CENTRAL ASIA

TURKMENISTAN HOLDS ELECTIONS FOR CEREMONIAL PARLIAMENT

Polling stations were nearly empty throughout yesterday’s Parliament election in Turkmenistan, forcing officials to carry ballot boxes door to door. But the government announced a nearly 80% turnout in the former Soviet republic, which is ruled by a one now is president-for-life.

The 131 candidates contesting Parliament’s 50 seats all represent the Central Asian country’s only party, the Democratic Party led by President Niyazov, and public organizations.

Mr. Niyazov reduced Parliament’s role in 2003, stripping it of the right to make constitutional changes, and made the People’s Council – a hand-picked assembly of more than 2,000 top officials and elders headed by himself – the country’s highest legislative body. He uses the council to legitimize decisions. All the candidates officially support Mr. Niyazov’s policies and based their on promoting the ideas in his book,” Rukhnama, “which sets moral and spiritual guidelines for the country’s citizens. Election officials said 76.88% of eligible voters had cast ballots yesterday, far more than the required 50% to make the vote valid. However, polling stations in the capital, Ashgabat, were almost empty throughout the day and election officials were going from door to door with ballot boxes. From early morning, special agitators were knocking on people’s doors to remind them of the election.

– Associated Press

EASTERN EUROPE

UKRAINE OPPOSITION PUSHES ON AMID SECURITY FEARS

KIEV, Ukraine – A convoy of supporters of Ukrainian presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko yesterday moved deeper into the hostile eastern strongholds of his rival, who has ignored their requests for safe passage. The convoy – dubbed the “friendship journey”- of some 50 cars draped with Mr. Yushchenko’s orange campaign colors headed to the industrial city of Zaporizhia, said Natalya Shypovalova, a convoy member and journalist. Carrying about 150 people, mostly artists and musicians, the convoy is traveling around this nation of 48 million people trying to sow support for Mr. Yushchenko ahead of the December 26 presidential rerun. Much of the traveling has been in the country’s Russian-speaking eastern and southern regions from where his Moscow-backed rival, Prime Minister Yanukovich, draws his support.

The convoy has already encountered several roadblocks put up by Mr. Yanukovich’s supporters. Fearing violence, the organizers haven’t decided yet whether to travel today to Mr.Yanukovich’s hometown of Donetsk.

– Associated Press

SOUTH AMERICA

PINOCHET RECOVERING AFTER STROKE SANTIAGO, Chile – General Augusto Pinochet was conscious and mobile but remained hospitalized after suffering a stroke, the Army Hospital said yesterday, while the former dictator’s family insisted that he’s too ill to be tried on human rights charges.

The Court of Appeals was to decide today whether to uphold Mr. Pinochet’s indictment and house arrest on human rights charges. He has been indicted for the kidnapping of nine people and killing of one during his 1973-90 regime.

Relatives and associates said the stroke shows that the 89-year-old former ruler is unfit to stand trial. Prosecution lawyers called his hospitalization “an old maneuver”to impress the court. Mr. Pinochet fainted during breakfast Saturday and was rushed to the hospital, where doctors said he’d had a new stroke. Physicians say he has had several since 1998, resulting in mild dementia.The condition saved him from trial three years ago on other charges.The former strongman also has diabetes and arthritis, and uses a pacemaker.

– Associated Press

PERSIAN GULF

TWO U.S. SOLDIERS KILLED IN TRAFFIC ACCIDENT

KUWAIT CITY -Two American soldiers were killed and two were injured in a traffic accident outside Kuwait City yesterday, the American military said in a statement.The statement said the “hit and run” accident happened in the morning, and the injured soldiers were admitted to a civilian hospital. A Kuwaiti security official said the driver of the vehicle that hit the soldiers later surrendered to police.

The names of the soldiers were withheld pending notification of next of kin, the statement said. The American military and Kuwaiti authorities were investigating. On Wednesday, the American Embassy warned Americans here about the possibility of terrorist attacks. Kuwait is a staunch American ally. American forces have been based in the country since the end of the 1991 U.S.-led Gulf War that ended a sevenmonth Iraqi occupation.In the past three years, American troops, and American civilians contracted to the military, have been targeted by Islamic extremists who oppose their presence in Kuwait.

– Associated Press

EAST ASIA

NORTH KOREA THREATENS TO INCREASE ‘DETERRENT FORCE’

North Korea, which insists it needs a nuclear deterrent against an American invasion, threatened yesterday to strengthen its “deterrent force” if America pursues policies the communist state deems hostile. “If the United States more desperately pursues its hostile policy to isolate and stifle [North Korea] under the pretext of the ‘nuclear issue’ and ‘human rights issue’…the latter will react to it by further increasing its self-defensive deterrent force,”an unnamed spokesman for the North Korea’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.

The spokesman condemned the North Korean Human Rights Act, a recent American law aimed at improving human rights in the country. North Korea has repeatedly cited that law as an example of what it claims is Washington’s hostile policy toward it. “By nature the U.S. is the worst human rights graveyard in the world,” the spokesman said. “This is clearly proved by what happened in Iraq.”

– Associated Press