FIFA not looking again at Qatar World Cup vote, says Infantino

FIFA president Gianni Infantino sees no need for a return to the vote for Qatar to host the 2022 World Cup despite bribery claims in a New York trial of former members of the ruling body's executive committee.

Infantino said in Moscow FIFA had now changed governance and the ruling body had learned from the past.

"Suspicions (around World Cup host city votes) cannot surface any more because we will put in the mechanisms which make sure it doesn't happen," Infantino said ahead of the draw for the 2018 World Cup in Russia.

He cautioned against "pre-judgements in general" and said: "It's easy to paint with a dark paint everything that comes from the east, from Russia, the Arab world because we are the best ones, we know how to run countries...we know how democracy works."

A senior Qatari official said last week his country had nothing to fear from the FIFA corruption case in New York.

Former South American football officials Jose Maria Marin, Manuel Burga and Juan Angel Napout are on trial for allegedly taking bribes worth millions of dollars.

According to a report in the New York Times, Alejandro Burzaco, the US government's first witness in the case, said last week that all three men received 1 million dollars in exchange for their votes to award the 2022 tournament to Qatar.

But Hassan al Thawadi, the secretary general of Qatar's World Cup organizing committee, said he was confident in the "integrity" of his country's bid.

"It is all hearsay and there is no evidence," al Thawadi said, in a report published by the Gulf Times. "The investigation is not in relation to the World Cup. We are not party to it."