Anti-doping agency facing some thorny issues - WADA's annual meeting arrives in wake of recent triumphs, but against a backdrop of questions about procedures and a messy succession plan.

American sprinter Marion Jones, long an agency target, publicly confessed to having taken steroids after having denied the accusation for years. Also, a split arbitration panel upheld the doping charge against 2006 Tour de France champion Floyd Landis, who was stripped of his cycling title. And scarcely a week passes in which some major athlete isn't tied to doping.

Yet this year's annual World Conference on Doping in Sport will open with the agency facing a number of challenges, including an ugly dispute over the succession to its departing president, Richard W. Pound of Canada, that has delegates of several European countries talking about splitting off from WADA. Questions also persist about WADA's controversial procedures, especially its appeals process, as well as the technical capabilities of its 36 laboratories around the world.

The conference opens Wednesday with more than 1,500 attendees expected from sports organizations, the Olympic movement and government agencies. Leading its agenda is ratification of an update of WADA's governing document, the World Anti-Doping Code, which was first implemented in 2004.

The new draft, which is to go into effect in 2009, is almost certain to be approved. It will stiffen the penalties for several categories of drug use and water down a key procedural protection for athletes -- the requirement that positive findings from an athlete's primary, or A, sample be confirmed by tests on a backup, or B, sample taken at the same time. Several cases against prominent athletes, including Jones and Kenyan distance runner Bernard Lagat, had to be dropped after their B test results were negative or inconclusive. Under the new rules, a B test would not be needed to confirm a doping finding if the prosecuting agency "provides a satisfactory explanation" for the lack of confirmation. "That's a huge change that the anti-doping agencies have always wanted," said Howard Jacobs, a Los Angeles-based athletes' lawyer. "The B test is one of the very few safeguards the athlete has, and now they want to do away with it." Another proposed change would lengthen the possible suspensions imposed on athletes accused of doping. For a first offense, athletes found with even a trace of a banned substance in their sample are currently subject to a two-year ban from competition. (A subsequent violation carries a lifetime ban.)