VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- It's unfortunate that the World Weightlifting Championships have been tainted by tampering with drug tests, IWF president Tamas Ajan said Tuesday.

Ajan gave his first press conference since the event opened Nov. 14.

Two days earlier, Ajan banned three Bulgarian weightlifters because their urine samples had been "physically manipulated." Banned are one Olympian, Galabin Boevski, and two world champions, Georgi Markov and Zlatan Vanev.

"Believe me, we didn't want to disturb these championships," Ajan said. "But I was informed Nov. 11 and I had to deal with it,"

Ajan said Tuesday that Bulgaria has appealed and a hearing committee will be convened "in due course. It is not something we can do from one day to the next."

Ajan said weightlifting has become among the cleanest of Olympic sports. This year less than 1 per cent of doping tests were positive, compared to an average of around 1.4 percent for international sports as a whole.

There already have been five injuries, two of them requiring surgery, at these championships. Ajan attributes it to athletes pushing themselves too hard because it is the major qualifying event for the 2004 Olympics.

Ajan was also quick to defend the Canadian government for refusing visas to 40 would-be competitors.

"They know better than we who should be allowed into the country," he said.

The IWF confirmed Budapest, Hungary, will host a 100-year anniversary celebration of the federation in 2005.

The next Olympic qualifying world championships is in 2007, and four cities -- Los Angeles; Sydney, Australia; Warsaw, Poland; and Chiangman, Thailand -- are bidding to host the event. Chiangman hosted the 1997 world championships.

The 2005 championships are in Doha, Qatar, and the 2006 event in Prague, The Czech Republic.