The New Nation - Internet Edition

Thai anti-govt protesters paralyse parliament

AFP, Bangkok

Thousands of Thai protesters marched on parliament and other key buildings Monday in what they called a final battle against the government, forcing lawmakers to cancel an important sitting.

Flag-waving demonstrators left from the prime minister's cabinet offices-which they have been occupying since late August-and fanned out through Bangkok's historic district in a bid to paralyse the legislature.

Two busloads of protesters also arrived at an abandoned air terminal where premier Somchai Wongsawat and his cabinet have set up a makeshift base, with security guards letting them through in an attempt to avoid a clash.

Police said about 18,000 people from the anti-government People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD) took part across Bangkok. Some demonstrators wore goggles and masks as protection from tear gas.

House speaker Chai Chidchob called for calm and announced the postponement of a joint parliamentary sessionÂ which was supposed to consider legislation on a major regional summit being held in Thailand in December.

"I ask for all sides to stop the movement now. If you love the king, please return home," he said on parliament radio, adding that the sitting was called off because elected MPs and senators could not enter the building.

The PAD has led a six-month campaign aiming to topple the government elected in December, accusing it of being a proxy of exiled former PM Thaksin Shinawatra, who was ousted in a bloodless coup in 2006.

Thaksin fled the country in August this year but a power battle is raging between those who support the billionaire and the old power elite in the military, palace and bureaucracy who want to purge Thailand of his influence.

A sea of protesters dressed in yellow shirts and headbands which symbolise loyalty to the monarchy marched through the government district Monday, many waving national flags and portraits of deeply-revered King Bhumibol Adulyadej.

Black-clad volunteer PAD security guards wielding homemade batons protected the crowd.

About 2,000 police armed with shields were on duty to try to prevent a repeat of bloody street battles outside parliament on October 7 that left two protesters dead and nearly 500 people injured, officials have said. One group of protesters moved from parliament to the finance ministry, while another group broke down a blockade on a road in front of the Bangkok Metropolitan Police headquarters, Thai television showed.

Most demonstrators later left parliament but dozens then drove in buses to Don Mueang airport on the outskirts of Bangkok, where premier Somchai-Thaksin's brother-in-law-has set up temporary offices, AFP reporters said.

"The government are having a special cabinet meeting. Wherever they meet we will go," Somsak Kosaisuk, a key leader of the PAD, told the crowds outside parliament.

PAD co-founder Sondhi Limthongkul told AFP earlier that they could call on the crowds to besiege other locations including the stock exchange in their self-proclaimed "final battle" against the government.

Three small blasts hit near Sondhi's Bangkok offices early Monday, causing minor damage but no injuries.

The PAD occupied Government House after massive rallies in late August. It launched its anti-government campaign in May and has called for Thailand's electoral system to be changed to include non-elected members.

The alliance called for supporters to march on Monday to avenge the death of an activist in a grenade attack at the protest site last week.

PAD leaders accuse the government of being behind that attack, which also injured 29 protesters, as well as a similar explosion that killed one more protester and injured seven on Saturday.

Somchai, who is currently in Peru for the APEC meeting of Asia-Pacific leaders, has denied any involvement and vowed an investigation into the violence.

Blasts hit Baghdad bus, Green Zone, killing 20

AFP, Baghdad

Three explosions rocked Baghdad on Monday, killing 20 people two days before parliament was to vote on a divisive military pact that would have all US troops leave the country by the end of 2011.

One of the blasts was caused by a female suicide bomber who detonated her explosives vest at the entrance to Baghdad's heavily guarded Green Zone, brutally underscoring the lingering violence in the Iraqi capital.

In the first attack 13 people were killed-nine of them women-when a roadside bomb exploded near a bus carrying trade ministry employees during the morning commute in east Baghdad, a medical official at a nearby hospital said.

The medic said most of the victims were incinerated inside the bus, and that five other people were wounded in the attack.

Less than an hour later five people were killed when the suicide bomber blew herself up in a corridor leading into the Green Zone, where Iraqi employees were queuing to pass through security checkpoints, police said.

Another 17 people were wounded in the rush-hour attack, which echoed across central Baghdad and sent a pillar of black smoke into the air.

In another attack in east Baghdad a roadside bomb killed one person and wounded five others, police said, adding that three of the wounded were patrolling police who appeared to have been the intended target.

The Green Zone blast splashed blood and seared flesh across the grey concrete barriers at the entrance, according to an AFP correspondent.

US and Iraqi forces closed the entrance and ordered bystanders to leave the area, forcing employees to wait hundreds of metres (yards) away.

An official from the Iraqi intelligence services said the blast targeted the entrance to a corridor of checkpoints leading to their headquarters.

"Two women employees of the intelligence services were killed and six guards were wounded in the attack this morning. This attack targeted our checkpoint," he said, adding that one of the women was pregnant.

Tiger rebels claim killing 43 Sri Lankan soldiers

AFP, Colombo

Tamil Tiger rebels fought an intense battle with government forces advancing into their territory in northern Sri Lanka and killed at least 43 soldiers, a pro-rebel website reported Monday.

Members of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) resisted a military push at Nallur in the northern mainland on Sunday, the Tamilnet.com website said.

They said the Tigers recovered the bodies of eight soldiers, but did not give their own casualties.

However, the guerrillas for the first time admitted that security forces had taken the strategically important town of Pooneryn and that heavy fighting was taking place on the outskirts of their political capital Kilinochchi. There was no immediate comment from Sri Lankan military authorities on casualties from the latest fighting, but the defence ministry on Sunday said that troops were marching on Kilinochchi from three directions.

