Russia's biggest party seeks Vladimir Putin as leader

By Guy Faulconbridge

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia's biggest party will ask President Vladimir Putin to become its leader this week at a conference that could provide the final clue in the riddle of who will really run Russia after Putin steps down.

Putin has said he will serve as prime minister once his protege, Dmitry Medvedev, is sworn in as president on May 7. But for many investors the critical questions of how much power Putin will wield and for how long remain unanswered.

If Putin does accept the invitation from the United Russia party to become its leader, it would significantly entrench his power and indicate, some analysts say, that he is planning to use that position to preserve his long-term influence.

Turning down the job could suggest that Putin, after a trial period to make sure 42-year-old Medvedev settles into the Kremlin job, is planning to take a back seat.

The Kremlin has given no indications about whether Putin will lead the party. Putin is expected to attend the second day of the conference, which opens on Monday.

"If Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin headed United Russia, it would be the very best option," Boris Gryzlov, the head of United Russia and the speaker of the lower house of parliament, told a news conference last week.

"Such a proposal (for Putin to head the party) will probably be made at the congress. I could myself make the proposal and that would be the correct way," Gryzlov said.

Putin used a United Russia conference last year to announce he could serve as premier once his presidency, limited by the constitution to two consecutive terms, came to an end.

Putin, 55, is the country's most popular politician after presiding over Russia's longest economic boom for a generation and cementing Kremlin control after the chaos of the 1990s. His critics, a minority in Russia, accuse him of crushing democracy.

Investors want to know what Putin's final role will be after he steps down because they see political stability as key to Russia's booming $1.3 trillion economy.

RIDDLE NOT SOLVED

Kremlin-watchers believe the riddle of what Putin will do next is still not fully solved because the post of prime minister is an awkward one for someone so powerful.

The prime minister is junior to the president, can be sacked at the president's whim and often carries the can for policy failures. Putin filled the post with a series of low-level technocrats all seen as expendable.

Some analysts see United Russia leadership as a way for Putin to preserve long-term influence by moulding the party, closely tied to the Kremlin since its creation, into a powerful political force in its own right.

The president can sack the prime minister but he has to seek the approval of parliament -- controlled by United Russia -- to appoint a new premier. The party has the two thirds majority required to amend the constitution.

Others say the party's influence and unity could dissolve if the new Kremlin administration withdraws its support.

Putin helped found the party, which was designed in the last days of former President Boris Yeltsin's rule to ensure the Kremlin's control of parliament.

Russia's Vedomosti newspaper reported on Friday that Putin could take a leadership role in the party without being a member.

The paper cited unidentified Kremlin and party officials as saying that United Russia was preparing to create the post of "non-member party leader" who would define strategy rather than take part in day-to-day management.

There is a precedent for leadership of a party, rather than any state position, providing the lever of power in Russia. For much of the 20th century, the leader of the Soviet Communist party held sway over all state institutions.

(Editing by Alison Williams)

A cleric, a pol, a warrior

In Iraq, Muqtada Sadr's clout and experience make any effort to subdue him a dangerous strategy.
By Patrick Cockburn

April 12, 2008

The Iraqi government has decided that the moment has come to crush the Mahdi Army and the followers of Muqtada Sadr once and for all. Despite its failure to eliminate his militiamen in Basra at the end of March, the government, with American backing, is determined to try again, according to senior Iraqi officials.

It is a dangerous strategy for both Prime Minister Nouri Maliki and the U.S. Sadr remains one of the most powerful and revered leaders of the Shiite community -- and the Shiites make up 60% of Iraq. What's more, the 34-year-old Sadr is not exactly the mercurial "firebrand" or "renegade" cleric portrayed by journalistic cliche-mongers; rather, he has repeatedly shown himself to be a cautious and experienced political operator.

Ever since he unexpectedly emerged as a central figure in Iraqi politics in the days after the overthrow of the old regime in 2003, Sadr's many enemies have invariably underestimated him and the commitment of his followers. When the U.S. viceroy in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer III, moved against Sadr in April 2004, he was astonished when the Sadrists took over much of southern Iraq in response. Maliki had a similar experience in March: He demanded that the Mahdi Army militiamen hand over their weapons within three days -- only to see pictures on TV of disaffected troops and police surrendering their guns to the militia instead.

Sadr enjoys such great religious and political authority because he is the scion of the most respected Shiite clerical family in Iraq. His father, Ayatollah Mohammed Sadeq Sadr, and two of his brothers were killed, presumably by Saddam Hussein's gunmen, in 1999. His cousin and father-in-law, Mohammed Baqir Sadr, a revered Shiite theologian, was executed by the old regime in 1980.

It was Sadeq Sadr who created the Sadrist movement, whose mixture of puritanical Islam, nationalism and social relief appealed to the millions of Shiite poor, impoverished by war and economic sanctions. Although Hussein initially saw Sadeq Sadr as a potential ally, he realized late in the day that he was fostering a dangerous enemy and ordered Sadeq Sadr's assassination.

Muqtada Sadr became so important so fast after the fall of Hussein because he inherited his father's movement -- and it is still the basis of his influence. He only narrowly avoided being killed at the same time as Sadeq Sadr and was held under house arrest, allowed to live only because Iraqi security believed he was no threat.

Living so close to death for so many years helps explain Muqtada Sadr's secretive character. "Even his closest lieutenants sitting beside him do not know what is going on in his head," one of his aides said. Highly intelligent with a quick, nervous manner, he illustrates his words with rapid hand movements in apparent imitation of his father's manner.

Muqtada Sadr created the Mahdi Army in 2003 and rapidly turned it into the most powerful militia in Iraq. Lightly armed and poorly trained, it suffered terrible losses fighting the U.S. Marines in two battles in Najaf in 2004, but the outgunned militiamen did not surrender. The Sadrists have always seen political and social activism as essential to Islamic practice. They criticized the rival Shiite leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, and the established Shiite clergy for their "quietism" and their failure to actively oppose Hussein (and later, the American occupation).

What makes Sadr different from other Shiite leaders, and gives him credibility among the Shiite masses, is that he opposed the U.S. occupation from the beginning. When the U.S. invasion overthrew Hussein, Sadr said that "the big snake has succeeded the small snake." He pulled his followers out of the Iraqi government in 2006 because Maliki would not condemn the occupation. He also became increasingly reliant on Iran in the face of U.S. hostility.

The once impressive political unity of the Shiite community is now collapsing. Maliki (who is a Shiite) and his small Dawa Party, along with his main ally, the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, believe that they can isolate the Sadrists and, with American help, marginalize them before the October provincial elections in which the Sadrists were expected to do well. The long rivalry of the Sadr family and the Hakim family (the founders of the Supreme Islamic Council in 1982) has once again exploded. The U.S. may come to regret taking sides against the Sadrists in this intra-Shiite feud.

Ever since the battles for Najaf four years ago, Sadr has tried to avoid direct military confrontation with U.S. military forces. He has agreed to truces and cease-fires, and two weeks ago, he even called his militiamen off the streets in Baghdad and Basra when they seemed to be winning.

But for the Iraqi government, those clashes were only the first round in a battle to crush the Sadrists as a political and military force. Going by past experience, Sadr will try to arrange a compromise to avoid the destruction of his movement. But if he is forced to fight, the U.S. will face a whole new front in the war in Iraq.

Patrick Cockburn is the Iraq correspondent for the Independent in London and the author of "Muqtada: Muqtada Al-Sadr, the Shia Revival, and the Struggle for Iraq."

Pakistan Premier Frees Judges

Leader's First Step Defies Musharraf

By Candace Rondeaux
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, March 25, 2008; A01

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, March 24 -- Pakistan's newly elected prime minister ordered the release Monday of top judges who had been under house arrest since last year, a dramatic challenge to the U.S.-backed president, Pervez Musharraf.

