"One has to respect the presumption of innocence. It is not up to an athlete to prove he is innocent but up to sporting institutions to prove his possible guilt," said Roggue in an interview. "The Armstrong case is apparently only about scientific research and not about a doping control."

Last month, French sports paper L'Equipe published documentation allegedly showing six of Armstrong's urine samples from 1999 contained endurance-boosting EPO when they were retested. Armstrong denied using banned drugs and said he was the victim of a "witch hunt."

Later, the International Cycling Union (UCI) said it had not received enough information to make a judgment on the allegations, and criticized L'Equipe for a interpreting the results of a faulty process. UCI and the World Anti Doping Agency (WADA) then claimed that the other had leaked documents to L'Equipe.

Also, leaders of two major sports organizations, Denis Oswald, president of the Association of Summer Olympic International Federations, and Sergei Bubka, IOC athletes' commission chief, demanded the French laboratory involved in the testing be suspended.

Pound on Thursday called Oswald's and Bubka's request for WADA to suspend the Chatenay-Malabry laboratory "unfortunate and ill-informed."