Bhutto killed in suicide attack

Tragic end: Former Prime Minister of Pakistan Benazir Bhutto speaks at a news conference in central London in this October 19, 2006 file photo. Picture: Reuters
RAWALPINDI, PAKISTAN

Friday, December 28, 2007

PAKISTAN opposition leader Benazir Bhutto was assassinated in a suicide attack yesterday, just two months after the former premier returned from exile for a political comeback.

Bhutto, a two-time former prime minister, had just addressed a campaign rally for next month's parliamentary elections when a suicide bomber blew himself up outside the venue, killing her and at least 10 other people.

President Pervez Musharraf called on the country to stay peaceful "so that the evil designs of terrorists can be defeated," state television reported.

It said he chaired an emergency meeting with top officials "to consider all aspects of the tragic national incident."

There was no claim of responsibility for the attack, but Bhutto had accused elements in the intelligence services of trying to kill her. She also said she had received death threats from Islamic militant groups including al-Qaeda.

Police officials said Bhutto succumbed to her injuries in hospital, but it was not immediately known if it was the gunshot wound that killed her.

There were unconfirmed reports that the attacker had also opened fire on her with a weapon before the explosion.

"It may have been pellets packed into the suicide bomber's vest that hit her," interior ministry spokesman Javed Cheema told AFP.

It was the second suicide attack at a Bhutto event since she had returned from exile in October, aiming to contest the elections, and comes amid an unprecedented wave of violence in the country.

The deadliest terror attack in Pakistan's history targetted her homecoming rally just hours after her return, leaving 139 people dead. After that attack, authorities repeatedly warned her they had information that Islamic militants were trying to kill her. Government offi-cials said President Pervez Musharraf had been privately told of her death.

The killing will deepen the political crisis in Pakistan, where Islamic militants have vowed to disrupt the vote and Musharraf's opponents — including Bhutto — accused him of planning to rig the result.

There have been more than 40 suicide attacks in Pakistan this year that have left at least 770 people dead.

Bhutto, educated at Oxford and Harvard, became the first female prime minister of a Muslim country when she took the helm in Pakistan in 1988. Her father, also a Pakistani prime minister, was hanged by the military in 1979 after being ousted from power.

Recalling how she stood at his grave, Bhutto once wrote: "At that moment I pledged to myself that I would not rest until democracy had returned to Pakistan."

A shaken Nawaz Sharif, Bhutto's main rival in the January 8 election, said he shared the grief of the entire nation and promised to take up her fight.

"I assure you that I will fight your war from now on," he told Bhutto's supporters, who were crying and wailing outside the hospital in the city of Rawalpindi.

AFP

Four killed in East Java`s landslides

Ngawi, East Java, Globalnews - Four people of a family were killed in a landslide triggered by rain in Polo hamlet, Hargosari village, Sine subdistrict, Ngawi district, East Java, early on Wednesday.

The four dead victims were identified as Suparman (40, husband), Suwarti (36, wife), Linda (10, daughter) and David (1.5, son).

Chief the Crime Affairs Unit of Ngawi`s Police, Adj. Comnr. Wayan Murtika said here on Wednesday that the incessant rain that fell since Tuesday had triggered the landslides which killed four residents.

"A family of four was trapped inside of their house when the mud slid down and buried them," he said.

In the meantime, floods also inundated hundreds of houses and cut off roads in Ngawi`s neighbouring districts of Madiun and Trenggalek.

In Madiun, incessant heavy rains triggered floods and cut off main roads. Floodwaters reaching a height of up to one meter submerged a number of neighborhoods such as Kelun, Kartoharjo, Rejomulyo, Kepatihan, Madiun Lor, Nambangan Kidul, and Gading.

"Floodwaters have continued to rise since this morning, and a number of houses have been submerged," Rudi Supriyanto, a local resident of Nambangan Kidul, Mangunhardjo subdistrict, said on Wednesday.

A number of school buildings in Madiun were also inundated forcing the students to stay at home.

