The sport's governing body announced Thursday it was setting up the task force, drawing its members from business, media, the International Olympic Committee and the international and national softball federations.

The aim is to generate support for softball's reinstatement at an IOC meeting in 2009, the next time the issue is allowed to be put before the Olympic committee.

``We need to ensure the future of our sport for the millions of young athletes around the world who are playing our sport with the dream of competing in the Olympics,'' International Softball Federation president Don Porter said in a statement from Beijing, host of the women's world championships now under way. ``This new strategic task force will go a long way toward helping us achieve that goal.''

Softball, a women's-only Olympic sport, debuted at the Games in 1996 at Atlanta. Its last scheduled appearance will be at the 2008 Beijing Games.

The IOC, eager to contain the ever-spiralling costs of staging an Olympics, voted earlier this year to scratch softball and baseball from the 2012 London program. Among the reasons cited were that the sports are primarily played in the Americas and East Asia, not worldwide, and that baseball has had a string of doping scandals.

Porter, who has travelled widely and lobbied persistently to keep softball in the Games, has said his sport has been unfairly lumped with baseball.