13/04/2012 (Agence Europe) - Controversy surrounding 2014 ice hockey championship. On Thursday 12 April, the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) announced that it would be discussing the holding of the 2014 world ice hockey championship in Belarus and was intending to launch a wider debate into the use of sport for political ends at its AGM in May, explained MEP Jacek Saryusz-Wolski (EPP) on Friday 13 April. He said that it is the holding the ice hockey championships in Belarus (rather than, as the IIHF argues, suspending the country's membership of the IIHF) that makes sport political because holding the championships in the country will provide backing for Lukashenko and his regime. Saryusz-Wolski said that sport should be an expression of joy, freedom, pluralism and honesty, rather than politics. In March this year, the European Parliament passed a resolution urging the IIHF and national ice hockey federations to consider holding the 2014 championships in another country if Belarus fails to release its political prisoners. (CG/transl.fl)