| International |
APEC leaders open talks amid protests India holds war games near Pak border German parties sign agreement 411 jailed for rioting in France 4 killed in Lankan mosque attack Israelis kill two Palestinians Over 70 killed in suicide attacks in mosques in Iraq Rajapakse wins Lankan presidential election Bush seeks Putin's help on Iran, North Korea Oxfam blasts UN effort on Pak quake victims Bird flu spreads to a quarter of Vietnam's provinces UN wants int'l probe of Iraq jail abuses CIA sets up secret counterterrorism centres around world Guantanamo ex-prisoners claim abuse, Quran desecration Chinese miner 'drank urine' to survive One held for keeping camera in women’s toilet APEC leaders open talks amid protests AFP, BUSAN Nov 18: Asia-Pacific leaders began a major summit Friday expected to make a strong push to unblock deadlocked global trade talks and draw up joint measures to control the spread of bird flu. Leaders of the 21 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) economies including China, Japan, Russia and the United States were to endorse a broad agreement touching on global issues also including terrorism and North Korea. A joint statement Saturday was expected to say that cutting farm subsidies was the key to salvaging next month's global trade talks in Hong Kong, setting up a showdown with the European Union over its state support for farmers. "We call for the breaking of the current impasse in agriculture negotiations," the leaders will say, according to a draft of the document obtained earlier in the week by AFP. APEC member countries and the European Union are embroiled in a bitter war of words, with Australia and the United States urging the EU to promise further cuts in agriculture subsidies and tariffs to free up global trade. EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson has refused to budge ahead of the December 13-18 World Trade Organization meeting, accusing APEC countries of playing to the media and "finger-pointing". Bird flu was also an urgent topic for the Asia-Pacific leaders, with China struggling to contain several new outbreaks and two more deaths recorded in the past week in Indonesia, another APEC nation. Meanwhile, South Korean police fired water cannons to keep stone-throwing anti-globalisation protesters away from a summit of Asia-Pacific leaders here Friday. Some 10,000 marchers confronted police close to the convention centre where US President George W. Bush and 20 other Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum leaders were debating lowering barriers to trade and investment and other issues. Violence flared when a group of around 100 frustrated protesters broke away from the main anti-APEC demonstration and tried to punch through police lines around one kilometre (0.6 miles) from the summit venue, witnesses said. Police responded by firing bursts from three water cannons as some demonstrators armed themselves with wooden sticks and steel pipes. Earlier police said they expected a crowd of up to 30,000, and used steel barriers and cargo containers to block off roads around the summit venue. Riot police in full body armour wielding clubs were stationed at key junctions. Chanting anti-US slogans and waving colourful banners reading "No APEC, No Bush" and "Terrorist Bush Go Home", protesters said they were angry at the South Korean government's plans to open its rice market to cheap foreign imports. "We oppose rice opening," chanted farmers groups from across the country opposed to World Trade Organization agreements opening the Korean market to foreign food imports. Two farmers committed suicide in the past week by drinking weedkiller in protest at globalisation. Security officials say up to 46,000 police, troops and undercover agents have been mobilised to protect the APEC leaders amid appeals from officials for demonstrators to keep the peace. "We are bracing for huge protests," a spokesman for the Busan police said earlier. Protest leaders said earlier they were hoping for a turnout of 100,000 in the port city which police transformed into a virtual fortress by erecting a ring of steel barriers across a wide perimeter around the summit convention centre. Local authorities had initially given approval for a major rally at a prearranged site on a river bank with a clear view of the convention centre. That permission was withdrawn amid fears of violence, and road blocks around the venue were reinforced by steel cargo containers obtained from the nearby port. Demonstrators successfully hauled away some of the containers while police trained water cannon on them. The protesters also lit fires of tyres and wood in the streets to dry wet clothes and keep warm in anticipation of further clashes with the police. Security officials say up to 46,000 police, troops and undercover agents have been mobilized to protect the APEC leaders amid appeals from officials for demonstrators