Moments after being confirmed as prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gillani declared, before a raucous Parliament now controlled by the president's opponents, that the judges would be freed immediately. The move was a step toward reinstating the country's once-independent judiciary, whose silencing by Musharraf fueled the opposition's pro-democracy campaign.

Hundreds of jubilant Pakistanis converged on the Islamabad home of the detained former chief justice, Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, as police began removing barricades and barbed-wire fences. Banging drums, waving flags and shouting, "Go, Musharraf, go!" the crowd massed beneath the balcony of Chaudhry's house and urged him to make his first public address in more than four months.

Chaudhry, who was fired last year when he and other Supreme Court justices refused to accept Musharraf's suspension of the constitution and declaration of emergency, subsequently appeared on the balcony to greet the throng.

"I and my colleagues were unconstitutionally confined under house arrest," said Chaudhry, accompanied by Aitzaz Ahsan, president of the Supreme Court bar association. "I am thankful to the whole nation -- lawyers, civil society, everyone. Your great struggle for the constitution and the rule of law will continue."

Gillani, 55, was a close associate of Benazir Bhutto, the opposition leader who was assassinated in December. After lawmakers voted overwhelmingly to name him prime minister, he strode to the front of the assembly amid boisterous anti-Musharraf chants. He shook hands with Bhutto's tearful son and political heir apparent, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, then struggled for several minutes to be heard as members of Parliament stood and pounded their tables.

"God willing, I assure you as the leader of this house that we will strengthen this institution," Gillani said. "We have spent a long time in opposition. We came here after a long struggle."

Restoration of the judiciary in Pakistan has been at the center of a battle between Musharraf's government and the nation's leading opposition parties. The former chief justice was reinstated by the Supreme Court in July, but Musharraf reversed that decision through an executive order four months later. Chaudhry, his family and five other Supreme Court justices had been under house arrest since November, when Musharraf disbarred about 60 judges to head off potential legal challenges to his rule.

The moves set off a constitutional crisis that prompted a firestorm of protests by lawyers across the country and stoked support for the opposition, which swept to power in February elections.

In addition to ordering the judges' release, Gillani called for a U.N. investigation into the assassination of Bhutto, who was killed Dec. 27 in a gun and bomb attack on her motorcade as she was leaving a political rally in Rawalpindi.

Gillani, who spent five years in prison on corruption charges lodged by Musharraf's government, also demanded a parliamentary resolution to apologize for the 1979 hanging of Bhutto's father, former president and prime minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto.

Musharraf is scheduled to swear in Gillani as prime minister on Tuesday. Gillani then is expected to start naming cabinet ministers.

Gillani's party, the Pakistan People's Party, and the party of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif have vowed to pass a resolution to fully reinstate the dismissed judges within 30 days of the formation of the new government. That move could lead to a major confrontation with the president. Musharraf could face charges of treason -- an offense punishable by death -- should the judges be restored.

But Musharraf's attorney general has said the judges can be reinstated only if the constitutional changes introduced by Musharraf last year are repealed. That would require a two-thirds majority vote of the combined National Assembly and Senate.

"This is the beginning of a new era in Pakistan," said Ali Sajid, 45, a university professor who was among the crowd outside Chaudhry's house. "We are excited that the judiciary is free and has been released from the clutches of the United States of America. They should allow us to determine our own future." He said the United States and Britain "have no right to interfere in our politics."

U.S. support for Musharraf in the face of the year-long judicial crisis and growing concerns about Pakistan's involvement in the U.S.-led war on terrorism in the region have provoked sharp discontent, particularly among the country's burgeoning middle class. U.S. officials in recent months have shied away from directly supporting the judges' reinstatement, saying only that the decision to restore the judiciary rests with Parliament.

Musharraf's opponents see the release of the judges as the first step toward the restoration of an independent judiciary and a sound rebuke of U.S. support for his rule of more than eight years.

The judges' release appeared to bring relief to the hundreds of police officers who have stood guard along the road to Chaudhry's home for months. Several officers shook hands with the same protesters at whom they had lobbed tear gas a week ago. Some smiled and laughed as they helped black-coated lawyers pick their way across the small field of barbed wire lining the road.

"The prime minister has given his order and has spoken it on the floor of Parliament," said one officer, who declined to give his name for fear of losing his job. "We all are tired of doing this. We knew it was wrong, but all the same it's a job requirement. We had to follow orders."

New Pakistani Leaders Tell Americans There’s ‘a New Sheriff in Town’

By SALMAN MASOOD

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — The top State Department officials responsible for the alliance with Pakistan met leaders of the new government on Tuesday, and received what amounted to a public dressing-down from one of them, as well as the first direct indication that the United States relationship with Pakistan would have to change.

On the day that the new prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gillani, was sworn in, Deputy Secretary of State John D. Negroponte and the assistant secretary of state for South Asian affairs, Richard A. Boucher, also met with the Pakistani president, Pervez Musharraf, whom they had embraced as their partner in the campaign against terrorism over the past seven years but whose power is quickly ebbing.

The leader of the second biggest party in the new Parliament, Nawaz Sharif, said after meeting the two American diplomats that it was unacceptable that Pakistan had become a “killing field.”

“If America wants to see itself clean of terrorists, we also want that our villages and towns should not be bombed,” he said at a news conference here. Mr. Sharif, a former prime minister, added he was unable to give Mr. Negroponte “a commitment” on fighting terrorism.

The statements by Mr. Sharif, and the cool body language in the televised portions of his encounter with Mr. Negroponte, were just part of the sea change in Pakistan’s domestic politics that is likely to impose new limits on how Washington fights militants within Pakistan’s borders.

That fight, which has recently included American airstrikes in the lawless tribal areas where the Taliban and Al Qaeda have made sanctuaries, has become widely unpopular, particularly in the last few months as a surge in suicide bombings here has been viewed as retaliation for the American attacks.

Asif Ali Zardari, the leader of the Pakistan Peoples Party, also met with the Americans but did not speak to reporters afterward. Husain Haqqani, an adviser who attended the meeting with him, said, though, that the American officials had been given notice that the old ways were over.

“If I can use an American expression, there is a new sheriff in town,” Mr. Haqqani said. “Americans have realized that they have perhaps talked with one man for too long.”

Neither Mr. Negroponte nor Mr. Boucher spoke publicly about the meetings, but the Pakistanis said the Americans expressed willingness to work with the new government.

Mr. Sharif and Mr. Zardari boycotted the swearing-in of Mr. Gillani as prime minister by Mr. Musharraf at the presidential palace, another sign of their determination to sideline Mr. Musharraf.

Distancing himself from Mr. Musharraf, Mr. Gillani, moments after taking the oath of office, said, “We have to give supremacy to the Parliament so that we can jointly take the country out of these crises.”

He later received a call from President Bush offering congratulations. According to Mr. Gillani’s office, Mr. Gillani told Mr. Bush that “Pakistan would continue to fight terrorism in all its forms” but that a “comprehensive approach” was required, “combining a political approach with development programs.”

The new chief of staff of the Pakistan Army, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, also seemed to eager to show he was his own man, relieving two generals on Monday who had been close to Mr. Musharraf.

The timing of the American visit was harshly criticized in the Pakistan media for creating the appearance that the United States was trying to dictate policy to a government not even hours old. The two American diplomats met Mr. Sharif as Mr. Musharraf administered the oath of office to Mr. Gillani.

“I don’t think it is a good idea for them to be here on this particular day,” said Zaffar Abbas, the editor of the English-language newspaper Dawn. “Here are the Americans, right here in Islamabad, meeting with senior politicians in the new government, trying to dictate terms.”

An editorial on Tuesday in The News, one of Pakistan’s most-read English dailies, was headlined “Hands Off Please, Uncle Sam.” The Americans should understand, the editorial said, that the newly elected Parliament was now their proper partner, not Mr. Musharraf.

An aide to Mr. Sharif, Ahsan Iqbal, said Mr. Sharif told Mr. Negroponte that the strategy of the partnership against terrorism needed to be reassessed. “Nobody supports terrorism, but there are different ways to counter it,” Mr. Iqbal said.

