THE long standing feud between the Minister of Sports and Culture Joseph Habineza and the president of the National Olympic Committee Ignace Beraho has reached a point of no return, Times Sport understands.

The rift reached new heights yesterday when the Minister hounded the RNOC boss out of a high level crisis meeting that sat at the ministry’s conference room.

According to a source that attended the closed door meeting but preferred anonymity, Habineza asked Beraho to leave the meeting as he was not welcome.

"It’s true he [the Minister] chased him [Beraho] out of the meeting because he had not been invited.

"The meeting was supposed to be attended by all local sports federations and the National Olympics Committee but Beraho wasn’t among the invited since the Minister does not recognise him as the genuine RNOC president,” the source told this paper.

According to the RNOC constitution, general elections for a new executive committee are supposed to be held three to four months after the Olympic Games, which means Beraho’s second and last term of office expired last December.

In an unprecedented trend, elections have been set for this December, 12 months after the original date, which means Beraho is running the Olympics body illegally, something that the Minister has been against all along.

"As the top administrator [of sports] in the country, the Minister wants Beraho to step aside and let an interim committee lead RNOC until the elections are held,” added the source.

Last month, it’s believed that Beraho called a press briefing in which he blasted Habineza for allegedly interfering in RNOC affairs, and when the Minister, who was out of the country at the time learnt of Beraho’s outburst, he was baffled.

On his return, he called for an impromptu meeting with RNOC executive committee in which he expressed his unhappiness with Mr. Beraho’s actions.

The source says that the two exchanged some unpleasant words.

In the meeting [yesterday], the Minister gave the federations 15 days to organize an extraordinary general assembly that will elect an interim committee to run RNOC until the December elections.

"Like anywhere else in the world, if the head of any ministry sees something not moving well under his area of operation, he reserves the right act and that includes suspending anyone found incompetent,” noted the source.

Beraho could not be reached for comment as he persistently refused to answer his phone.

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