Sports Minister Mike Watson has blamed Uefa's internal politics for the failure of Scotland and Ireland's joint bid to host Euro 2008.

Mr Watson said there were forces within European football's governing body designed to keep the Scottish-Irish bid out of the final run-off.

He said that the bid was kept out of the final three choices to give the successful Austria-Switzerland submission an easy path.

The minister denied Scotland's bid was flawed and said that a substantial proportion of the millions of pounds set aside for the tournament would now be spent on grassroots sporting projects.

Meanwhile European football's governing body has urged Scotland and Ireland to consider trying again for future tournaments.

At a Uefa ceremony in Geneva on Thursday, the Austria-Switzerland bid was announced as the winner with the Scottish-Irish submission coming fourth out of seven.

An unnamed source on Uefa's bids inspection team said the unresolved question of which stadia would be used in Dublin was one of the reasons for the failure.

The concentration of too many stadia in only three cities and the perceived lack of political unity from the Irish Government were other reasons.

Easier path

Mr Watson said that this was not true.

He said: "The Uefa technical inspection gave us 94 out of 100 and gave Austria and Swizerland 95.

"So how we could then be dropped from the top three apparently on the basis of not having certainty in Ireland does not stack up.

"We can see now, in retrospect, as the evidence emerges, that there were other forces there designed to keep the Scottish-Irish bid, and indeed the Nordic bid out of the run-off so that Austria and Switzerland would have an easier path."

Mr Watson also denied that First Minister Jack McConnell had not been committed to the bid.

Mike Watson: Bid was not flawed

He said that Mr McConnell had an "absolute determination" to bring the tournament to Scotland and Ireland.

However, Mr Watson said that neither he nor the first minister would commit to launching a bid for the Euro 2012 championships.

The sports minister said there was a concern over what the opposition may be for that tournament.

He said that none of the "big guns" had bid for Euro 2008 and "it is unlikely they will stand by the next time round".

'Football politics'

Meanwhile Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern rejected criticism of his government's handling of the joint bid.

He said it had always been clear the Swiss-Austrian bid would "be very strong from a football politics point of view".

Mr Ahern said: "At the end of the day, I think that our technical performance and presentation were only a point, but it was ultimately football politics.

"I am not surprised at that - but disappointed."