The chief organiser of the World Cup 2010 has pleaded for South Africa not to be condemned in the wake of the gun attack on the Togolese team in Angola for the Nations Cup, which killed three people.

The ambush was claimed by the Front for the Liberation of the State of Cabinda - Military Position, a faction in a separatist struggle which has lasted decades but waned in recent years.

Danny Jordaan, chief executive of the organising committee for World Cup 2010, said: “We should not be asked nor should we be condemned for what happened in a country far away from us because we don’t apply the same standard when we come to any other country

If something happens on the African continent then we cannot condemn the whole continent. There’s a war in Afghanistan - you cannot condemn the whole of Asia and to say now cannot you can’t have any events in Korea or in Japan.

“The happenings in Angola is unfortunate, it’s tragic, and we have a lot of sympathy and understanding but the event of Angola has absolutely nothing to do with South Africa and absolutely nothing to do with the World Cup in South Africa.”

The attack, though, has cast a pall over a tournament that was supposed to be Angola’s “coming-out party” after a long civil war, and South African officials want to avoid any association between it and the World Cup, particularly abroad.

Jordaan was speaking at a press conference seen by many as being aimed at the foreign media and held in the shadow of Soccer City, the giant 95,000-seater stadium that will host the opening and final games of the tournament.

“Angola is by flight three and a half hours from Johannesburg, South Africa, Angola is a sovereign independent country with its own military, its own police, its own infrastructure relating to security,” he said.

“If the army of Italy gains a victory you are not going to ask an explanation from Germany. If there is a security breach in Finland you are not going to ask England to explain, yet both of those countries are within the three-and-a-half hour flight range.”

Moscow, he pointed out, was three and a half hours flight from London, but no-one was suggesting the London 2012 organisers be asked to explain anything that happened in between Britain and Russia.

“It can’t be right, it’s illogical, and if we do that then we are applying double standards, because we didn’t do that in 2004 when a bomb went off in Spain and the Olympics was hosted in Greece. We didn’t do that in 2005 when a bomb went off in London and the World Cup was hosted in Germany 2006.”

South Africa does not have any separatist movements of its own, and has not seen any terrorist incidents since the advent of democracy in 1994.

Officials say that the security plans for the World Cup have already taken in every possibility and they will not be revised or re-examined in the light of the Flec-MP attack.

Jordaan added that the comments by Phil Brown, the Hull manager, that the attack put a “question mark” over the World Cup were “ill-informed”.

“I found that to be very extraordinary,” he said. “If Hull lose against Tottenham Hotspur they cannot blame Manchester united because they did not play in the match, they were not there.”

Rather, he agreed “absolutely” with Arsene Wenger, the Arsenal chief, who pointed out that the Munich Olympics continued after the Black September massacre of Israeli athletes, as anything else would have been a victory for terrorism.