"I was told by my teacher to go home because my school is flooded," Santi, a student of Nambangan Kidul 5 elementary school, said.

In the meantime, hundreds of houses at three villages in Trenggalek district, were under water on flooded after two days of torrential rain.

Although there was no further report on casualties and damages, the flood waters had covered some roads, cutting off land communications between Trenggalek and the nearby Ponorogo district.

Official said that as of Wednesday morning, flood waters in Sukorejo, Gondang, and Nglongsor villages had risen to about one meter high.

"The flood waters have inundated rice fields and hundreds of houses in those three villages," Difa, one of the flood victims at Gondang village, Tugu subdistrict, said.

Difa added that the floods this time had reminded him of flash floods and landslides which swept through villages in Trenggalek district in April 2006 which claimed 27 lives and destroyed thousands of houses. (Ant)

Turkish warplanes strike Northern Iraq: Iraqi official

SULAIMANIYA, Iraq- Turkish warplanes struck northern Iraq on Wednesday but inflicted no casualties in the latest in a series of small-scale strikes, a spokesman for Iraqi Kurdish security forces said.

Jabbar Yawar, spokesman for the Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga forces, said the strike lasted about an hour in a mountainous border region of Dahuk province. (Sherko Raouf/Ross Colvin/Reuters)

Fun is serious for Asian elephants' struggle to survive

SURIN, Thailand- Sucking up sugarcane with their trunks and circling busy traffic roundabouts, the elephants that roam Thai towns at festival time seem as much at home in the city as in the forest.

Shows that feature elephants painting pictures, playing polo and whirling hoola hoops on their trunks have become an economic lifeline for more than a thousand domesticated elephants, who lost their incomes when Thailand banned logging in 1989.

But entertaining locals and tourists has become a life or death business for elephants and their keepers, explained Sam Fang, author of Thai Elephants: Tourism Ambassadors of Thailand.

"They had to cope with the ban on logging, and deforestation," Fang said. "First jobless, second no food. Wham!"

Tourism filled the gaps, he said.

"The better elephants got themselves a job as taxis. The intelligent elephants got themselves jobs as show elephants. The smarter ones became artists," he said jokingly.

Unlike larger African elephants, which have never been domesticated in large numbers, Asian elephants have worked closely with humans for millennia.

But this proximity has not helped protect Asia's pachyderms, who are endangered throughout their 13 range states, and ten times less numerous than their African cousins.

"The worst case scenario is that the global economy goes into a recession, tourist numbers plummet and, a large number have no gainful employment".(Gillian Murdoch/Megan Goldin/Reuters)

Pope says find time for God at Christmas

By Philip Pullella

VATICAN CITY - Pope Benedict led the world's 1.1 billion Roman Catholics into Christmas with a midnight mass on Tuesday, urging people to find time and space for God, the needy and the suffering.

Benedict, marking the third Christmas season of his reign, said a solemn mass for about 10,000 people inside St. Peter's Basilica on a chilly night. The ceremony was broadcast live to 42 countries.

Wearing gold and white vestments, the 80-year-old pontiff wove his sermon around today's significance of the birth of Jesus.

He said the fact that Jesus was born in a manger because there was no room for Mary and Joseph at the inn in Bethlehem had modern parallels.

"In some way, mankind is awaiting God, waiting for him to draw near. But when the moment comes, there is no room for him," he said.

"Man is so preoccupied with himself, he has such urgent need of all the space and all the time for his own things, that nothing remains for others -- for his neighbor, for the poor, for God. And the richer men become, the more they fill up all the space by themselves. And the less room there is for others."

The spirit of Christmas, the Pope said, should make everyone recognize the darkness of a world where many people were closed into themselves because they did not want to receive God or his message.

"Do we have time for our neighbor who is in need of a word from us, from me, or in need of my affection? For the sufferer who is in need of help? For the fugitive or the refugee who is seeking asylum? "Do we have time and space for God? Can he enter into our lives? Does he find room in us, or have we occupied all the available space in our thoughts, our actions, our lives for ourselves?" he said.