to keep the peace. Fears that protests could turn violent were fanned by clashes on Tuesday in Seoul, where 12,000 farmers demonstrated. Chanting anti-US and anti-APEC slogans some hurled rocks and beat riot police with steel pipes and sticks. On Thursday several hundred demonstrators staged anti-US protests in Gyeongju, just north of Busan, during a summit between Bush and South Korean leader Roh Moo-Hyun on the eve of the two-day APEC session that ends Saturday. "We can't block protests and demonstrations, but if they happen I appeal to the organisers to behave in an orderly way and to cause no harm or damage," said Busan's mayor Hur Nam-Sik. ###### | Top of this page | Back to Index Page | Bush seeks Putin's help on Iran, North Korea AFP, BUSAN Nov 18: US President George W. Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin, showing no signs of strains in their relationship, have met for talks focused on nuclear programs in Iran and North Korea. "We've got a very important relationship. We value your advice and we value the strategic relationship we've built," Bush said as they sat down on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation ( APEC) forum summit here. The US president hoped to win support from Putin to ensure Iran does not get nuclear arms, and erase differences on six-country talks aimed at convincing North Korea to dismantle its atomic weapons programmes, US officials said. But Bush also planned to express concerns about Putin's moves to centralize political power in the Kremlin and Moscow's push to close down foreign-funded non-governmental organizations, the officials said on condition of anonymity. "It's very agreeable that we have virtually permanent contacts on both bilateral relations and the international agenda," said Putin, who came to APEC hoping to convert Russia's wealth in natural resources into regional influence. A senior Kremlin official confirmed the talks between Bush and Putin centered on the nuclear programs in Iran and North Korea and also touched on developments in Iraq and "the situation around Syria". The official, Putin's foreign policy advisor Sergei Prikhodko, said the two men also discussed their efforts to fight terrorism, with the Russian leader stressing the importance of Moscow and Washington taking "joint steps" in this area. On global trade relations, Prikhodko said Putin thanked Bush for US support of Russia's campaign to accede to the World Trade Organization (WTO) but noted Washington has not yet endorsed Russia's immediate entry into the body. "A few practical problems remain" on that issue, he said, without elaborating. ###### | Top of this page | Back to Index Page | Oxfam blasts UN effort on Pak quake victims AFP, ISLAMABAD Nov 18: Aid organisation Oxfam Friday blasted the United Nations' relief effort in quake-hit Pakistan as "severely lacking" and said the lives of thousands of people were at risk as a result. The damning statement came as UN Secretary General Kofi Annan travelled to the Kashmiri city of Muzaffarabad, where thousands of people left homeless by the devastating October 8 quake are living in tented camps. Oxfam called on the world body and international delegates gathered in the Pakistani capital for a donor conference Saturday to scale up their contribution to the relief effort. "The UN response is severely lacking in resources and personnel on the ground," it said in a statement. "If lives are to be saved, the relief operation must be dramatically scaled up; the international donors conference will be a test of commitment," added Jane Cocking, Oxfam's humanitarian coordinator in Pakistan. "If the political will of these aims is there, effective relief and reconstruction is possible," Cocking said. The UN has about 100 people in Muzaffarabad co-ordinating relief for an estimated more than three million people made homeless by the huge quake, which rocked northern Pakistan as well as parts of India and Afghanistan. Estimates put the death toll at more than 73,000 while Oxfam says the figure is closer to 80,000. Aid workers say more needs to be done if relief is to be brought to thousands of people in stricken isolated mountain villages before the oncoming Himalayan winter makes it almost impossible to reach them. Pakistan President Pervez Musharaf has said his government needs 5.2 billion US dollars for the operation. So far 2.5 billion dollars has been pledged and far less has been actually handed over. The donor conference on Saturday is hoped to fill the shortfall, but if it does not, Oxfam warned, the consequences would be dire. "Many countries have failed to properly fund the UN appeal, leaving hundreds of thousands of survivors more vulnerable," the statement said. "We must ensure that this conference is not just another talking shop but a real opportunity." ###### | Top of this page | Back to Index Page | Chinese village locked down after death Bird flu