Sri Lanka's government has vowed to take the Tiger political capital and dismantle the LTTE's mini-state.

Sri Lankan troops have been engaged in a massive offensive against the Tigers since the government pulled out of a Norwegian-brokered truce at the start of the year.

Authorities in Sri Lanka have restricted access to the embattled areas for journalists as well as most aid workers, meaning that claims by either side in the decades-old conflict are normally impossible to independently verify.

Tens of thousands of people have died in the LTTE's campaign for a separate homeland for the island's minority Tamils.

India failing to crush Maoist revolt: Singh

AFP, New Delhi

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Sunday said India was failing in its efforts to crush a Maoist rebellion plaguing vast swathes of the country.

Addressing a conference of senior police and security officials in New Delhi, Singh once again described the ultra-leftist insurgency as "the most serious internal security threat" India was facing.

"It is evident that despite the efforts that have and are being made, the measures taken so far have not yielded desired results," the premier was quoted as saying by the Press Trust of India news agency. "The inability of intelligence agencies and the police to obtain pinpointed and actionable intelligence and in time has enabled these outfits to carry out some high-profile attacks."

Singh was referring to audacious attacks by the revolutionaries this year including the slaughter in July of 21 elite police commandos in eastern Orissa state.

In March 2007, the rebels assassinated a federal MP and a few days later killed 55 policemen in twin attacks in eastern India.

The Maoist insurgency grew out of a peasant uprising in 1967 and rebels often target the overstretched and poorly trained security forces operating in the east of the country.

The rebels say they are fighting for the rights of neglected tribal people and landless farmers and that their ultimate goal is to capture India's cities and overthrow parliament.

The left-wing guerrillas are active in more than half of India's 29 states and the rebels use a heavily forested region in eastern Chhattisgarh state as their headquarters.

Singh's government promised in July to create new, specialised commando units in the worst-hit states of Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Andhra Pradesh and Orissa.

Jordan king warns of humanitarian crisis in Gaza

AFP, Amman

Jordan's King Abdullah II warned on Sunday of a "humanitarian crisis" in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip, urging the international community to help end Israel's blockade of the area, the palace said.

"The world should take swift measures to end the suffering of the Palestinians in Gaza," a palace statement quoted the king as telling EU ambassadors at a meeting.

"If the blockade continues, it would create a humanitarian crisis of destructive results." According to the statement, the king on Sunday ordered the urgent dispatch of food aid and medical supplies to Gaza amid growing concern over the humanitarian situation in the impoverished territory.

"The international community should do its utmost to end this crisis," said the king, whose country is allied with Israel through a 1994 peace treaty.

Abbas says not one issue resolved in US- backed Mideast peace talks

AFP, Ramallah

Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas hit out at US-backed Middle East peace talks on Sunday on the eve of a White House meeting between Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and President George W. Bush, saying that not one issue has been resolved.

He also pledged to call snap presidential and parliamentary elections in the New Year if there is no agreement with the Islamist Hamas movement which controls Gaza to end the rift in Palestinian ranks. "So far we have not reached agreement on a single question-every issue remains up for discussion," Abbas told a key decision-making body of the Palestine Liberation Organisation under whose auspices the year-old negotiations with Israel are being held.

"Even if (US Secretary of State) Condoleezza Rice or someone speaking in her name says, even if (Israeli Foreign Minister) Tzipi Livni or someone speaking in her name says that there are agreements being prepared, it's not true," he told the PLO Central Council.

Zimbabwe may soon collapse say Annan, Carter

Reuters, Johannesburg

Prominent figures, including former U.N. secretary general Kofi Annan, believe Zimbabwe could soon collapse due to a political and economic crisis, South Africa's ANC leader Jacob Zuma said on Monday.

"They believe the situation is very bad. They believe things could collapse in a few months time in Zimbabwe," Zuma told reporters after meeting Annan, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and other prominent figures.

Annan, Carter and Nelson Mandela's wife, Graca Machel, are among a group of prominent figures and former statesmen called The Elders. They were barred by Zimbabwe from visiting to assess a humanitarian crisis there this weekend.

North Korea prepares to shut border with South

Reuters, Seoul

Secretive North Korea said on Monday it would all but seal its border with the South a week before heading into talks with its neighbor and other regional powers which are pressing it to give up nuclear weapons.

The tension on the long-divided Korean peninsula has been escalating since conservative President Lee Myung-bak took office in February promising to invest heavily in the impoverished North on condition it moves to end development of an atomic arsenal. North Korea's KCNA news agency said the border closure was the first step "to be taken in connection with the evermore undisguised anti-DPRK (North Korea) confrontational racket of the south Korean puppet authorities."

But the latest move appeared to be more saber-rattling than substance as the North will continue to let in some South Koreans to manage an industrial zone just across the border in what is the one significant economic relationship it has with the South.

Chavez party wins majority in local election

AFP, Caracas

Leftist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on Monday hailed his party's majority victories in key local polls but recognized opposition gains in at least three states and the capital Caracas.

A record of more than 65 percent of 17 million eligible voters turned out to vote for governors, mayors and heads of regional councils in Sunday's polls.

"Who can say there's a dictatorship in Venezuela?" Chavez said, in a jab at his many critics.

The polls were seen as a key test for anti-US Chavez and his drive for nationalization and social projects, amid growing discontent over escalating crime, corruption and inflation.

Candidates from Chavez's socialist party won 17 states out of 22, first results showed, in the vote which came almost 10 years after he was first elected.