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Britain deployed 1,200 extra soldiers on Tuesday in a last-minute effort to bolster Olympic security while global diplomatic tensions started to play out among athletes and politicians three days ahead of the opening ceremony.

The additional troops, which took the military contingent at the 2012 Games to well over 17,000, were called in to cover an embarrassing shortfall left by private security group G4S, the world's largest by some measures, in the run-up to the Games.