In the run-up to Christmas, the Pope several times urged Catholics to rediscover its religious significance, lamenting that the holiday had been dominated by materialism.

On Monday the Pope lit a peace candle and placed it at the window of his apartment overlooking St. Peter's Square as the Vatican's life-size nativity scene was unveiled to the public below.

Later on Tuesday, the Pope will deliver his traditional Christmas "Urbi et Orbi" ("to the city and the world") blessing from the basilica's central balcony. He was also due to deliver Christmas greetings in more than 60 languages.(Editing by Andrew Dobbie/ Reuter)

Japan to overhaul financial markets - regulators

Tokyo- Globalnews-Japan's regulators have announced the country's biggest financial market reforms in a decade amid hot competition in Asia to be the region's financial hub.

The Financial Services Agency on Friday unveiled "a plan to strengthen the competitiveness of financial and capital markets" with deregulation and liberalization.

The agency plans to submit bills to parliament early next year to revise existing regulations, agency officials said.

The package represents the first comprehensive financial reforms by Japan since it launched "Big Bang" deregulations in 1996.

Under the latest package, Japan will remove a ban on creating a comprehensive financial market to handle the trading of stocks, bonds and financial and commodity derivatives in about two years.

The package also wants to cut barriers between banks, securities and insurance firms while calling on the government to upgrade financial infrastructure.

"I hope to implement the plan as soon as possible so that the competitiveness of Japanese markets will revive," Financial Services Minister Yoshimi Watanabe said, according to Kyodo News.

Japanese financial markets face competition from centers such as Singapore and Shanghai, with investors warning Japanese regulations fall short of global standards. (Antara)
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Israel kills two militans in Gaza, Hamas

Gaza, Globalnesw- Israel launched an air strike in the Gaza Strip on Monday, killing two Hamas militants and wounding two, the Palestinian Islamist group and medical staff said.

Hamas, which seized control of Gaza in June when it routed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas`s forces, said the four men were travelling in a car near the border fence with Israel close to the al-Bureij refugee camp when the attack occurred.

An Israeli army spokesman said he was checking the report.

Israel has killed more than 20 militants in the past two weeks in increased military action in the coastal territory.

The Jewish state carries out frequent raids into Gaza to try and stop militants from firing rockets at southern Israeli towns, Reuters reported.(Antara)

Italian PM meets Karzai

KABUL

Monday, December 24, 2007

ITALIAN Prime Minister Romano Prodi held talks with President Hamid Karzai yesterday, the latest leader to visit from a nation that has troops here fighting Afghanistan's growing insurgency.

Prodi, whose Christmastime visit follows trips Saturday by the leaders of France and Australia, also met US General Dan McNeill, commander of a NATO-led force of nearly 40 nations helping the government battle Taliban unrest.

He celebrated Mass with some of the more than 1,000 Italian troops in Kabul before he was due to visit an International Security Assistance Force base in Herat where there are about 800 others, an Italian military official said.

Afghan officials meanwhile reported a string of new attacks linked to the Taliban, who launched an insurgency soon after they were driven from government in a US-led offensive in late 2001 for sheltering Al-Qaeda.

Three civilians were killed in a bomb blast in the east, while the Afghan and international militaries reported at least 14 Taliban killed in various incidents.

The past year has been the bloodiest in their insurgency, with a spike in suicide attacks. The deadliest killed nearly 80 people, 59 of them children, in November.

Support for the often-criticised mission has been waning in some of the other nations of ISAF, a force of about 40,000 that works with Afghan security forces and a US-led coalition of about 20,000 mostly US troops.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd used their visits Saturday to stress commitment to Afghanistan.

Sarkozy told journalists the international community could not afford to lose the "war against terrorism" in the war-torn nation. He said the world must be united and committed in efforts to build Afghanistan and help it withstand insurgents linked with the Taliban and Al-Qaeda.

Rudd said Australia would be involved in Afghanistan for the "long haul." He announced extra economic aid but did not say if he would keep the country's nearly 1,000 troops here after their mandate expires next year.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel visited the country last month while British Prime Minister Gordon Brown was here earlier in December, also vowing more help.