spreads to a quarter of Vietnam's provinces AFP, HANOI Nov 18: Bird flu has spread to more than a quarter of Vietnam's 64 provinces and cities since early last month, officials said Friday, with the cooler north the worst-hit region. Outbreaks were reported in three more northern provinces, taking the total number to 17 provinces. Thirteen of them, including the capital Hanoi, are in northern Vietnam, a senior agriculture ministry official said. "The bird flu situation is more worrying in the north, where the current winter weather favours the growth of the H5N1 virus", the ministry's animal health department deputy director Hoang Van Nam told AFP. While drastic measures have been taken in Hanoi, such as closing down poultry markets and carrying out mass culls of fowl, outbreaks have spread in several surrounding provinces, Nam said. Astrid Tripodi, the Food and Agriculture Organisation's avian influenza coordinator in Hanoi, cautioned against blaming the weather alone, saying, "there may be other factors that have to be looked at". "With the cold weather the lifetime of the virus is improved. That can be one of the explanations," Tripodi said. "We still need to research: Where is the virus hiding in the environment? Why is it happening at the same time? Are there other factors?" Another agriculture ministry official blamed poor supervision on the part of provincial health authorities for the outbreaks. "The absence of coordinated preventive measures as well as lethargy on the part of localities, which failed to discover new outbreaks in time, is leading to the fast spread of bird flu," said the official, who did not want to be named. Meanwhile, Chinese authorities Friday had locked down the village in eastern Anhui province where a 24-year-old pregnant woman died of bird flu last week, becoming the nation's first confirmed human fatality from the virus. Several local officials in red arm bands were posted as sentries at the narrow dirt road entrance to Yantan, a small village of a few thousand residents in Zhoutan township where Zhou Maoya died on November 10. The officials refused to answer questions, other than admitting that Yantan was where Zhou had died of avian flu and insisting that only local residents were allowed in and out of the village. ###### | Top of this page | Back to Index Page | UN wants int'l probe of Iraq jail abuses REUTERS, GENEVA Nov 18: United Nations human rights chief Louise Arbour on Friday called for an international probe into Iraqi jails after accusations of serious abuse of detainees at a secret Interior Ministry detention center. The Iraqi government has already promised to investigate the discovery in a ministry bunker this week of 173 malnourished and in some cases badly beaten men and teenagers, some of whom showed signs of having been tortured. But a government probe might not be enough given the high international concern and the importance of reassuring Iraqis, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights said in a statement. An international probe should cover all Iraqi detention centers because of the rising number of people being picked up in mass security and military operations, Arbour added. ###### | Top of this page | Back to Index Page | CIA sets up secret counterterrorism centres around world AFP, WASHINGTON Nov 18: The CIA has set up secret joint counterterrorism centers in Europe, Middle East and Asia to track and capture suspected terrorists and penetrate their networks, The Washington Post said Friday. The centers, known as Counterterrorist Intelligence Centers, or CTICs, act on initial tips that may come from the CIA, but the operations to pick up suspects are usually organized by one of the joint centers, current and former US and foreign intelligence officials told the daily. "The vast majority of successes involved our CTICs," an ex-counterterrorism official said. "The boot that went through the door was foreign." ###### | Top of this page | Back to Index Page | Guantanamo ex-prisoners claim abuse, Quran desecration AFP, MANAMA Nov 18: Three Bahrainis released from the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay earlier this month accused their captors of torturing them and regularly desecrating copies of the Quran. Adel Kamel Haji, Abdullah al-Nuaimi and Salman bin Ibrahim al-Khalifa, a member of the ruling royal family, told a press conference that they intend to sue the US government for holding them for four years without charge or trial. "They detained us in Pakistan and we were exposed to psychological and physical torture," said Haji, 41. "We are going to sue them for that and we are going to sue them for dishonouring our religion." The trio had returned to Manama on November 6. His comrade Nuaimi said they and other detainees were "regularly beaten up, chained and left out in the cold." "My Quran was always stepped on by soldiers," he added. Haji said that they had