“Mr. Sharif asked Mr. Negroponte if he thought that using the military was the only solution,” Mr. Iqbal said. “Mr. Negroponte agreed that there are other dimensions that can be adopted.”

Some of those questioning the American visit noted that Pakistan had been an ally of the United States since its independence 60 years ago. Still, they added, many Pakistanis now resented that the campaign against terrorism dominated the relationship.

Washington should learn from the outcomes of the election last month in which Mr. Musharraf’s party was trounced and an alliance of religious parties in the North-West Frontier Province, adjacent to the tribal areas, was also defeated, said Javangir Tareen, the leader of a faction of the Pakistan Muslim League, who was a member of Mr. Musharraf’s early cabinet.

“The people have spoken and rejected the religious parties, and at the same time they have rejected the people who will automatically nod to the United States,” Mr. Tareen said.

An independent analyst on the Pakistani military, Shuja Nawaz, who lives in Washington, said Pakistani officials had told him they discouraged the American diplomats from coming this week.

But the Pakistanis were told that Mr. Negroponte was on a trip that included other already arranged stops and that Tuesday was the only possible day for him. Mr. Nawaz called the visit “ham-handed,” and said it could be seen as Washington wanting to keep acting as the “political godfather behind Musharraf.”

The American Embassy in Islamabad said that the two diplomats would stay in Pakistan until Thursday, and that they would meet other officials on Wednesday, though the embassy declined to identify them.

The changes in the military hierarchy by General Kayani seemed intended to display his independence from Mr. Musharraf, who appointed him chief of the military in December. General Kayani reassigned two of the most important corps commanders, the 11 powerful generals in charge of regional posts: Lt. Gen. Shafaat Ullah Shah, the corps commander of Lahore, Pakistan’s second biggest city; and Lt. Gen. Sajjad Akram, the corps commander at Mangla on the Indian border.

Taiwan Elects a Leader Who Seeks Closer China Ties

By KEITH BRADSHER

TAIPEI, Taiwan — Taiwan elected on Saturday its first president who had campaigned for closer economic relations with Beijing, paving the way for a considerable lessening of tensions in one of Asia’s oldest flashpoints.

Ma Ying-jeou, a Harvard-educated lawyer and former Taipei mayor from the Nationalist Party, won by a convincing margin. He prevailed despite a last-minute effort by his opponent, Frank Hsieh of the Democratic Progressive Party, to warn that the Chinese crackdown in Tibet represented a warning of what could also happen to Taiwan if it did not stand up to Beijing.

With all votes counted, Mr. Ma prevailed 58.45 percent to 41.55 percent and Mr. Hsieh quickly conceded defeat. Clear skies and warm weather until early evening helped produce a heavy voter turnout of 75.7 percent,which tends to help Nationalist candidates, like Mr. Ma.

Both parties’ polls showed an increasingly close race in the final days of campaigning, in contrast with the last polls by media organizations nearly two weeks ago, which showed Mr. Ma ahead by 20 percent. But in election day interviews, voters echoed Mr. Ma’s stance that closer relations with the mainland and its fast-growing economy represent the island’s best hope of returning to the rapid economic growth it enjoyed until the late 1990s.

Jason Lin, a 41-year-old interior designer, said as he left a polling place in Taipei that he had always voted for the Democratic Progressive Party until this year and remains a member of the party. But he crossed party lines to vote for Mr. Ma on Saturday because he was convinced that Taiwan’s economic survival depended on closer ties.

“If we don’t get into China’s market, we are locked into our own country,” he said.

Beijing officials have been wooing the Nationalists for years, even hosting visits to the mainland over the past three years by those party leaders who are especially eager for eventual political reunification with the mainland, like Lien Chan, the party’s unsuccessful presidential candidate in 2004.

Mr. Ma has taken a more cautious approach to the mainland, attending annual vigils for those killed during the Tiananmen Square killings in Beijing in 1989 and denouncing the mainland’s repression of the Falun Gong spiritual movement over the past decade. During the campaign, he ruled out any discussion of political reunification while calling for the introduction of direct, regularly scheduled flights to Shanghai and Beijing and an end to Taiwan’s extensive limits on its companies’ ability to invest on the mainland.

Chinese government officials had no immediate response to the election results on Saturday evening, but had made little secret of their hope that he would win.

“China has a love-hate relationship with Ma — when I visited China last November, they criticized Ma a lot, and then asked me to vote for Ma,” said Yen Chen-Shen, a political scientist at National Chengchi University.

American officials have been deeply frustrated with President Chen Shui-bian, also of the Democratic Progressive Party, and have sought to lessen tensions between Taiwan and the mainland while preserving the political status quo. But the Bush administration has also been irritated by the reluctance of Nationalists in the legislature to vote for purchases of American weapon systems, including systems that President Bush offered for sale in 2001 but which Taiwan still has not purchased.

Many in Taiwan have preferred to spend money on social programs while relying on the United States military to deter aggression by the mainland, prompting bitter jokes among American military personnel that if mainland military forces ever land on Taiwan, the Taiwanese will fight them to the last American.

Cheng Ta-chen, a Nationalist aide to Mr. Ma on security policy, said that the Nationalists had not been given enough information by President Chen to understand and approve military purchases.

Following his inauguration, scheduled for May 20, Mr. Ma will have almost complete political power to pursue his agenda. His party and two tiny affiliated parties together took three-quarters of the legislature in January elections. Nationalists also serve as the magistrates, a position akin to mayor, in 15 of Taiwan’s 25 largest cities.

The extent of Nationalist control made some voters nervous on Saturday.

Two controversial referendums, calling for Taiwan to apply for membership in the United Nations, also fell well short of passage.

Taiwan's referendum law requires a majority of eligible voters to vote on a referendum for it to be valid. Nationalists called for voters not to cast ballots for either initiative and slightly less than 36 percent of eligible voters did so.

With China strongly opposed to United Nations membership for Taiwan, which it regards as a breakaway province, the island's recent efforts to win membership have failed completely. The United States and China had both denounced as provocative the referendum sponsored by the Democratic Progressive Party, which specifically called for the island to apply as Taiwan and not using its legal name, the Republic of China.

The legal name reflects the principle that Taiwan and the mainland still form one China.

Taiwan's economy grew 5.7 percent last year, but middle-class and working-class incomes have stagnated as an affluent elite has grown prosperous, often from investments on the mainland.

Much of the island’s manufacturing industry has shifted to the mainland and hundreds of thousands of Taiwanese, have moved to the mainland to manage these operations. The bulk of these are men aged 25 to 45, leaving a dearth of skills and entrepreneurial energy in Taiwan itself.

Witnesses to Tibet violence describe scenes of horror

Protesters in Lhasa randomly beat and killed ethnic Chinese, and troops fired live ammunition into mostly defenseless crowds.

By Barbara Demick
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

March 22, 2008

BEIJING — On a cloudless day near the top of the world, Swiss tourist Claude Balsiger had just finished a late-morning cup of tea and stepped out onto the streets of Tibet's capital. Buddhist monks had been marching against Chinese rule all week, but today seemed calmer.

Suddenly, Tibetan youths started hurling paving stones at police, who tried to protect themselves with their riot shields.

Over the next few hours, the odor of tear gas and fires replaced the scent of incense wafting from backpacker cafes. The intense Himalayan light was blacked out by smoke. And in the days that followed, violence would spread beyond Lhasa to ethnic Tibetan villages deep inside China and to Chinese embassies worldwide.

China has barred Western journalists from entering Tibet and ethnic Tibetan areas. But interviews with foreign witnesses and Chinese residents, as well as blog postings by Tibetans too frightened to be interviewed, show that during three crucial hours on March 14, woefully unprepared police fled, allowing rioters to burn and smash much of Lhasa's commercial center.

