The New Nation - Internet Edition

Obama victory would be good for US global image

AFP, Washington

Electing Democrat Barack Obama to the presidency would be good for the image of the U.S., a State Department official said.

James Glassman, Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, was careful to emphasize that he didn't support the presidential nominee of either party. He also said he thought "it would be a great thing for the United States to have a woman as vice president," a reference to Republican running mate Sarah Palin. Speaking at a news conference focused on the U.S.-led campaign against terrorism, Glassman - who is assigned to improve his country's image around the world - also spoke about the U.S. military-run detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. "I don't think it's going to affect the image of the United States" if the prison is closed, he said. The facility has drawn international criticism.

Both U.S. presidential candidates, Obama and his Republican rival, John McCain, have pledged to close the camp at the U.S. naval base. It is holding 272 prisoners without charges.

Democrat Barack Obama geared up Wednesday to deliver a presidential-style address to the nation on the final stretch of his duel for the White House against John McCain.

Upping the pace to an intense new level six days before next Tuesday's election, Obama was to hold his first joint rally with former president Bill Clinton at a midnight event in Orlando, Florida. Obama's bulging campaign coffers and grass-roots organization is allowing the 47-year-old Illinois senator to push deep into Republican territory, forcing McCain to pour resources into what in the past were safe states.

In Virginia late Tuesday, Obama said history was in the air as he builds a double-digit poll lead in a state that last voted for a Democratic White House hopeful in 1964, but warned once again against complacency.

"Don't think for one minute that power will concede without a fight," he told supporters.

McCain, 72, was Wednesday also campaigning in Florida, a pivotal battleground that decided the 2000 election in favor of President George W. Bush after a recount fiasco that went all the way to the Supreme Court.

An estimated two million Floridians have voted early and queues have grown so lengthy that Governor Charlie Crist -- a moderate Republican who is reportedly critical of McCain's campaign -- has extended balloting hours.Florida had appeared a lock for McCain not many weeks ago, but a Los Angeles Times poll late Tuesday had Obama ahead by 50-43 percent. It also had Obama on 49 percent to McCain's 40 in Ohio, another major toss-up state. The McCain campaign has been putting a brave face on the grim polling data, insisting that the race is much tighter than the surveys reflect.

Talking to reporters aboard McCain 's campaign plane on Tuesday, political director Mike Duhaime said he believed the voting patterns mirrored previous years despite the wave of early ballots cast in favor of Obama.

"The big thing that I look at is whether the composite of the electorate is changing, and I have not seen evidence of that," he said, adding that he believed Florida and other battlegrounds were "within the margin of error."

A new poll from Quinnipiac University Wednesday showed Obama with a still sizeable, albeit slightly narrower lead in Ohio and Pennsylvania but with Florida now too close to call. Obama is now ahead in Florida by 47-45 percent compared with 49-44 percent on October 23, Quinnipiac said, leaving the outcome within the margin for error of the poll.

McCain is portraying Obama as an ultra-liberal politician plotting to raise taxes across the board. "Senator Obama is running to be redistributionist-in-chief, I'm running to be commander-in-chief," he said. But that message does not appear to be resonating with voters. A new ABC News-Washington Post poll said Obama was the first Democratic hopeful since Clinton to lead his Republican rival on taxes, by 10 points.

Overall, the Democrat led McCain by 52-45 percent in the poll.

Obama 's 30-minute, prime-time television pitch was being taken out at a cost estimated by media analysts at up to five million dollars on three of the four national networks: CBS, NBC and Fox.

Virtually guaranteeing a huge audience, the "infomercial" was to directly precede the start of the latest and potentially decisive game of baseball's World Series between the Philadelphia Phillies and Florida's Tampa Bay Rays.

Aides were tight-lipped about the contents but the broadcast was likely to emulate the slickly produced biographical video shown at the Democratic convention in late August as Obama offers his "closing argument" to voters.

Clinton meanwhile could help Obama seal the deal with the kinds of white, working-class voters who backed the former president's wife Hillary in the Democratic nominating slugfest earlier in the year

Floods kill six in India's northeast, thousands homeless

Reuters, Guwahati

Floods and landslides caused by three days of incessant rain killed six people and left thousands homeless in India's remote northeast, one of the country's most flood-prone regions, officials said on Wednesday.

A sudden wave of flood waters swamped hundreds of villages in the region, destroying houses, farmland and roads, forcing thousands of people to take shelter on high ground, in government buildings and schools.

Three people, including one child, were buried in mudslides and three others were washed away by fast flowing waters in two northeastern mountainous states of Meghalaya and Arunachal Pradesh, police said.

In the oil- and tea-rich state of Assam, around 70,000 people have been affected by flash floods, as authorities called rescue workers to evacuate stranded people.