gone to Afghanistan through Iran at the start of the US-led military campaign against the Taliban regime in late 2001 to "take part in humanitarian relief for areas affected by the bombing." After the fall of the Taliban they went to Pakistan and gave themselves up to the army so that they can be handed over to the Bahraini embassy there but were instead given to the Americans, said Haji. He said they were briefly held at a detention facility in Kandahar in Afghanistan where they were "tortured with electric cables" before being transferred to the notorious US facility in Guantanamo, Cuba. "The desecration of the Quran is intentional, deliberate. That didn't happen just once or twice or three times, but several times in front of me and other colleagues," Haji earlier told Radio France Internationale and the RMC-MO station in an interview. "The Quran was continually insulted by the management of the prison and the soldiers. The aim was to provoke us religiously and to psychologically abuse us to make us pliant," he said. Three other Bahrainis remain at the camp, including one, Jumah al-Dossari, who reportedly tried to commit suicide during a visit from his lawyer last month. The allegations of torture and mistreatment of the Quran are not new. In May, the US magazine Newsweek reported that the Islamic holy book was flushed down a toilet, sparking violent anti-US protests in several Muslim countries. That story was subsequently retracted. Last month, a released Egyptian man, Sami al-Leithy, told television in his home country that he was confined to a wheelchair because of the "torture" he suffered at Guantanamo. Several of 17 Pakistanis freed in June said they had seen their captors desecrating the Quran. "There were various incidents. Once I saw them throw the Quran in a bucket full of urine and faeces," said one of the men, Haifz Ehsan Saeed. Another, Muhammad Hanif, said he was tortured and his beard was forcibly shaved off. "The Americans removed our beards and have been spitting over the holy book," he said. About 500 people are being held at the Guantanamo detention center without charges, most of them captured in 2001 in Afghanistan. ###### | Top of this page | Back to Index Page | Chinese miner 'drank urine' to survive REUTERS, BEIJING Nov 18: A Chinese miner survived 11 days trapped underground by drinking his own urine, state media reported on Friday. Three neighbouring gypsum mines in northern Hebei province collapsed on Nov. 6, killing at least 33 people. Rescuers had been searching for five missing miners. Yuan Shenglin's rescue began on Wednesday when miners, about 200 metres (650 ft) underground, heard his voice, the China Daily said. They inserted a plastic tube through a five-metre heap of collapsed rubble and pumped in food and water to the other side. "The rescuers did not dare to dig a tunnel immediately for fear of another collapse and took a day to gingerly build a channel from an adjacent mine," the newspaper said. Yuan, 26, had been in the shaft winch house at the time of the accident and had access to water. The Beijing News quoted him as saying he had also drunk urine to survive. ###### | Top of this page | Back to Index Page | One held for keeping camera in women’s toilet AP, WACO A school superintendent was arrested for allegedly placing a hidden video camera resembling an air freshener dispenser in a women's bathroom at the school administration office. Danny Edward Doyen, 46, told investigators that he bought the camera with a school district credit card and placed it in a restroom to obtain nude photos of female employees, according to the McLennan County Sheriff's Office. Doyen has been superintendent in Bruceville-Eddy, a town of about 1,500 residents about 20 miles south of Waco, since 2002. He was booked Wednesday into the McLennan County Jail on a charge of improper photography or visual recording, punishable by up to two years in a state jail. The school board had an emergency meeting Wednesday night and placed Doyen on administrative leave. School officials searched all campus bathrooms and found no recording devices, so they believe the camera in the administrative building was an isolated incident. "The board deeply regrets this occurrence and wants to assure the community that all steps will be taken to assure the safety and well being of all students, employees and visitors," the Bruceville-Eddy school board said in a news release Thursday. According to records, a school business office clerk alerted investigators this week after finding a school credit card statement for a $299 purchase with no vendor name, then discovering it was from a surveillance company. Two days later, Doyen submitted an invoice for the purchase, which included a description of the camera and a Web site address, according to records. ###### | Top of this page | Back to Index Page | India holds war games near Pak border AFP, POKHRAN Nov 