Nov. 11 (Bloomberg) -- A Middle Eastern Olympic Games or soccer World Cup would show the region’s potential and overcome perceptions of bombs and instability, according to the head of Qatar’s Olympic committee.

Sheikh Saoud Bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani said his country won’t give up its hopes of hosting the summer Olympics after missing the cut for the 2016 event won by Rio de Janeiro in Copenhagen in October. Qatar’s capital Doha didn’t make a shortlist that also included Tokyo, Madrid and Chicago.

“If you see in the news, unfortunately about the Middle East you’ll always hear either there’s a bomb explosion or problems,” Sheikh Saoud, a member of the Emirate’s royal family, said on the sidelines of the Sports Event Management Conference in London yesterday. “To have big events such as the World Cup or the Olympics come to the Middle East helps the needs of the world, not just the Middle East.”

Qatar, which is bidding to bring the World Cup to the Mideast for the first time in 2022, is plotting another bid at the 2020 or 2024 Olympics, Sheikh Saoud said. Yesterday, Istanbul said it would attempt to win the 2020 Games, joining Dubai, Tokyo and Delhi as interested cities. FIFA will announce the hosts of the 2018 and 2022 World Cups next year.

Rio became the first South American nation to be awarded the Olympics after favorite Chicago was eliminated in the opening round of voting by the International Olympic Committee. Sheikh Saoud described the decision as a “milestone for the Olympic movement.”

New Era

“I think what we have witnessed in Copenhagen in early October is a new era of the Olympic movement,” he said. “The IOC members made their decision that the Olympics are about the whole world not just certain areas.”

Following Qatar’s elimination from the Olympic race, its bid leader Hassan Ali Bin Ali railed against the IOC, saying he didn’t know why “the IOC wants us in the Olympic movement.”

The Gulf state’s biggest obstacle may be the weather. The Games must be held between July and September, when Doha has high temperatures. Qatar failed to make later stages of the 2016 vote after saying it planned to move the event to October.

It’s talking with Olympics officials to see if there can be any changes to that policy.

“If this is something that’s not possible to change we will put it in our bid and we will find ways and means to set a schedule to do the Olympics in the period,” Sheikh Saoud added.

According to the World Meteorological Organization’s Web site the highest average temperature in Doha in July is 41.5 Celsius (106.7 degrees Fahrenheit) and 40.7 Celsius in August. Indoor stadiums and a late night calendar are among the proposals being discussed.

To contact the reporter on this story: Tariq Panja in London at tpanja@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: November 11, 2009 11:10 EST