The New Nation - Internet Edition

AP, Bangkok

The political party allied with deposed Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said Monday it has recruited enough other parties to form a coalition government following its win in Sunday's first post-coup election.

The pro-Thaksin People's Power Party won 228 seats in the parliamentary election, falling short of an absolute majority in the lower house. To govern, it needs to join hands with at least one of the other six parties that won seats. PPP secretary-general Surapong Suebwonglee said at a news conference that enough parties had responded to his party's entreaties for an alliance to form a ruling coalition with more than half the house seats.

"The PPP will form a government," he said, without naming its partners.

Thailand's political parties pursued coalition talks Monday after allies of deposed Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra won nearly half the seats - but not an outright majority - in the first parliamentary election since a military coup.

The bargaining foreshadowed continued political instability in Thailand, where the election was billed as a return to democracy following the ouster of the billionaire populist in 2006.

With nearly all votes counted, the People's Power Party - established after Thaksin's Thai Rak Thai Party was disbanded by court order earlier this year - had won 228 seats in the 480-seat lower house of parliament, according to the state Election Commission. If the PPP fails to build a coalition that secures an absolute majority it could allow opponents to form a government.

Complete election results were due later Monday.

"I would like to call for all political parties to join us in forming a strong government," PPP leader Samak Sundaravej said at a news conference. "I will certainly be the prime minister."

He said Thaksin, who was in Hong Kong, had telephoned to offer his congratulations after hearing the results.

The second-place Democrat Party took 166 seats.

"If the PPP succeeds in forming the government, the Democrat Party is ready to be in the opposition to protect the people's interest. However, if the PPP fails to form a government, the Democrat Party is also ready to form a government," said Democrat Party leader Abhisit Vejajjiva. The possible disqualification of some Thaksin allies could also complicate the task of assembling a ruling coalition.

Sodsri Sathayatham, a member of the Election Commission, said at least 24 could be disqualified while re-elections might be necessary in a dozen cases.

The commission, which will meet Wednesday to begin investigations, was barraged by hundreds of complaints of vote-buying and other violations of electoral law.

Reuters, London

Dozens of flights were expected to be disrupted at Heathrow and Gatwick on Monday despite the lifting of a thick belt of fog that caused travel chaos for thousands of passengers over the weekend.

Hundreds of flights were cancelled at airports across the country on Saturday and Sunday as fog descended just in time for the Christmas getaway.

Heathrow Airport said 30 departures would be grounded on Monday as a knock-on affect of the weekend disruption. At Gatwick a handful of flights were affected. The bulk of the affected journeys are British Airways short-haul flights. Officials at Heathrow were unable to say how many arrivals would be disrupted.

Over the weekend, 90 departures and 112 arrivals were cancelled. Up to a thousand stranded passengers were forced to spend the night at Heathrow on Sunday waiting for alternative flights, while others slept in nearby hotels.

Last year when more than 350 flights at Heathrow were cancelled in the run-up to Christmas due to fog. Airports in Scotland were returning to normal after 25 planes were grounded during the weekend, with just 5 flights in total due to be cancelled on Monday at Edinburgh and Glasgow.

Airport authorities are encouraging travellers to check the BAA or airline Web sites before embarking on their journeys.

The fog has also caused problems on the road, with a major pile up on the M5 near Bristol on Sunday involving 16 vehicles including a coach.

The motorway was closed in both directions as fire crews cut a passenger free from the wreckage of a car. The woman was said to have suffered spinal injuries. Elsewhere, motorway traffic was slow in northern England, the Midlands and Scotland.

AFP, Peshawar

Pakistan's military said that the death toll from a suicide attack on an army convoy was up to nine, with 23 people wounded.

Sunday's attack took place in the Swat valley in the country's restive northwest, where there have been three suicide attacks since President Pervez Musharraf lifted a nationwide state of emergency a week and a half ago.

The military said four soldiers and five civilians were killed, with 13 soldiers and 10 civilians wounded. It had given the toll on Sunday as seven dead and 29 wounded.

The attack took place in the town of Mingora in the troubled valley, a onetime tourist haven that has become a flashpoint for violence where the military has been battling followers of a hardline pro-Taliban cleric.

The military has launched an offensive in the Swat valley, looking to drive out followers of Maulana Fazlullah, a radical cleric who has been looking to establish Islamic sharia law in the region.

There have been more than 40 suicide attacks in Pakistan this year, as Musharraf battles a wave of militant violence.

The deadliest came in October, when twin suicide bombers killed 139 people during a homecoming rally for opposition leader Benazir Bhutto.

AFP, Riyadh

Saudi Arabia announced on Sunday the arrest of 28 Al-Qaeda linked suspects for planning attacks in the oil-rich kingdom, following an alleged plot to commit a "terrorist act" during the annual Muslim pilgrimage, or hajj.

"Since December 14, 28 members of the deviant group (the term used by the Saudi authorities for Al-Qaeda) have been arrested, including one foreign resident and the rest Saudi nationals," an interior ministry official said in a statement carried by the official SPA news agency.

The statement said the suspects were "linked to elements abroad and were planning criminal acts in the kingdom," an expression Saudi authorities use to describe Al-Qaeda attacks.

The suspects were captured in the provinces of Mecca, Medina, Riyadh and the area around the kingdom's northern borders, the statement said.

It added that it was in the "general interest" to withhold further details of the nature of the plots and the planned targets. The Saudi authorities have been battling a wave of deadly violence waged by Islamist militants since 2003.

On Friday, the interior ministry said that security forces had arrested an Al-Qaeda-linked group planning a "terrorist act" during the hajj, which this year attracted about 2.5 million Muslims from across the globe.

AFP, Hilla

A train collided with a packed car at a level crossing in central Iraq, killing 13 people in the vehicle, including 11 children, a local police officer and a medic said on Monday.