18: India's military Friday staged a grand finale to major military manoeuvres, showcasing newly-acquired T-90 battle tanks and warplanes close to the border with Pakistan in the Thar desert. The Indian military said New Delhi gave advance notice of the 14-day exercises codenamed "Operation Desert Strike" to neighbouring Pakistan in line with a pact between the nuclear-armed rivals, who are engaged in a slow-moving peace process to end their decades-old feud over Kashmir. "Such exercises show our capability and ability," said Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee. He said, however, the war games were not designed to intimidate India's neighbours. "India does not have any territorial designs...all our capabilities are just aimed at protecting our interests," Mukherjee said as supersonic jets dived in mock attacks. ###### | Top of this page | Back to Index Page | German parties sign agreement REUTERS, BERLIN Nov 18: Germany's two leading parties signed a governing coalition deal on Friday, formally setting aside decades of rivalry exactly two month's after September's inconclusive general election. The conservatives of chancellor designate Angela Merkel and the Social Democrats put pen to paper to form Germany's first "grand coalition" of the traditional opponents since 1969. The almost 190-page document lays out plans to rein in Germany's public sector deficit, raise sales tax by three percentage points to 19 percent in 2007 and seeks to promote economic growth with a multi-billion euro investment programme. ###### | Top of this page | Back to Index Page | 411 jailed for rioting in France AFP, PARIS Nov 18: A total of 411 people have been jailed in France for taking part in the three weeks of rioting that rocked the country, officials said Friday. Another 244 are in detention pending appearances before judges, the justice ministry added. According to its figures, nearly one in five of the people jailed or detained are minors. Police declared Thursday that the situation was now back "to a normal situation everywhere in France" after nightly unrest that had raged since October 27 subsided. More than 9,000 vehicles were firebombed and nearly 3,000 people arrested during the urban violence, the national police service said. ###### | Top of this page | Back to Index Page | 4 killed in Lankan mosque attack AP, COLOMBO Nov 18: Suspected separatist rebels tossed grenades into a Mosque during morning prayers Friday, killing at least four Muslim worshippers, police said. The attack came a day after Sri Lanka held its presidential election, which was boycotted by the Tamil Tiger rebels. "Two grenades were thrown at the mosque that killed four people and wounded 10 others," said Nimal Lewke, deputy inspector general of police. There were no other immediate details of the attack in the city of Akkaraipattu, 140 miles east of the capital, Colombo. During the two decades of civil war, the mainly Hindu rebels have occasionally carried out attacks against Muslims including an August 1990 massacre of 130 Muslims at two mosques on the same day. ###### | Top of this page | Back to Index Page | Israelis kill two Palestinians AP, JERUSALEM Nov 18: Israeli forces killed two Palestinian militants Thursday during a West Bank arrest raid, riddling their car with bullets when it tried to run a roadblock outside the town of Jenin, the army said. The shooting, part of a recent increase in Israeli raids in Palestinian towns, threatened to inflame tensions between the two sides, which agreed to a cease-fire nine months ago. The truce has been repeatedly violated by both sides, though the level of violence remains far lower than before the agreement. The army said the incident Thursday began when an Israeli force seeking to arrest two wanted militants set up a checkpoint outside Jenin. When the militants tried to run the roadblock, the force opened fire and the vehicle ran off the road and flipped over, the army said. An Associated Press photo showed the two young militants dead in their car, their bodies riddled by bullets. Mohammed Turkman, a Palestinian who witnessed the attack, said that after the car ran off the road, the Israelis got out of their truck, ran down to the car, and shot the militants again, before returning to the truck and driving off. Palestinian security officials identified the slain men as Mohammed Zaid, 18, and Ahmed Abahri, 18, militants with the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, a militia affiliated with the ruling Fatah party. Al Aqsa threatened to retaliate. ###### | Top of this page | Back to Index Page | Over 70 killed in suicide attacks in mosques in Iraq AFP, BAGHDAD Nov 18: At least 67 worshippers were killed in suicide attacks on two Shiite mosques in eastern Iraq near the border with Iran on Friday, hours after suicide bombers killed six people outside a Baghdad hotel. The carnage came as the US military warned