Tibetans randomly beat and killed Chinese solely on the basis of their ethnicity: a young motorcyclist bludgeoned in the head with paving stones and probably killed; a teenage boy in school uniform being dragged by a mob. When authorities did regroup, paramilitary troops fired live ammunition into the crowds. Witnesses did not see protesters armed with anything other than stones, bottles of gasoline or a few traditional Tibetan knives.

Despite a massive deployment of Chinese forces, the protests show no signs of abating. In New Delhi on Friday, Tibetan exiles stormed the Chinese Embassy. And China posted a "most wanted" list of 21 alleged rioters, featuring grainy photographs taken from video shot by a hidden camera.

The death toll of Tibetans had risen to 99 as of Friday, with a 16-year-old girl being shot by police in China's Sichuan County, the Tibetan government in exile said.

Chinese authorities say 19 Chinese have been killed in Lhasa: one police officer and the rest civilians.

Since their homeland was invaded by Chinese communists in 1951, Tibetans have risen up periodically against Beijing's rule. Led by the Dalai Lama, a Buddhist monk and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, their movement has been largely nonviolent. There hadn't been a substantial uprising in Lhasa since the late 1980s, giving the city a reputation as a laid-back Shangri-La.

"Tibetans usually are so calm and friendly, but suddenly they were insane," said Balsiger, 25, a teacher. "They were howling like wolves. . . . It was so brutal, so violent."

March 10, Monday

Everybody is girded for demonstrations today. It is the 49th anniversary of the failed Tibetan revolt in which their leader, the Dalai Lama, fled into exile in India. This year the protests are expected to be bigger because activists hope to use the upcoming Summer Olympics in Beijing to press their case.

Tibetan demonstrations are well-choreographed: Monks, who ran Tibet in pre-communist times, usually take the lead while laypeople try to protect them.

At 6 p.m., a parade of about 300 red-robed monks leaves the 15th century Drepung Monastery, five miles west of downtown Lhasa. Blocked by police from reaching the city, the monks sit for several hours at a checkpoint before dispersing.

At dusk, students and monks stage a second demonstration in the center of Lhasa, making a circle around Barkhor Square and joining hands. The square is filled with uniformed and plainclothes security officials. A young Dutch couple watch police take away six or seven demonstrators.

"Everybody is afraid to speak," the Dutch tourists, Steve Dubois and Ulrike Lakiere, write later on a blog. "Even us, free-born people, not for our sake, but for that of the Tibetans who can get in trouble just by speaking with us."

Balsiger recalls meeting a young Tibetan brother and sister at a cafe. Although he and they have no common language, he understands that they live in fear of Chinese undercover police. They nervously show him that they wear images of the Dalai Lama, which are banned, on strings around their necks, hidden under their clothes.

March 11, Tuesday

Nine monks emerge from the Sera Monastery north of Lhasa carrying a banned Tibetan flag and are almost immediately dragged away by police.

Several hundred more monks come out to demand their release. The paramilitary Chinese People's Liberation Army police disperses the crowd with tear gas.

March 12, Wednesday

Many stores in Lhasa are closed. Tsering Woeser, a Tibetan poet who writes a blog, says two monks at Drepung Monastery slit their wrists in suicide attempts, and monks at Sera Monastery start a hunger strike. Water supplies are cut to many of the monasteries.

A foreign tourist wanders into Sera Monastery at 3 p.m., just as hundreds of monks are rushing out, their hands in the air and in obvious distress. Police surround them.

"They were grabbing monks, kicking and beating them. One monk was kicked in the stomach right in front of us and then beaten on the ground," the tourist later tells BBC.

Paramilitary forces block roads leading out of the remote Ganden Monastery. The Chutsang Nunnery is also surrounded.

March 13, Thursday

Roadblocks are in place around Lhasa. Thousands of paramilitary forces are reported to be searching houses for photographs of the Dalai Lama.

March 14, Friday

Stores reopen. The trouble appears to have passed. But about 11:30 a.m., as the morning prayer finishes at Ramoche Temple, a small Buddhist shrine up a pedestrian street from the main square, police block monks from marching. This time, onlookers start throwing stones at police.

Trucks carrying reinforcements speed down Beijing East Street, the main drag. As soon as police climb out, the stones start flying again. About 20 protesters in their teens and 20s are cheered on by several hundred older Tibetans.

Rioters use their bare hands to pry paving stones loose and hurl them with such ferocity that they crack police shields. The police officers, some of them teenagers themselves, hurry into an alley for cover. The enraged crowd begins to vent its anger on ethnic Chinese passersby.

"At first it was sort of a game. You throw the rocks and you run away," Susan Witmore, a Canadian business consultant who had given herself a trip to Tibet as a 60th birthday present, later recalls. "But then the scene turned incredibly ugly."

A young Chinese motorcyclist is struck by stones. Witmore utters a silent scream to the man, "Keep moving!" but the motorcyclist stops, as if to reason with the mob. Soon his flashy gold helmet is off and the mob is pounding his head with stones and pipes. Witmore, who was watching from the lobby of her hotel, retreats into the courtyard in horror. Other tourists say later that they believe the man was killed.

Balsiger sees the crowd pull a Chinese-looking man off a bicycle. A teenage boy is bludgeoned on the head, but as he staggers, bleeding on the pavement, barely conscious, a tall foreign man steps in and pulls him to safety.

Police flee, and by early afternoon the mobs have the run of the city. They go after Chinese shopkeepers, who these days dominate the commercial life of Lhasa.

"They thought we Han Chinese people were coming to steal from their rice bowls," says the manager of Top of the World Hotel on Ramoche Street, near the temple. She cowers in her courtyard as the crowd sets fire to many of her neighbors' businesses.

The mob is more interested in destroying than looting. Witnesses see cellphones, bicycles, clothing, food and furniture smashed along Beijing East Street. Cars are overturned and set on fire, often topped with burning Chinese flags.

Riots spread to the Muslim quarter, targeting the Hui, Chinese Muslims who have been opening businesses in Tibet. Rioters smash holes through metal shop gates and pour in gasoline. A Muslim family later describes to Chinese journalists how they hid in a bathroom as flames spread around them. The main gate of the mosque is set on fire, but the mob doesn't get inside.

It is not until 4 p.m. that Chinese authorities venture back into the center of Lhasa. What happens next is unclear, because by this time the city is under a strict curfew. According to Tibetan sources, the Public Security Bureau lifts an order restricting the use of live ammunition by the paramilitary forces.

Tibetans say many people are killed in front of the main temple, the Jokhang, and that families come to collect the bodies late at night, offering prayers and strewing traditional white prayer scarves.

"Many of those killed were young Tibetans, both boys and girls," a rioter tells Radio Free Asia. "Those who are dead sacrificed their lives for 6 million Tibetans. My disappointment is that we were not armed."

Amid the raging violence, some Tibetans do step in to help the beleaguered ethnic Chinese.

A 24-year-old Chinese assistant at an optometry shop recalls how a teenage neighbor escorted her home, only to be chastised by a Tibetan security guard who asked, "How can you come back with a Han Chinese?"

The Tibetan girl "was horrified," recalled her Chinese friend. "In her eyes were confusion, perplexion, sorrow and mostly astonishment."

March 15, Saturday

Overnight, soldiers move into the center of Lhasa. By the end of the day, they have the city under control. But protests break out elsewhere. At Labrang Monastery in Xiahe, 750 miles to the northeast, more than 1,000 Tibetans march against the Chinese.

March 16, Sunday

Protesters carrying photos of the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan flag stage protests in Sichuan, Gansu and Qinghai provinces. In remote Aba County in Sichuan, Tibetans attack a police station and set fire to a market, firetrucks and police cars. Police reportedly fire into the crowd, killing at least eight.

March 17, Monday

Protesters try to storm Chinese embassies and consulates around the world.

"Chinese people have to realize we can't bear any more," says Tenzin Lama, 25, a Tibetan student demonstrating in London. "We will give up our lives to fight for our beliefs. Tibetans won't stop."

barbara.demick@latimes.com

Jia Han, Cathy Gao and Eliot Gao of The Times' Beijing Bureau contributed to this report.

