A coach from communist Romania's Olympic team met with immigration officers at a secret location Wednesday after appealing for asylum in Canada, an Immigration Department spokesman said. ``He's in a secluded place, a safe place with security,'' spokesman Gerry Maffre said in Ottawa. The coach was not identified, but Olympic sources and Canadian news media said he was Dumitru Focseneanu, the Romanian bobsled coach whose team had 27th and 30th place finishes at the Winter Olympic Games in Calgary last week. ``We're trying to find out what he really wants to do,'' Maffre said. The bobsled coach reportedly refused to board a bus taking the 22-member Romanian team to Calgary airport Monday night and sought refugee status. The federal Immigration Department was handling the case. The Soviet Union filed an angry protest over an immigration hotline set up in Calgary to handle emergencies and possible defection cases. The Romanian was the only known defector among more than 1,800 Olympic athletes and 1,000 coaches and officials from 57 countries. But three Romanian speed skaters and their coach left Calgary abruptly the day before the Games began amid speculation the athletes planned to defect. City Police Superintendent Len Esler said the defector approached two police officers at the athletes' village at the University of Calgary about 9:30 p.m. Monday and ``requested political asylum.'' Esler said the man was taken to a police station where immigration officers picked him up. He refused to give the man's name ``for his safety and the safety of his family.'' Focseneanu was in Calgary last December during a bobsled World Cup competition. The Romanian Embassy in Ottawa refused to comment. Wilf Lindner, manager of the Calgary immigration center, said the man would be allowed to stay only after a medical examination, a security check into his background and an Immigration Department hearing. ``All decisions are made on a case-to-case basis,'' he said.