The Taliban were removed from power weeks after the September 11 attacks by the Al-Qaeda network. The regime failed to heed warnings to hand over Al-Qaeda leaders it had sheltered for years.

As the insurgency has grown there has been a push to find other ways to defeat the insurgents. (AFP)

Click of The Week #29: Marwan Azis

When we read a newspaper, we are bombarded with news on politics, economy, business, crimes and sports. We don’t find articles on environment too often, unless the issue is really high profile and involving big names.

That’s why I’m going to give a nod to Marwan Azis, a self-proclaimed freelance environment journalist, by choosing his blogs as Click of the Week. Perhaps I should say Clicks of the Week since he is taking care of three blogs: petualanganku.multiply.com; etalasehijau.blogspot.com and greenpressnetwork.blogspot.com.

The first two blogs are his personal blogs where he posted his work on various environmental issues. While the third one is the official blog for an organization for environment journalists, the Green Press Network, where Marwan acts as the editor. Green Press Network adopts citizen journalism principle where Marwan invites everyone who read his blog to submit environmental-related articles to be posted in his blog.

Obviously, Marwan is passionate about delivering news on the environment and we should salute him for doing it. Indonesia is such a vast country with great natural treasure and thanks to journalists likeMarwan, we can stay updated in any environmental issues that are happening all over the archipelago.

We need more people to care about the environment in this country. Perhaps by reading Marwan’s blogs, some people will think twice about throwing garbage out of their speeding cars.(http://maverickid.com)

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Cycles for health, clean air

Marwan Azis
JAKARTA

Sunday, August 19, 2007

JAKARTA is notorious for its air pollution and traffic jam. Taking bicycles to work places, as well as for shopping or visiting friends and relatives has captured the hearts and minds of a number of people in this busy, smoky city.

Started among people who like cycling for sports and recreation, more and more Jakarta inhabitants have moved forward by using their bicycles as their main transportation on their daily routines.

The community of bikers among professionals, who call themselves Komunitas Bike to Work (Bike to Work Community), believe that by cycling to work, they help preserve the environment, keep themselves healthy, save energy as well as reduce pollution, stress on the streets and traffic jams.

The initiative of using this environment-friendly transport started two years ago among mountain bikers, who dreamt of having clean air in Jakarta. They felt that the Jakarta air was worsening, with more and more smoke from motor vehicles flooding the streets.

"It started with the community of mountain bikers, where we usually get together on weekends outside Jakarta," said Toto Sugiharto, chairman of Bike to Work Community Indonesia.

"And we thought, 'why not use these bicycles to go to work, and reduce pollution?' We all agreed on that idea. From then on, we campaigned on using this alternative transport to go to work in super-crowded Jakarta."

The community gains members quite quickly. Only after two years, it now has about 5,000 members, according to its information officer Rivo Pamudji. Some 2,500 of them are active in communicating with one another via the community's mailing list.

"Every day, about 100 new members enlist," said Rivo, when met at the Bicycle for Earth event at Senayan last month. Among professionals who are cycling to offices in Jakarta are Andi Malarangeng, the President's spokesperson, Minister of Environment Rachmat Witoelar and his wife, the environmental public figure Erna Witoelar, and other famous names in business, politics, and other fields of professions.

Bike to Work also has branches in other Indonesian cities like Yogyakarta, Jabodetabek (Jakarta, Bogor, Depok, Tangerang and Bekasi), Bandung, Mojokerto, Aceh and Balikpapan and are always looking to expand.

"Bike to Work Makassar will be established this month," Rivo added. The rapid development of this community is made possible by the seriousness of the chairman, Toto Sugiharto, in making this programme work. A strong fellowship between bikers also contributes to it members are always helpful to bikers, even though they are not members, when they have problems on the streets.

"Our community is open to everybody. It requires only ownership of a bicycle, regardless the type and class of the bike," said Lutfi, a biker from Bekasi who only recently started cycling to work.