Pakistan’s Leaders Try New Approach to Militants

By JANE PERLEZ

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Faced with a sharp escalation of suicide bombing in urban areas, the leaders of Pakistan’s new coalition government say they will negotiate with the militants believed to be orchestrating the attacks, and would use the military only as a last resort.

That talk has alarmed American officials, who fear it will mean a softening stance against the militants just as President Pervez Musharraf, an ally in the war on terror, has given the Bush administration a freer hand to strike at them using unmanned Predator drones.

Many Pakistanis, however, are convinced the surge in suicide bombings — 17 in the first 10 weeks of 2008 — is in direct retaliation for three such Predator strikes since the beginning of the year. The spike in attacks, combined with Mr. Musharraf’s crushing defeat in February elections, has brought a new mood in Pakistan: that there should be a change from his American-backed policies.

It is this atmosphere that the leaders of Pakistan’s new government coalition — Asif Ali Zardari of the Pakistan People’s Party, and Nawaz, Sharif, head of the Pakistan Muslim League-N — want to capitalize on. Speaking in separate interviews, the two men sought to repackage the conflict in a more palatable way for Pakistanis, and to strike a more independent stance from Washington.

Though short on details, they said they were determined to set a different course from President Musharraf, who received generous military financial help of more than $10 billion from Washington for his support.

“We are dealing with our own people,” said Mr. Sharif, who was twice Prime Minister of Pakistan in the 1990s. “We will deal with them very sensibly. And when you have a problem in your own family, you don’t kill your own family.

“You sit and talk,” he added. “After all, Britain also got the solution of the problem of Ireland. So what’s the harm in conducting negotiations.”

For his part, Mr. Zardari said: “Obviously what they have been doing for the last eight years has not been working. Even a fool knows that.”

The war against the insurgents had to be redefined, he said, as “Pakistan’s war” for a public that has come to resent the conflict as being pushed on the country as part of an American agenda. It should be dealt with by talks and the use of a beefed up police force rather than the army, he said.

Washington has opposed past negotiations on the grounds that short term peace deals between the militants and the Pakistani military were a sign of weakness that resulted in the militants winning time to fortify themselves.

The chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, said on a visit here last month that talks with the militants, were not helpful in the “short term.”

In general terms, according to a retired senior Pakistani general who remains close to the current military leadership, new negotiations would likely involve a ban on non-Pakistani militants — such as Afghans, Uzbeks, Chechens — coming from southern Afghanistan into Pakistan in return for reduced operations by the Pakistani army in the tribal areas.

But precisely how those talks would be different from the negotiations that led to failed peace deals under Mr. Musharraf was not entirely clear, except that negotiators would represent the newly elected government rather than the military government of the last eight years.

Neither Mr. Zardari nor Mr. Sharif was specific about whom among the militant groups in Pakistan’s tribal areas they favored talking to. Nor was it clear what kind of formula or quid pro quo the two political leaders had in mind for talks.

Mr. Sharif, whose Islamic religious background is conservative, refused to say whether he would negotiate with Baitullah Mehsud, the Pakistani Taliban leader whom the government blames for many if not most of the recent suicide bomb attacks in Pakistan.

American and Pakistani terrorist experts have said they believe that Mr. Mehsud was behind the assassination of the opposition leader Benazir Bhutto in December, and that he works in tandem with Al Qaeda. “Nobody gave me any presentation on this subject,” Mr. Sharif said.

Asked who the negotiations would be held with, Mr. Sharif replied: “With all the concerned elements. I don’t think guns and bullets have so far produced any positive results.”

Any result that smacks of Pakistan ceding further control over the tribal areas is not one likely to be welcomed in Washington. The Bush administration views the tribal areas as a sanctuary for Taliban forces who cross the border into Afghanistan to fight American and NATO forces, as well as a base for Al Qaeda to plot new terrorist attacks in the United States and Europe.

Pakistanis, however, have come to see the tribal areas as something entirely different: a once peaceful region where a group of militants have turned their wrath on the rest of the country as punishment for the American alliance.

Many civilians are among the 274 people killed since the beginning of the year, but the dead also include young soldiers and policemen, according to a tally by the Pakistani newspaper, Dawn. A bomb explosion at an Italian restaurant favored by foreigners in Islamabad last Saturday injured four F.B.I. agents, and underscored for Pakistanis yet again the American involvement here.

Washington may have little choice but to adjust to the new policies, a retired army brigadier, Mehmood Shah, who was in charge of security in the tribal areas, said.

Of the new Pakistani government, Mr. Shah said: “They will not like to be seen as dictated to by the United States, they would like it to be seen as ‘our war.’ ”

Mr. Shah, who met with Admiral Mullen when he was in Islamabad, said there was a popular sense in Pakistan — prevalent on television talk shows as well as the halls of parliament — that it was time to “keep a distance from the United States.”

As Pakistan’s new leaders fashion their strategy, however, they will unavoidably be dealing with programs devised by Washington to help Pakistan regain control of the lawless tribal areas. In some places, the approaches may yet dovetail.

For instance, one element of the stepped-up American aid effort is a $400 million plan to train the Frontier Corps, an under funded paramilitary force that is used to patrol the border with Afghanistan.

Mr. Sharif said he had heard about the plan, expected to begin in October, but had no details.

Mr. Zardari favored employing such a force over relying on the army, which he said was the “wrong instrument” to use against the militants. “We need to use the police force,” he said. “They had few guns, made in 1952. You have to upgrade them. You have got to give them modern technology and they will stand better than anybody else.”

Mr. Sharif, who is regarded as a nationalist — he gave the go ahead for the explosion of Pakistan’s nuclear bomb in 1998 — said he was not in favor of foreign aid. “I think frankly we should rely less on aid,” he said. “It makes us, you see, lazy. We should generate our own resources.”

Both men stressed that the new parliament, which held its first session this week, would be consulted on the strategy toward the insurgency, a sharp distinction from the go-it-alone behavior of Mr. Musharraf, who until last year served as both head of the army and president.

The two leaders have made much of the fact that they received a broad mandate in the elections last month. To that end, they said, they would revive the role of parliament.

As an example of the docile legislature, a recent report of the parliament’s committee on defense for the last four years consisted of 67 pages. The panel was apparently so short of funds, the report was published with funding from the United States Agency for International Development whose logo appears on the last page.

The only mention on the war on terror was a resolution by the committee in 2007 criticizing the United States for threatening to link the amount of aid to Pakistan to the performance of the army.

Another important distinction from the past is that the new government would not use “the same tainted network of agencies and the army who have created this” situation, said one of Mr. Sharif’s senior lieutenants, Nisar Ali Khan, who has relatives in prominent positions in the army.

“The new start won’t be with them,” he said. “It has to be a multifaceted operation with the tribal chiefs who are operating in the area.”

Both parties have long accused Pakistan’s intelligence agencies of backing militant groups even as the government has been forced to negotiate with them. Many of the groups were used to pressure India and Afghanistan, but have more recently turned their fury back on Pakistan as they have become more radicalized.

Those intelligence agencies will almost certainly have new leadership chosen by the new prime minister. Whether fresh faces at the top will mean change in the ingrained behavior of the agencies is an open question, however.

The head of the Inter Services Intelligence agency, Lt. Gen. Nadeem Taj, a relative of Mr. Musharraf, is likely to be replaced in the coming months, Pakistani officials said. The head of the Intelligence Bureau, another powerful agency, Ijaz Shah, a confidant of Mr. Musharraf, resigned this week. His replacement will be named by the new prime minister, who is expected to be named on Monday by Mr. Zardari.

Mr. Zardari is not immediately eligible to become prime minister himself because he did not run for Parliament. But it is likely he will do so in the coming months and then assume the mantle.

