Kremlin says to check veracity of Russian official's doping comments

MOSCOW (Reuters) - The Kremlin said on Wednesday it would check the veracity of a report in the New York Times to make sure that Russia's top anti-doping official had been accurately quoted when talking about doping in the country's sports system. The New York Times cited Anna Antseliovich, the acting director general of Russia's anti-doping agency, as saying that there had been "an institutional conspiracy" to dope in Russia, but that top officials had not been involved. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russian authorities would investigate whether they were the actual words used by Antseliovich and in what context they had been spoken before deciding how to respond. He said the Kremlin had from the beginning denied that the Russian state had been involved in doping. "We are not inclined to consider this information as first hand," said Peskov. "The accuracy of these words first needs to be checked." (Reporting by Denis Pinchuk; Writing by Peter Hobson; Editing by Andrew Osborn)