"I enjoyed biking since my childhood. Three years ago, I started cycling again. I started using my bike to go shopping and to office. I kind of enjoy it. With this community, I am more encouraged." He also tries to influence his colleagues at his office to do the same, reminding them about the worsening air quality in Jakarta that may endanger people's health.

Jakarta's traffic snarls are notorious it could take some one two to three hours to get from home to the office.

One biker said he was doing better by bicycle on the 36km home to office trip, compared to using his car.

"The government should realise that there is a crisis of transportation in Jakarta, and there must be a solution to that," Luthfi said.

Some people might raise the possibility of inhaling polluted air while cycling, therefore making the exercise unhealthy. However, there is a study by Rank J, Folke J and Jespersen from University of Roskilde, Department of Environment, Technology and Social Studies, Denmark, that says otherwise.

They sent two teams of bikers and motorists, equipped with air-testing devices, to roam the streets for four hours in two different mornings in Copenhagen. The air sample the teams took were analysed of their benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylene (BTEX) content, including dust particles.

The results: The concentration of BTEX in drivers was two to four times the amount recorded for the cyclists.

What has been initiated by the Bike to Work Community is good to emulate, since Jakarta is projected as one zone that may be severely affected by global warming.

Research from the International Institute for Environment and Development Britania in cooperation with City University of New York and Colombia University in 2007 says a tenth of the world's population, or 634 million people, living near the oceans will drown when polar ice melts as a result of global warming.

This research also predicts that Jakarta, some parts of West Java and Banten province are some zones that would drown by the end of this century. (The Brunei Times)

Hird Tsunami Anniversary: Scientists Finetune Alert System

BERLIN, Globalnews-AS THE third anniversary of the Asian tsunami nears, German scientists say they are working hard to honour a promise made to Indonesia to create an Indian Ocean alert system to prevent a repeat of the 2004 tragedy.

"The aim is to be able to send out an alert within 10 minutes of the earthquake that sets off the giant waves and to save lives," said Joern Lauterjung of Germany's national research centre for geoscience (GFZ) in Potsdam outside Berlin.

The offer to develop a complex quake measuring system with sensors on land and the seabed relaying information via satellite to remote computers, was made three weeks after the tsunami killed some 220,000 people along the Indian Ocean shoreline on December 26, 2004.

The government of Indonesia, which bore the brunt of the killer waves, immediately accepted and 120 German experts went to work on a project named the German Contribution to the Tsunami Early Warning System for the Indian Ocean (GITEWS).

Three years later, the mission is almost accomplished and the researchers hope to have the system up and running in November 2008.

Since early 2005, the German team has worked with Indonesian, American and Japanese crews on setting up 160 seismic measuring stations on land and anchoring 23 sensors to the ocean bed.

The seabed sensors are vital to the system's success because the instruments on land cannot give scientists a picture of how the earth's plates have been deformed below the sea by a quake.

"The land sensors are not enough because they do not enable us to know how an earthquake has damaged the seabed. It is only if there is a vertical deformation that the seism will be followed by a tsunami," Lauterjung said.

In 2004, he explained, the strongest earthquake ever recorded in this region pushed the earth's crust upwards by 15 centimetres (six inches) with a violent jolt that triggered the tsunami.

The underwater sensors are cast into the waves attached to weights to make them sink more than five kilometres to the ocean floor.

They can measure the pressure of the water mass above them, and therefore its height.

This means that any sudden variation in sea level is detected and used to predict the formation of giant waves.

The sensors carry out measurements every 15 seconds and relay the information to a buoy which sends the information to Jakarta via satellite.

If a quake is detected and at the same time the seabed monitors measure abnormal water pressure, another complex part of the warning system kicks in, as the GFZ's technology seeks to predict where and when the tsunami will strike the coast.

The system had what his team described as a "baptism of fire" in September when an 8.4-magnitude earthquake struck off the west coast of Indonesia's Sumatra island. It measured the size and location of the seism within a record five minutes.

This enabled the scientists at Potsdam to raise the alert to Indonesian authorities more than 10 minutes earlier than the Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre in Hawaii.