of rising violence in the run-up to the December 15 legislative elections. At least 75 people were wounded when two suicide bombers, wearing explosives belts, blew themselves up amid worshippers during Friday’s weekly prayers in two Shiite mosques in the town of Khanaqin, officials said. Ambulances were sent from Sulaimaniyah, two hours away, to pick up some of the wounded. The local authorities immediately imposed a curfew in the majority Shiite Kurdish town of Khanaqin, some 170 kilometres (110 miles) from the capital. Just hours earlier at least six people were killed, including a woman and two children, and 40 hurt in Baghdad when suicide bombers detonated an explosives-ladden minivan and a car outside the Hamra hotel, frequented by foreigners, and near an interior ministry complex. The complex, in southern Baghdad’s Jadriyah district, came to public notice on Sunday when US troops discovered there some 179 mostly Sunni detainees, several of whom had been tortured. The discovery led to an international outcry, a stern warning by US authorities and promises by the Iraqi government to investigate the matter. United Nations human rights chief Louise Arbour on Friday called for an international probe of detention conditions in Iraq. "In light of the apparently systemic nature and magnitude of that problem, and the importance of public confidence in any inquiry, I urge the authorities to consider calling for an international inquiry," said the UN high commissioner for human rights. The Baghdad morning car bombs brought down the facade of a three-storey residential building, and sent slabs of concrete flying, wounding many people as they slept in on their day off. Two Turks and one Sudanese were reported to be among those hurt, hospital officials said. Firemen and soldiers, assisted by local people, scrambled through the rubble, searching for survivors. A crater in the street quickly filled with water from ruptured pipes. Witnesses said a first van, which drove down a side street behind the interior ministry prison, exploded against a concrete barrier protecting the Hamra hotel. A second car then attempted to penetrate further, but blew up at around the same place. On October 24, in a similar attack, triple car bombs rocked the Palestine and Sheraton hotels, used by foreign journalists and contractors in the centre of the capital, killing 17. Elsewhere, the US military said Friday it had killed 32 rebels after more than 50 of them had launched a series of concerted attacks Thursday against military outposts in Ramadi, west of Baghdad. An Iraqi soldier and a US marine were lightly wounded, it said in a statement. "The attacks were planned to coincide simultaneously; however, once initiated the attacks lacked coordination," the military said. The attacks took place along the main road traversing the city, some 100 kilometres (60 miles) from the capital, with much of the fighting concentrated around the Abdullah al-Karber mosque, from where rebels opened fire at Iraqi and US troops, according to the US military. US forces also reported the death on Thursday of a US soldier in a road crash near the northwestern town of Tal Afar, the 13th American serviceman to die in the country over a three-day period. At least 2,083 US military personnel have been killed in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion, according to an AFP tally based on the independent Iraq Coalition Casualty Count. Senior US officers believe the level of violence will increase in the run-up to the December election, at a time when military analysts suggest some 3,000 foreigners are now fighting alongside home-grown insurgents. "This level of chaos and violence is going to increase, almost in spite of what we do, between now and the election," according to a senior US commander in Iraq, interviewed before the latest attacks. Violence was likely to increase because of the ongoing political struggle in the run-up to the elections, with some groups taking part in the political process while fighting at the same time, the senior officer said. In Washington, a US military analyst, citing a study drawing on Saudi and other regional intelligence, suggested that as many as 3,000 foreigners are involved in the insurgency. Algerians constituted the highest percentage of the foreign fighters, about 20 per cent. They are followed by Syrians, Yemenis, Sudanese, Egyptians and Saudis, said Anthony Cordesman, an expert at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies. "If there are anything like 3,000 foreign fighters in Iraq, this poses a serious threat," Cordesman said. But "the exact numbers are largely irrelevant. All it takes is enough volunteers to continue to support suicide attacks and violent bombings, and to seek to drive Iraqi Sunnis towards a major and intense civil war," he said. Should civil war break out, Iraqi Kurds would have no choice but to proclaim independence, one