Russian Hospital Finds Push for Progress Blocked

Privately Funded Improvements Run Afoul of Local Bureaucracy

By Peter Finn
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, March 21, 2008; A10

TARUSA, Russia -- When a new cardiac unit opened at the municipal hospital here last month, Russian Health Minister Tatyana Golikova sent a letter of congratulations, calling the new facility a "vivid example" of the medical community and private donors working together to improve the lives of ordinary Russians.

The good feeling didn't last long.

Three days after the unit's opening, Tarusa's mayor fired the hospital's head doctor and sent in the police to check for possible fraud in the refurbishing of the hospital, all of which had been financed privately.

Doctors at the hospital said the crackdown was the culmination of a two-year campaign by local officials to wrest control of tens of thousands of dollars that were to transform the once-crumbling hospital into a model of preventive medicine in a rural community.

The hospital funding was a bright example of the growing philanthropy of Russia's wealthy. But it was also a window into the stifling role Russia's bureaucracy can play, even in a sector deemed a national priority by President-elect Dmitry Medvedev.

"Every improvement caused difficulties," said Maxim Ossipov, a Moscow cardiologist who works three days a week at the Tarusa hospital. "Bureaucrats have to fight for their existence, and if they don't control something, then they are no longer bureaucrats. They are a real disaster for today's Russia."

Tarusa is a river town of 9,000 people about 85 miles south of Moscow. Popular with Muscovites, such as Ossipov, who maintain second homes in the region, the town's summer population swells to 80,000.

In an interview, Ossipov said he started volunteering at the 135-bed hospital in 2005 as a route back into regular practice, which he had abandoned in the 1990s to open a medical publishing company in Moscow. He had old ties to the town -- his grandfather, also a doctor, was exiled there after a prison camp term during the repressive rule of Joseph Stalin.

"By Western standards, it was not a hospital at all," said Ossipov, who was a research fellow at the University of California at San Francisco in 1991 and 1992.

Ossipov said he began turning to friends and colleagues for equipment, such as defibrillators, and even basic drugs to improve the quality of care. At the same time, the Russian government's $6.5 billion spending plan to improve health care brought a much-needed ambulance and pay increases for the hospital's medical staff.

The effects were quickly apparent, doctors at the hospital said. Its mortality rate was halved, and the death rate in Tarusa from heart attacks, a major killer in Russia, was cut by five-sixths, according to regional government figures.

"I have problems with my heart and I remember when they couldn't help me here and they would immediately sent me to Kaluga," the provincial capital, said Pyotr Dovbnyak, a 65-year-old pensioner. "Now they call me on the phone and invite me in for examinations."

In 2006, the hospital was offered a new X-ray machine through the "national projects" led by Medvedev. But the hospital's electric wiring was unable to support the new equipment. Mayor Yury Nakhrov refused to upgrade the hospital's power supply, the doctors said. Irina Oleinikova, the head doctor, reluctantly turned down the X-ray machine.

Nakhrov was reprimanded by the regional administration for "frustrating" the national projects, and he, in turn, reprimanded Oleinikova for "safety violations" and for failing to properly treat a patient. Oleinikova appealed to the courts and the reprimands were overturned, which she said infuriated the local administration.

Nakhrov was not available to answer a reporter's questions; officials in his office said no one else could comment.

In the meantime, Valery Balikoyev, a Moscow businessman, committed approximately $130,000 to renovate one of the hospital's wings for the new cardio-therapy unit. According to the doctors, Nakhrov told Oleinikova her "sponsor" should visit him to introduce himself. She declined to make the introduction. Nakhrov also told her she should move the town's pharmacy -- which was located on a prime piece of real estate -- into the hospital. She again refused.

In another example of bureaucratic pressure, Ossipov said that an official, whom he wouldn't name, suggested overbilling -- doubling the amount on an invoice for some new equipment that another wealthy sponsor was willing to buy, so that the balance could be used for other purposes. Ossipov declined.

Researchers at the Russian Academy of Sciences have estimated that corruption absorbs about 35 percent of all health-care spending in Russia. Ossipov said the hospital deliberately never accepted cash donations, only equipment or physical improvements, to avoid any suggestion that its personnel could benefit financially.

"My language is as impossible for them to understand as theirs is for me," Ossipov said of the local officials who, by his account, found it hard to believe that the doctors had no personal stake in the improvements.

Local officials eventually tried to close the hospital on grounds of fire safety violations, according to Oleinikova, but a higher court blocked the effort.

On March 3, Mayor Nakhrov fired Oleinikova and ordered a criminal probe into the construction of the cardiac unit. Ossipov, Balikoyev and others appealed to the regional governor, who ordered a separate investigation. He also recommended that that the local council fire Nakhrov, but it refused.

The mayor later checked into a Moscow hospital where he could not be reached by either investigators or the news media; Oleinikova was reported Thursday to be headed back to her job after the investigation by the regional government.

"We are taking the whole thing as a slap in the face," Ossipov said. "Small bureaucrats don't believe in philanthropy and they can't stand any independence on their own territory."

Struggling for Solutions As Opium Trade Blossoms

By Molly Moore
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, March 21, 2008; A10

TARIN KOT, Afghanistan -- On a recent cold spring day, just as the first small sprouts of poppies began pushing out of the southern Afghanistan earth, the members of Uruzgan province's poppy eradication council gathered around a wood stove in the governor's compound here for their first meeting.

"We should encourage people to eliminate poppies voluntarily," offered one official. "Ministers will go to the radio stations and tell them to stop. Mullahs should go to the mosques and tell people it's forbidden by Islam."

Mohammad Mawlawi, a mullah with a curly black beard extending down the length of his chest, exploded in anger.

"The people won't listen to us if we go to the mosque and say it's against our culture," he insisted. "No one wants to stop because the government has done nothing for us. They say, 'We have no choice, we have to make a living to support our families.'

"The people won't stop!" he repeated, waving his lime-green prayer beads for emphasis.

In the last six years, the international community has set aside hundreds of millions of dollars for Afghan poppy eradication, built a state-of-the-art maximum-security facility for drug traffickers outside Kabul and dispatched hundreds of troops to try to persuade farmers to plant wheat, fruit trees and saffron instead of poppies.

The result of those efforts: Last year Afghanistan produced 90 percent of the world's opium and its derivative, heroin -- more than at any time in the country's history. The only major drug traffickers held in the new prison wing were allowed to escape. And a special international fund for motivating Afghan leaders to eradicate poppies has barely been touched, according to international officials involved in Afghan anti-drug efforts.

While 13 provinces in the north and central parts of Afghanistan were poppy-free last year, the number of acres under cultivation nationwide increased 17 percent, according to a U.N. survey. More than three-quarters of the poppy crop is cultivated in areas outside government control, primarily in five southern provinces.

The war against poppies has been undercut by disagreements among NATO allies and Afghan officials over how to stop cultivation, corrupt Afghan officials and inefficient reconstruction efforts, according to U.S., U.N., NATO and Afghan officials involved in the anti-drug effort.

Most militaries are loath to engage in eradication efforts because of the danger to soldiers and the risk of angering the very farmers whose support they are trying to win. Many poor farmers have managed to survive only by selling their crops to the Taliban, the extremist militia that has used profits from the drug trade to fund its resurgence.

"If you support eradication one day, you can't tell the people the next day we're here for you," said Lt. Col. Tjerk Hogeveen, commander of the Dutch combat troops in Uruzgan. "They won't believe you're here to help them if you're destroying their only source of income. If we want to win them over, supporting eradication without alternatives is the wrong symbol."

The United States has pushed aggressively for aerial spraying, similar to years-long programs in Colombia.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai and officials from many European countries argued vigorously against spraying, saying it would kill other crops and poison the land. The United States recently backed down -- reluctantly -- under increasing pressure from Karzai, who in turn is facing an upcoming election and domestic criticism that he is subservient to Washington.

"We're not going to start spraying," said Tom Schweich, the U.S. State Department's coordinator for counternarcotics and justice reform in Afghanistan. "Karzai said he didn't want to, that it looked heavy-handed."