It is big step forward in a field where mere minutes can mean the difference between live and death for people in the path of a tsunami, the GFZ's Joachim Zschau said.

It takes 10 to 20 minutes from the time a seabed earthquake happens for a tsunami to hit the coast. (AFP)

Israel unveils new settlement plans on eve of 'peace' talks

JERUSALEM, Globalnews-ISRAEL plans to enlarge two settlements in occupied Palestinian territory next year, officials said yesterday, casting yet another shadow over newly-revived Middle East peace talks.

Israel has set aside US$25 million ($36.3475 million) in the 2008 budget to expand the Maale Adumim settlement in the occupied West Bank and in the Har Homa settlement in annexed east Jerusalem, the anti-settlement group Peace Now's head Yariv Oppenheimer told AFP.

Israel's Pensioner Affairs Minister Rafi Eitan confirmed the report.

About 250 new housing units are to be constructed in Maale Adumim and 500 in Har Homa, known to Palestinians as Jebel Abu Ghneim, Peace Now said.

Palestinians warned that the move could hamper the peace talks revived at a November US conference after a near seven-year hiatus, with president Mahmoud Abbas calling settlements the most serious obstacle to the relaunched talks.

"We can't understand these frantic settlement activities at a time when we are talking about final status negotiations," Abbas was quoted as saying yesterday by Wafa, the official news service of the Palestinian Authority.

"We have begun negotiations and they face obstacles, the most prominent of which is the issue of settlements, which has held us back for so long," he said at a meeting of local Fatah leaders.

Coming ahead of US President George W Bush's planned visit to the region in January, Israel's announcement is likely to elicit criticism from its main ally that also blasted another settlement expansion several weeks ago.

The announcement came a day before Israeli and Palestinian negotiating teams, headed by Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and former premier Ahmed Qorei, respectively, were to meet for their second round of talks since the two sides formally relaunched peace negotiations at the US conference in Annapolis.

Palestinians have demanded that Israel stop all settlement activity, as called for in the 2003 roadmap peace blueprint that both sides pledged to uphold when they renewed negotiations at the US conference.

The issue of settlements marred the first round of negotiations on December 12 as just a week before the talks, Israel invited bids for more than 300 new housing units in the Har Homa settlement.

The expansion was slammed by the Palestinians and criticised by the European Union and Washington.

Earlier this week, Israel dropped plans to expand another east Jerusalem settlement in a move US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called a "good step," saying the expansion could have undermined peace talks.

Palestinians have demanded that Israel stop all settlement activity, as called for in the 2003 roadmap peace blueprint that both sides pledged to uphold when they renewed negotiations at the US conference.

The internationally-drafted roadmap calls on Israel to freeze all settlement activity and on the Palestinians to impose law and order.

Israel does not consider the Har Homa project to be a settlement because it lies within the municipal boundaries of Jerusalem, drawn up by Israel after it captured and annexed the mostly Arab eastern half of the city in 1967.

But the international community has never recognised the annexation. (AFP)

Pro-Thaksin party wins Thailand post-coup election

Setback for army: Leader of victorious People Power Party (PPP), Samak Sundaravej making a victory sign. Picture: Reuters

BANGKOK

Monday, December 24, 2007

ALLIES of deposed Thai premier Thaksin Shinawatra claimed victory in yesterday's elections, setting the stage for the billionaire's political comeback more than a year after his ouster in a coup.

The pro-Thaksin People Power Party (PPP) fell short of an absolute majority in parliament, according to the election authority, forcing its leader Samak Sundaravej to seek partners for a coalition government.

"It will definitely be a coalition government. We will discuss with the parties who have similar policy platforms to us," PPP's secretary general Surapong Suebwonglee said.

The results were a repudiation of the military's relentless efforts to wipe out Thaksin's political influence, 15 months after the generals seized power in a bloodless coup, an analyst said.

"The results underlined that people still support Thaksin and want him to come back," said Ukrist Pathmanand, a professor of political science at Bangkok's Chulalongkorn University. "It also showed that Thaksin was still popular, especially among people living in northeastern provinces."