The crash occurred on Sunday north of the city of Hilla in an area called Al-Sayahiyah, the police officer said on condition of anonymity.

"Thirteen people from the family of Hamid Hrat were killed when the train rammed into their car at the level crossing," he said, adding the dead children included six boys and five girls.

He said Hrat was a captain in the facility protection service, a specialised security force that guards infrastructure projects and government buildings across Iraq.

"It appears that the Opel car in which the family was travelling broke down at the level-crossing and the train coming from Basra to Baghdad crashed into it," the police officer said.

The train driver ran away after the crash, he added.

A medic from Hilla hospital confirmed receiving the bodies of the victims.

"It was a gruesome accident. The body parts of the dead were brought to the hospital yesterday. All the 13 members were killed instantly," Laith al-Massudi from the hospital told AFP.

Reuters, Colombo

Sri Lankan troops killed 41 Tamil Tiger fighters in a series of weekend clashes in the island's civil war-ravaged north, while three soldiers were also killed, the military said on Monday.

Eleven rebels were killed in fighting in the northern districts of Vavuniya and Jaffna on Sunday, while another eight were killed in the northwestern district of Mannar.

Those clashes came, in turn, after soldiers killed 22 rebels, destroyed several bunkers and captured an insurgent base in a series of exchanges on Saturday and Sunday. "Another 19 terrorists were killed on Sunday, taking the weekend toll to 41," military spokesman Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara said.

The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), who are seeking to carve out an independent state in north and east Sri Lanka, were not immediately available for comment. There was no independent account of what had happened or how many people were killed. Analysts say both sides tend to exaggerate enemy losses and play down their own.

Pro-rebel Web site www.tamilnet.com cited the Tigers as saying 17 soldiers were killed and 54 were wounded in a clash in Mannar on Saturday, when the military says troops captured an insurgent check point along the forward defense line that separates government from rebel-held land. Well over 5,000 people have been killed since early last year amid near daily land and sea battles, bombings and air raids.

The government has vowed to wipe out the Tigers militarily and to clear the rebels from territory they control in the island's north, after driving them from eastern strongholds earlier this year.

AFP, Washington

US commander General David Petraeus Sunday hailed "fragile" progress towards damping down sectarian bloodshed in Iraq but cautioned against a faster withdrawal of US forces.

Insurgent attacks and casualties among US troops and Iraqi civilians have fallen sharply, he said, helping the United States to press ahead with plans to withdraw five combat units from Iraq next year. "Obviously, we want to reduce the strain on our ground forces as much as we can while recognizing that what has been achieved here remains tenuous and is still fragile in a number of areas," Petraeus said on Fox News Sunday. He stressed his agreement with Defense Secretary Robert Gates that planning for any further withdrawals would be "conditions-based," dependent on whether Iraqi violence continues to fall or not.

AP, Milwaukee

Highways were hazardous for holiday travelers Sunday and thousands of homes and businesses had no electricity in the Midwest as a storm blustered through the region with heavy snow and howling wind.

At least 11 deaths had been blamed on the storm. Winter storm warnings were posted for parts of Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan on Sunday as the core of the storm headed north across the Great Lakes. Parts of Wisconsin already had a foot of snow, and up to a foot was forecast Sunday in northeastern Minnesota, the National Weather Service said. Radar showed snow falling across much of Wisconsin and eastern Minnesota on Sunday and moving into parts of Michigan and Indiana. "Everything is just an ice rink out there," said Sgt. Steve Selby with the sheriff's department in Rock County, Wis. The weather system also spread locally heavy rain on Sunday from the Southeast to the lower Great Lakes.

AP, Larkana

Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto accused the government Sunday of failing to crush Islamic militants, days after a suicide bombing killed 56 people during prayers in a mosque.

Meanwhile, an army statement said a suicide bombing of a military convoy killed five civilians and four soldiers in the troubled northwest. It said 13 civilians and 10 soldiers were also wounded in the attack in the town of Mangora in Swat district, where security forces have carried out several operations against followers of a pro-Taliban radical Islamic cleric. Bhutto's sharp criticism came hours before the latest suicide attack. She spoke as the campaign heated up for next month's parliamentary elections, with politicians addressing rallies around the country. The former prime minister, speaking to about 25,000 supporters in her hometown of Larkana, said the ruling party of President Pervez Musharraf's government bore the blame for the rise of Islamic militancy.

AFP, London

Nearly half of all British voters want the main opposition party in power rather than Prime Minister Gordon Brown's governing Labour, a poll released Sunday showed. The survey makes for more negative news for Brown's government, with more people responding that Conservative Party leader David Cameron would make a better prime minister than Brown. Brown's administration has already been beset by a series of scandals in recent months, from a banking crisis to the losses of millions of Britons' personal data, as well as a Labour Party funding row. Some 48 percent of voters in the ComRes survey for The Independent agreed with the statement, "It's time for a change and the next government should be a Conservative one." By contrast, just 36 percent preferred a Labour government. Cameron was backed by 39 percent of respondents as the candidate who would make the best prime minister, while 37 percent supported Brown.

AFP, Islamabad

Pakistan's health ministry said it was still investigating whether there was human transmission in the country's first death from bird flu. It said initials tests by the World Health Organisation (WHO), which sent a team here last week, had ruled it out but that Pakistan had sent samples to Geneva -- the WHO's headquarters -- for further confirmation. Scientists fear that if the virus were passed from one person to another, rather than from infected birds, it might indicate a mutation that could lead to a global pandemic with the potential to kill millions. "In their preliminary tests the WHO team excluded suspected human-to-human transmission, but we have sent the samples to Geneva for further confirmation," health ministry spokesman Oriya Maqbool Jan told AFP.