Schweich said U.S. officials continue to disagree with Karzai and many NATO allies.

"Spray by air, there are fewer people who die, but it appears more heavy-handed," Schweich said. "Go in manually" on the ground "and it appears less heavy-handed, but there are more deaths."

The sporadic attempts at forced eradication across Afghanistan have largely failed because of inadequate law enforcement efforts and the corruption that is rife among police and government agencies.

"Eradication is very costly," Antonio Maria Costa, director of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, said in a telephone interview from Vienna. "An enormous amount of money is spent with very little accomplished.

Afghan and NATO officials said that this year they are shifting tactics, focusing on eradicating the poppy fields of large farmers, rather than those of impoverished farmers with small plots who are often indebted to drug traffickers, the Taliban or larger landowners. But attempts to convict and imprison major drug traffickers have also largely failed, officials said.

A year and a half ago, Costa inaugurated a $4.4 million maximum-security wing at the Pul-i-Charki prison outside Kabul. Funded by Britain and other European countries, the wing was designed to hold major drug traffickers.

"I said then the weak link was the front door," Costa said. "No more than two or three months later, four drug traffickers ran away through the main door."

He said now "the vast majority of inmates are individuals who were foot soldiers, not anyone with senior responsibility."

Few provinces have a worse track record on poppies than impoverished Uruzgan in south-central Afghanistan, where the Helmand River valley provides one of the region's key drug-trafficking routes.

As the Uruzgan poppy eradication council met around the wood stove, one official passed around copies of notebooks that are being distributed to schoolchildren. The title read, "If we don't destroy the poppies, the poppies will destroy us." Evil-looking cartoon poppies are shown strangling a child, a young woman and a gaunt drug addict as an armed soldier, a woman wielding a Koran and a farmer with a sickle try to protect them.

Debate around the wood stove was not nearly as clear-cut.

"The law says no one should grow poppies," began Gov. Assadullah Hamdam, who has held his post since last fall. "If they do, they are criminals. They destroy our country."

He said he is concerned about the increasing number of addicts in his province, now estimated at 4,500, including significant numbers of women and children. An internal U.N. report found that Uruzgan has only 25 doctors serving a population of 320,000 and that no drug treatment service exists. Until this meeting, the province had no awareness campaign on the dangers of drug use.

One local official suggested that farmers wouldn't stop growing poppies without money or other compensation from the government.

But because Uruzgan did not meet the poppy eradication quota set by the government, the province will receive nothing this year from the Afghan Counter Narcotics Trust Fund. Donor nations have contributed tens of millions of dollars to provide provinces with incentives to eradicate poppies and provide alternate livelihoods for farmers.

The governor looked irritated.

"Our government doesn't have enough money to pay every farmer to stop poppy cultivation," he told the officials gathered around him. "If you pay, they'll constantly ask for more."

"It's against Afghanistan's rules -- if they grow poppies, they'll be punished," continued the governor. "We can't promise to help them. Even if we can't help them, they should stop."

Privately, in an interview, Hamdam said he believes it will take a decade more to end poppy production in his province.

"We don't know what to do," the governor said during the meeting with local officials. "There are places we can't even go. How will we get to those areas that are not even under the control of the government?"

No one offered an answer. As Hamdam glanced around the conference room, some ministers had closed their eyes and appeared to be dozing.

The governor was exasperated. "We will do what we can, we will do our best," he said.

He paused. And if that fails, he said, "we will pray to God to wash out the poppy fields, to bring cold weather and snow, or floods."

China Tensions Could Sway Vote in Taiwan

By KEITH BRADSHER

TAIPEI, Taiwan — Violent unrest in Tibet has created shock waves in another volatile region on China’s periphery, shaking up the presidential election in Taiwan and sapping support for the candidate Beijing had hoped would win handily.

The suppression of Tibet protests by Chinese security forces, as well as missteps by the Nationalist Party, which Beijing favors, have nearly erased what had seemed like an insuperable lead for Ma Ying-jeou, the Harvard-educated lawyer who has been the front-runner in the race.

Concern that China’s crackdown could herald a tougher line on outlying regions that Beijing claims as sovereign territory, including Taiwan, has become the most contested campaign issue ahead of Saturday’s election.

On Thursday, China acknowledged for the first time that security forces had opened fire on Tibetan protesters in Sichuan Province, while also saying that protests had spread to several areas of China where ethnic Tibetans live.

Even if Mr. Ma wins, the election may now give him a weaker mandate for his goal of pursuing closer economic ties and reduced diplomatic tensions with China.

A loss by Mr. Ma, which campaign analysts say is unlikely but now possible, would be a major setback for China’s leaders. They have cultivated the Nationalists in recent years to undermine Taiwan’s current pro-independence president, Chen Shui-bian, and reduce the chances that his Democratic Progressive Party will hold the presidency after Mr. Chen’s mandatory retirement.

The stirring up of the election on Taiwan, which Beijing has long considered its top national security priority, is a potentially heavy price for the Tibetan unrest and the ensuing police action. Beijing also faces a stronger international outcry over its human rights record and scattered calls to boycott the opening ceremony of the Summer Olympic Games, which China hopes will showcase the country’s rapid development.

Both the Nationalists and the Democratic Progressive Party promise to reduce tensions between Taiwan and China. But China has been wary of the Democratic Progressive Party’s presidential candidate, Frank Hsieh, who inherits a volatile coalition that includes many native Taiwanese who favor outright independence from China.

Mr. Hsieh and his party, with help from Mr. Chen’s ministers, have moved swiftly to turn Tibet into a central campaign issue. They contend that Tibet’s fate is a warning of Taiwan’s future if it does not stand up to Beijing.

“What has happened in Tibet in the past three decades, and what is going on now, is a warning to us,” said Shieh Jhy-wey, the minister of information and a Democratic Progressive Party member who takes a hard line toward Beijing. “We don’t want to have the same fate as Tibet.”

Mr. Hsieh abruptly turned a campaign rally in Taipei on Wednesday night into a candlelight vigil for Tibetans who have been killed, injured or detained during the Chinese crackdown. Party activists unfurled a huge Tibetan flag, and Tibetan students sang a Tibetan anthem.

A huge television screen at the rally showed a documentary on Tibetan history provided by the Taiwan office of the Dalai Lama, as well as a short video of Chinese soldiers mistreating Tibetans. Mr. Hsieh’s running mate, Su Tseng-chang, has scheduled a “Support Tibet” rally for Friday morning while Mr. Hsieh has scheduled a “Protect Taiwan Democracy” election-eve rally in Taipei for Friday.

With politicians from both parties concluding that the Tibet issue is hurting the Nationalists, Mr. Ma has focused on damage control. To the surprise of many even in his own party, he warned this week that Taiwan might boycott the Olympics if the Chinese crackdown in Tibet turned more draconian and if conditions there deteriorated further.

Known for his gentlemanly style, his reluctance to engage in personal attacks on political adversaries and his long-held desire for more cordial relations with the mainland, Mr. Ma has also rushed to distance himself from Beijing by using uncharacteristically harsh language.

When Prime Minister Wen Jiabao of China said Tuesday that Taiwan’s future should be decided by people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait, and not just by Taiwan residents, Mr. Ma condemned what he described as a “ruthless, irrational, arrogant, foolish and self-righteous comment.” Mr. Hsieh has rejected any boycott of the Olympics.

Opinion polls showed Mr. Ma with a lead of up to 20 percentage points last week; Taiwan’s election laws do not allow the release of polls during the final 10 days before voting.

But surveys by both parties show that more than half of that lead has evaporated. Mr. Ma is now ahead by a more slender margin because of Tibet and because of an embarrassing incident in which four Nationalist lawmakers were caught roaming through the Democratic Progressive Party’s headquarters, politicians and political analysts said.

