LONDON?For the first time, a senior Olympic official questioned Tuesday whether the Winter Games should go ahead in Salt Lake City while the United States is at war in Afghanistan.

But the International Olympic Committee reiterated that the games would go on as planned in February, saying that only ?World War III? could lead to a possible change.

Gerhard Heiberg, a respected IOC member from Norway, became the first IOC official to suggest publicly that the games might not take place in the crisis stemming from the Sept. 11 terror attacks in the United States.

?A country at war can?t organize the Olympic Games,? Heiberg was quoted as saying in the Norwegian evening paper Aftenposten.