GOTEBORG, Sweden (AP) – Alarmed by the case of Olympic champion Justin Gatlin, track and field’s governing body wants to reintroduce four-year bans for first-time serious doping offenders.

Calling the Gatlin case a “disaster for our sport,” International Association of Athletics Federation chief Lamine Diack said his group was prepared to go alone in imposing four-year bans.

“We want to move in that direction,” Diack said Sunday, a day before the start of the European Championships. “It’s not a problem for us to go back to four years. We cannot have doping.”

“This is the position of the whole IAAF family,” said Diack, adding that the athletes’ commission of the federation supports such action.

The IAAF originally reduced its four-year bans to two years to be in line with the doping policies of other sports.

The proposal on longer suspensions will be put before the next congress of the IAAF, in Osaka, Japan, in August 2007, Diack said.

He wants the World Anti-Doping Agency to lobby governments to the four-year bans.

“We need the support of government and for that we need WADA,” he said.

Track and field had four-year bans from 1991-95. The world anti-doping code, signed by most major sports federations, provides for two-year bans for first-time doping offenders.

The four-year bans would be valid for serious offenses, such as performance-boosting steroids and blood doping while penalties for stimulants would remain less severe.

Gatlin, the Olympic and world 100-meter champion, will get a lifetime ban from the sport’s international governing body if found guilty of doping.

If his test is confirmed, it would be Gatlin’s second offense, and would mean a lifetime ban from the sport. While in college, the American tested positive for a banned substance contained in Adderall, which he took to calm attention deficit disorder.

He drew a two-year ban in international competition after the first infraction, but it was later reduced to one year.

Gatlin said he will cooperate with the USADA and “hope that when all the facts are revealed it will be determined that I have done nothing wrong.”

“I cannot account for these results because I have never knowingly used any banned substance or authorized anyone else to administer such a substance to me,” Gatlin said.

Gatlin tied Jamaica’s Asafa Powell in May for the world record in the 100 at 9.77 seconds, but he would lose the record if found guilty of doping.