of their leaders, Massud Barzani, told Turkey’s NTV television. "May God save us from civil war, but if others start fighting among themselves and there is an outbreak, we will have no other alternative," according to the president of northern Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish region. ###### | Top of this page | Back to Index Page | Rajapakse wins Lankan presidential election AP, COLOMBO Nov 18: Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapakse won Sri Lanka’s presidential election by a slim margin, and said Friday that once in office he wants to hold face-to-face peace talks with the secretive leader of the rebel Tamil Tigers. Throughout the campaign, Rajapakse took a hard line on the rebels, and his victory was clearly aided by a Tiger boycott that kept thousands of minority Tamils, who overwhelmingly supported his dovish opponent, away from the polls. Rajapakse received 4.88 million votes, or 50.29 percent of the total 9.7 million valid votes cast, said Election Commissioner Dayananda Dissanayake. Wickremesinghe received 4.70 million, or 48.38 percent, and the remainder of the votes were cast for the other 11 candidates. "I will bring about an honorable peace to the country respecting all communities," Rajapaskse said after being declared the winner. Balloting was smooth Thursday in western and southern parts of the island nation and overall turnout was 75 percent, election officials said. But in the north and east - Tiger territory - grenade attacks, roadblocks and intimidation kept many Tamils from voting. Others heeded a boycott called by pro-rebel groups that complained neither of the main candidates would help them win a homeland in northeastern Sri Lanka. The Tamils, whose plight is at the heart of a civil war that has lasted more than two decades, make up just under 20 percent of Sri Lanka’s 19 million people but were potential kingmakers in the tightly contested election. Wickremesinghe’s softer line on peace talks with the rebels won him wide support among Tamils, a largely Hindu minority. Rajapakse’s election as Sri Lanka’s fifth president was "a setback for the peace process as you have a very polarized society," Wickremesinghe told reporters. "There will be a lot of question marks and uncertainty." Earlier Friday, his campaign demanded re-votes in key northern districts where the rebel roadblocks stopped people from voting, but election officials refused. Most of the 200,000 Tamils living in rebel territory did not vote, officials said, and many of the more than 2 million Tamils in government areas also stayed away from the polls. In and around the city Jaffna, a city in the Tamil heartland of northern Sri Lanka, turnout was less than 1 percent - the lowest ever in any of the Indian Ocean country’s 22 districts. That clearly helped Rajapakse, who turned 60 Friday and said in an interview with The Associated Press that he wants to hold talks with Tiger leader Velupillai Prabhakaran. It’s a pledge that Rajapakse made throughout the campaign, but one that may be easier said than done - Prabhakaran rarely sees anyone outside a tight inner circle and makes only a single public appearance a year on Heroes’ Day, a Tiger holiday honoring guerillas killed fighting for a Tamil homeland in northeastern Sri Lanka. Still, asked about his plans for Sri Lanka’s stalled peace process, Rajapakse said: "I am ready to talk to the (Tigers), and I am ready to meet Prabhakaran." From the campaign’s outset, Rajapakse has promised peace but pledged to take a tough line on the rebels, saying he would never allow the establishment of an autonomous Tamil homeland in northeastern Sri Lanka, as the rebels demand, and allow direct foreign tsunami aid to the insurgents, who run a de facto state in northern and eastern strongholds. The Dec. 26 tsunami killed at least 31,000 people in Sri Lanka and swept away the homes or livelihoods of 1 million others. Speaking of tsunami aid, Rajapakse said in the interview Friday: "We have a government, this is for government machinery so let the government machinery work." That sentiment is not likely to please the Tigers, who want to run tsunami relief efforts in their territory and have repeatedly demanded access to some of the US$2 billion (euro1.5 billion) in tsunami aid promised to Sri Lanka. Asked about those demands, Rajapakse said, "There is a government ... it’s not about the rebels, they are citizens of this country and everybody is equal." The Tigers took up arms in 1983 over discrimination against Tamils, most of whom are Hindu, by the predominantly Buddhist Sinhalese majority. Nearly 65,000 people have been killed in the conflict. A 2002 cease-fire ended major fighting, but peace talks stalled in disagreement over the Tigers’ demands for broad autonomy, and clashes- especially between the Tigers and a breakaway faction - have intensified. ###### | Top of this page | Back to Index Page |