Montevideo, March 29 (IANS) Uruguayan President Jose Mujica said the managers of the nation's top football teams, and not the police, were responsible for curbing fan violence.
His remarks come days after violent clashes between fans and police at a match left more than 10 police officers injured and nearly 40 fans under arrest, reports Xinhua.
In a radio broadcast Friday, Mujica called on the teams to take measures to curb violence and hooliganism, saying "we want co-responsibility."
"They haven't been able to solve this problem in other parts," an exasperated Mujica said.
"What do we have to? We've seen that piling on the police presence doesn't help."
Meanwhile, in an article published Friday by Uruguay's daily La Republica, Mujica said he was instructing police to suspend their security operations during the games of leading teams Nacional and Penarol in a bid to force them to take action.
"I am willing to put a stop to football if necessary until they take steps. We Uruguayans cannot continue with this madness," Mujica said.
"To begin with," said Mujica, "we are going to end police protection at Parque Central and at Centenario," the stadiums used by Nacional and Penarol respectively.
Nacional fans clashed with police Wednesday, after a match against Argentina's Newell's as part of the Libertadores Cup, leaving 13 police officers with injuries and leading to 38 arrests.
Mujica said he singled out the leading teams "because they represent 90 percent of the country."
Increasingly, the games require a larger police presence and "on top of it they blame the police" when the violence gets out of hand, he said.
Football-related violence has killed at least five people in the past two decades in Uruguay.
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