The International Cycling Union (UCI) has asked all ProTour cyclists to sign an anti-doping charter including promises to submit DNA samples to Spanish authorities investigating the Puerto affair.

The document, handed out by the UCI at a media conference in Geneva, will also ask cyclists to pledge a year's salary in the event that they test positive for a banned substance in the future.

The letter, which begins with a declaration that the rider has not been involved in any past doping affair, will be sent to cyclists for signing by July 7.

Describing the document as "the riders' commitment to a new cycling", UCI president Pat McQuaid acknowledged that no-one could be forced to sign.

However, a full list of those who had signed and those who had not would be made publicly available on the organisation's Web site, he added.

"It is not a legal letter at all so from that point of view we don't have the possibility to sanction the riders, but we have asked the team leaders to take any non-signings into account when deciding whether their riders start (a race) or not," McQuaid said.

"Of course it can be said that this is merely a nice intention but I prefer to be optimistic on it. I do think there is a genuine wish for change in the sport and this is one aspect of that wish for change."

Cyclists will be asked to declare "to the Spanish Law that my DNA is at its disposal, so that it can be compared with the blood samples seized in the Puerto affair."

Spanish authorities seized 200 bags of frozen blood last year in the Operacion Puerto anti-doping probe.

Having at first been denied access to the evidence produced in the Puerto case, McQuaid said the UCI had now received a thousand pages of the total six thousand presented to the courts.

The UCI president said he had urged ProTour team leaders to suspend any riders involved in the case but added that it was "still not clear" if the courts' evidence could be used for sporting sanctions.

McQuaid said there was no chance of any such sanctions being implemented before next month's Tour de France.

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