Officials said heavy rains and later the release of excess water from dams by power generating companies in Arunachal Pradesh and neighboring Bhutan caused flooding in the region.

"It all started overnight and we are trying to shift the people to safer places," said Hemkanta Pegu, a local civil servant in Assam's Lakhimpur district.

Though officials set up temporary shelters for the homeless in schools and government buildings, many people have camped on highways under plastic sheets with whatever little they had salvaged of their belongings.

The regional weather office warned of more showers in the next 48 hours in the region.

Floods and landslides are common in the mountainous northeast during the annual monsoon season that normally begins in June and continues through September.

In India, more than 200 people have been killed in rains in this year, 30 of them in the northeast.

Assam accounts for about 55 percent of India's tea production and also produces oil. Officials said the rains had not affected tea trade or oil exploration.

Thailand moves ASEAN summit to Chiang Mai amid Bangkok protests

AFP, Bangkok

Thailand has moved a December summit of Southeast Asian nations to the northeastern town of Chiang Mai, a government spokeswoman said Wednesday, as protests drag on in the capital.

Originally scheduled for Bangkok, the 14th annual Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit will now take place in Chiang Mai from December 15 to 18, deputy government spokeswoman Suparat Nakbunnum told AFP, citing the cooler weather up north.

"The prime minister told the cabinet meeting yesterday (Tuesday) that the summit would be held in Chiang Mai and the government had prepared venues for the meeting and accommodation," she told AFP.

"It will be comfortable and easier to organise the meeting there."

Although government officials have insisted that the change of venue was linked to the better climate, anti-government protests which began in May in Bangkok are also believed to be a key factor.

Protestors from the People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD) have occupied the prime minister's offices since late August, and have rebuffed government pleas for them to leave to save embarrassment during the summit.

The protests, aimed at overthrowing the elected government and supported by the country's urban elite, have forced the cabinet to work out of a disused airport terminal.

On October 7, PAD supporters clashed with police outside parliament, with two people killed and nearly 500 injured in the worst street violence in Thailand in 16 years.

Chiang Mai is in the northeast stronghold of the ruling People Power Party and is the birthplace of ousted prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra.

African summit must be 'decisive] on Zimbabwe: UN chief

AFP, Manila

African leaders must take "decisive" action to end the deadlock between Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said Wednesday.

Both men remained deadlocked over who will control Zimbabwe's powerful home affairs ministry, which oversees the police, despite efforts to end the crisis early this week in a high-level security meeting.

An urgent summit of the 15-member Southern African Development Community (SADC) has now been called to help end the problem. "Now that the SADC has decided to convene their full summit meeting, I hope these leaders-considering their responsibility to see peace and stability maintained in their region-should take very decisive measures to help resolve this crisis," Ban told reporters on the sidelines of a UN forum on migration in Manila.

"This has been taking too long," Ban said, referring to calls that Mugabe agree to power-sharing.

The SADC has for the past seven years tried to press Mugabe into compromise with Tsvangirai, but its members are deeply divided over Zimbabwe.

Some leaders are strong allies of Mugabe, respected by many as a liberation hero, while others blame him for leading the country into economic ruin, causing waves of migrants to cross its borders to seek work.

Thousands suffering from shattered Mindanao peace talks

AFP, Manila

Thousands of Filipinos have had their lives shattered following the collapse of peace talks between the government and Muslim insurgents, Amnesty International said in a report released Wednesday. The London-based rights group said an estimated 370,000 people have been displaced by the violence that erupted in August on the southern island of Mindanao following the breakdown of talks between the two sides. Rebel commanders have since broken away from the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and have been waging a systematic campaign of killing and looting throughout central and northern Mindanao. The Philippine government has poured thousands of troops into the area with little impact and the military has been forced to seek extra funding from a defence budget already strapped for cash. The 39-page report highlights a string of human rights abuses carried out by both sides of the conflict including the deliberate targeting of civilians by the MILF, burning of homes, looting and stealing.

Amnesty said at the start of the fighting that 610,000 people fled their villages, citing data collected by the National Disaster Coordinating Council.

"Around 240,000 of them have subsequently gone back to their homes t only to find their houses burned and their livestock stolen," the report said.

"The 370,000, who are still displaced, remain in internally displaced person sites or with relatives."

"The MILF and local groups opposing the peace talks have used violence as a negotiating strategy and hundreds of thousands of people are paying the price," said Donna Guest, Amnesty International's Asia Pacific deputy director.

On August 4, the Supreme Court issued a temporary restraining order on a Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain (MOA-AD), which had been initialed by both sides.

The agreement would have given Muslims virtual self rule within the Philippine state and ended a 40-year conflict in the south which has claimed more than 120,000 lives.

Politicians and Christian groups described the agreement as a "sell out" and the government was forced to back down.