial in Yemen, where the attacks are carried out in close coordination with the government in Sanaa.

A Yemeni intelligence official said the strikes have helped weaken al-Qaida and thwarted plans to kidnap diplomats and foreigners. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media.

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Associated Press writer Ahmed al-Haj contributed to this report from Sanaa, Yemen.