The exit polls gave PPP at least 58 seats more than its nearest rival, the Democrat Party.

Election authorities planned to release unofficial results by midnight, but Democrat leader Abhisit Vejjajiva said he would not dispute the PPP's right to form a coalition.

"So now we are in second place, and forming a coalition government is for the one that got the most," he told reporters, but later added they were still waiting for the official results.

PPP appeared to come out ahead in the polls, even though one third of the country, including Thaksin's rural strongholds, are still under martial law.

Army-backed Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont insisted the polls were fair, and PPP leader Samak Sundaravej said Sunday that he believed election authorities had dealt with the party even-handedly so far.

Thaksin has not returned to Thailand since the coup, living instead in self-imposed exile in Britain, where he bought the Manchester City football club.

The junta dissolved Thaksin's Thai Rak Thai (Thais Love Thais) party and banned him from political office, but the man who made a fortune in telecoms has remained a dominant and divisive figure in Thai politics. PPP campaigned on promises to bring back Thaksin's economic policies and to allow the exiled leader to return to Thailand.

Few analysts believe the election will resolve deep divisions between anti-Thaksin urban dwellers and the rural masses, who remain loyal to the deposed leader.

PPP draws most of its support from farmers, the majority of Thailand's 64 million population, who remember Thaksin's efforts to boost the rural economy during his five-year rule.

The Democrat Party is popular among Bangkok's middle-class, who last year spearheaded anti-Thaksin protests that culminated in the coup.

The military has already taken steps to ensure its continued influence over the new government.

The generals tossed out Thailand's 1997 constitution, widely hailed as the most democratic the kingdom had ever known, and passed an army-backed charter in a referendum in August.

The United States congratulated Thailand on a "crucial step toward a return to elected government" after its "free and fair" parliamentary vote.

"The United States welcomes initial reports indicating that Thailand's parliamentary election today was conducted in a free and fair manner and congratulates the people of Thailand on taking this crucial step toward a return to elected government," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said. "The Thai people turned out at the polls to show their support for a return to elected government," he said in a statement.(AFP)

Uzbek vote expected to extend Karimov's rule

Foregone conclusion: Uzbek President Islam Karimov receives his ballot at a polling station in Tashkent yesterday. Picture: AFP

TASHKENT

Monday, December 24, 2007

UZBEKISTAN, Globalnewscentre- voted yesterday in an election expected to extend President Islam Karimov's 18-year rule and condemned by the opposition as a Soviet-style one-man contest.

The Muslim state is at the heart of a geopolitical power struggle between the West and Russia, which still sees former Soviet Central Asia as its sphere of interest.

Karimov's ties with the West have been strained since he was condemned by the United States and Europe in 2005 when troops opened fire on a protest in the Uzbek town of Andizhan.

He looked relaxed as he cast his ballot at a polling station in the capital Tashkent. Western media were not allowed in.

"I believe people know what they are voting for — for tomorrow, for peace in our country, for our country's development and prosperity," he said in brief televised remarks.

Karimov, who turns 70 in January, tolerates little dissent in his ex-Soviet nation and public criticism of him is taboo. He faces three other candidates in a line-up analysts say is designed to give the election the veneer of a democratic vote.

Polls closed at 8pm (1500 GMT) across Central Asia's most populous nation, which ranges from western deserts near the Aral Sea to the fertile plains of the Ferghana valley in the east.

Preliminary official results and an assessment of the vote's fairness by the election monitoring arm of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe were due on Monday.

Public criticism of Karimov is usually taboo, but some people ridiculed the vote.

"I didn't go. What kind of election is this?" said one 50-year-old Tashkent resident called Bakhrom. "I don't expect anything from this election."

Another man, who asked not to be named, said: "It's more like a monarchy. We've been ruled by the same person for almost 20 years. Some people say they are running out of patience." But in the old part of Tashkent, its narrow streets lined with mud-brick huts and mosques, many said they voted for Karimov.(Reuters)