London Olympics not to drop Dow Chemical sponsorship

  LONDON:   Despite the resignation by a senior member of the sustainability commission on the Bhopal tragedy issue, organisers of the London 2012 Olympics have said there were no plans to drop 'Dow Chemical' as the sponsor of the wrap around the main stadium.   Meredith Alexander, who is one of 12 commissioners of the Commission for a Sustainable London 2012 watchdog, resigned from her post, citing concerns about Dow's relationship with the company responsible for the 1984 gas disaster.   After Alexander's resignation, senior Labour party figures such as Keith Vaz and Tessa Jowell (shadow Olympics minister) have also called for an audit of the process by which Dow Chemical was awarded the sponsorship.   However, London 2012 chief executive, Paul Deighton, insisted that after Alexander's resignation, it would not reconsider the decision to award the contract to Dow, which also has a 100 million pounds deal with the International Olympic Committee.   He said: "It is absolutely her right to make her point about how she feels about the victims of Bhopal. We fully respect her. She is one of 12 people who signed off on our process for choosing Dow to provide the wrap ? so we carry on."   He added: "It is absolutely her right to resign. She is one of 12 members of that sustainability commission who signed off on the way we approached awarding the wrap to Dow. I think that it is great that we have got this independent function to oversee so all this is washed through transparently. I think that is fine but we are moving on."