(Reuters) The "Tobacco Free Sports - Play it Clean" campaign was launched as the U.N. agency's 191 members began a third round of negotiations on a global treaty to control tobacco, due by 2003.
Soccer's governing body FIFA, the International Olympic Committee (IOC), the International Automobile Federation (FIA), Danish former soccer star Michael Laudrup and Norwegian Olympic gold speedskater Johann Koss took up arms against the habit.
Countries, many under pressure from major tobacco companies, are divided about how the pact should try to curb cigarette smuggling and marketing.
"The most pernicious and pervasive form of that marketing is found in sports stadiums and arenas worldwide," Dr. Derek Yach, a senior WHO official, stated.
FIFA spokesman Keith Cooper said sporting bodies had an obligation to discourage tobacco, not promote it. FIFA, which has banned tobacco advertising since the 1986 World Cup in Mexico, is preparing a "Tobacco-Free World Cup" in 2002.
"For next year's World Cup, we are making special efforts so that three million people at stadiums in South Korea and Japan sit in relative comfort and not in a cloud of someone else's pollution hanging around their head," he said.
The follows on from FIA's statement this week that it wanted to ban tobacco sponsorship from international motor sport by the end of the 2006 season. It estimates current tobacco sponsorship in motor sports probably exceeds $350 million a year.
Top sports bodies and athletes joined the World Health Organisation (WHO) in calling for a ban on tobacco advertising and smoking at sports events.