The closer race has reinvigorated the Democratic Progressive Party, which had been deeply gloomy after badly losing a January vote for the legislature. “We have narrowed the gap significantly since January and I believe the final outcome will be very close,” said Hsiao Bi-khim, the international affairs director of Mr. Hsieh’s campaign.

Su Chi, a Nationalist lawmaker and deputy campaign manager for Mr. Ma, said that Mr. Ma’s lead had narrowed in the last few days, but added that this was to be expected.

Many Democratic Progressive Party supporters did not vote in the legislative elections because they were disillusioned with corruption cases involving the current government, but they are now becoming more active as Mr. Hsieh has campaigned aggressively, Mr. Su said, adding that he still thought Mr. Ma would win.

Government ministers have helped Mr. Hsieh by repeatedly drawing attention to the difficulties in Tibet.

At a news conference on Thursday, Chen Ming-tong, the chairman of the Mainland Affairs Council, the ministry responsible for relations with the mainland, called for the international community to put more pressure on China to begin a dialogue with the Dalai Lama, the leader of Tibet’s government in exile.

Mr. Hsieh received an influential endorsement on Thursday. Lee Teng-hui, a former Nationalist president of Taiwan who now favors much greater political independence from the mainland, said he would vote for Mr. Hsieh.

The Nationalists and two affiliated minor parties captured three-quarters of the seats in the legislature in January’s elections, in a crushing defeat for the Democratic Progressive Party. The Nationalists’ capitalized on voters’ concerns about stagnant household incomes and paralysis in contacts with the fast-growing mainland economy — two potent issues that could still produce a victory for Mr. Ma on Saturday.

But the incident at Mr. Hsieh’s offices last week helped his party warn voters against giving too much power to the opposition. Four Nationalist lawmakers roamed through Mr. Hsieh’s offices in an attempt to document whether the building lease complied with election laws.

Mr. Hsieh’s aides trapped the four in an elevator, accused them of trespassing and called the police. A crowd of Democratic Progressive Party supporters formed and smashed the windshield of one of the police cars that rescued the four; Mr. Ma has apologized repeatedly since then.

Mr. Hsieh has staked out a more moderate position toward Beijing than Mr. Chen has. Mr. Ma has taken positions similar to Mr. Hsieh’s on economic issues, and he said that he would not seek political reunification with the mainland, still the goal of many Nationalists.

Many of the two men’s proposals, like direct flights to China, would require talks with Beijing, and are more likely to happen if Mr. Ma is elected because mainland officials have been reluctant to have formal contacts with the Democratic Progressive Party.

Democracy by royal decree in Bhutan

The tiny Himalayan kingdom moves, albeit reluctantly, toward people power under monarch Jigme Singye Wangchuck, who prefers evolution rather than revolution.
By Henry Chu
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

March 21, 2008

THIMPHU, BHUTAN — In this idyllic Himalayan country that measures progress by its "gross national happiness" index, the stoplight just didn't cut it.

Residents here in the capital complained that Bhutan's one and only automated traffic signal was too impersonal. It got taken down. Now, a white-gloved police officer gracefully directs motorists.

A lone man in charge: That's what most Bhutanese want when it comes to how their entire country is run, not merely a single intersection. But their beloved king, the man in question, has other ideas.

On Monday, Bhutan is set to become the world's newest democracy, with the first general elections in the history of this isolated Buddhist kingdom. At the heart of this brave new world lies a paradox: It is people power by royal decree. The Bhutanese are choosing their leaders because, essentially, they were told to by their king.

He intends to bow out as an absolute ruler and turn Bhutan into a modern constitutional monarchy. But the changes afoot have produced deep ambivalence in a traditional, largely rural populace more inclined to see democracy as a Pandora's box apt to bring dissension and other nasty influences to their placid, cohesive society.

"I feel maybe we're too early for democracy," said Wangchuk Wangdi, 47, a tour operator who was dressed for work one morning in a colorful striped gho, the traditional knee-length robe worn by Bhutanese men. "Till now, we've been under five kings. All have been good."

Few people here seem particularly thrilled about the prospect of governing themselves, preferring to remain subjects under direct rule by the Golden Throne, which has guided the Land of the Thunder Dragon for the last 101 years. But spurred by devotion and duty to the king, they say they will do their best to fulfill his vision of a shiny new Bhutan.

"We are reluctant democrats," said Sonam Tobgay Dorji, a candidate for parliament. "It's been forced on us, and we have to embrace it."

In many ways, the carefully planned transition to democracy is the most daring leap into modernity for a country whose diplomatic and physical isolation had, in the eyes of most residents, been pretty splendid for much of its history.

Sandwiched between Asia's two giants, India and China, Bhutan has fiercely guarded its independence and held itself aloof from the rest of the world, establishing ties with only a handful of nations, which do not include the United States. Its population of fewer than 700,000 citizens lives in an area barely twice the size of Vermont. Most are devout practitioners of a form of Buddhism believed to have been introduced to Bhutan in the 8th century by a guru who arrived on the back of a flying tiger.

Television, including satellite channels, and the Internet were gingerly allowed in only in the last decade, and only after great debate. Even then, authorities banned MTV and a sports channel that broadcast professional wrestling because of their potentially deleterious effect on youth.

Protecting Bhutan's spectacular natural environment -- glacial lakes, fertile valleys and towering forests of blue pine, oak and cypress -- is one of the pillars of public policy here. So is preservation of its cultural heritage, which includes the elegant native dress, the Dzongkha language and, many say, the Buddhism-inspired social harmony that is now under threat from the evils of Western-style party politics.

"It frightens me," said Dorji Yangki, 18, as she hung out with friends in the main square in Thimphu. Like many youths here, she likes her fashions new and hip, such as bluejeans and sneakers -- but not her politics.

"Democracy is just starting right now," Yangki said. "We can see the candidates fighting, and it's just the beginning."

Newspapers have shuddered at the negative campaigning between the two new parties: the Druk Phuensum Tshogpa, or DPT, and the People's Democratic Party, or PDP.

But even Bhutan's gloves-off politicking seems more akin to a sandbox squabble than the vicious mudslinging common in the West: A typical dispute centers on one party's use of yellow in its logo, which the other side indignantly points out is the king's color.

In reality, very little separates the two parties. Neither dares deviate from the blueprint for increasing "GNH" -- gross national happiness -- laid out by the king, based on sustainable development.

"Bhutanese politics is still without ideology," said the Harvard-educated Sonam Tobgay Dorji, a candidate for the People's Democratic Party. "So basically, what people are looking at is what candidates can deliver."

The politicians' promises are of the usual kind in the developing world: more roads, reliable electricity, better sanitation, safe drinking water.

But to an electorate afraid of change, both parties also preach stability. The DPT, whose slate of nominees boasts five former ministers in the royal government, promotes itself as the safest hands for an uncertain time, while the PDP projects a younger, more dynamic image, a party able to "walk the talk," as its slogan goes. The leader of the party that wins a majority of the 47 parliamentary seats will be Bhutan's first elected prime minister.

This may well be one of the most micro-managed elections on Earth, with officials eager to regulate almost every aspect of the process to ensure the smoothest, most harmonious outcome possible. They even held a mock election last year to prepare voters.

There are rules on fund-raising limits, the size of posters, where they can be displayed, what goodies can be handed out to voters, how the parties ought to treat each other (only "constructive criticism," please). Candidates must have a college degree, which drastically shrinks the available pool. Monks are ineligible to vote, in order to keep religious institutions and figures remain above politics.

The parties are also barred from campaigning on matters of "security" or "citizenship" -- code words for Bhutan's most intractable issue, its population of ethnic Nepalese. A crackdown on "illegal immigrants" by the king more than a decade ago resulted in tens of thousands of Nepali speakers fleeing the country.

Independent observers are monitoring participation in the election process by ethnic Nepalese who stayed behind.

No one knows with certainty why Bhutan's fourth "Dragon King," Jigme Singye Wangchuck, decided a few years ago that the time had come to limit the monarchy and impose democracy. (The monarchy was established in 1907 after centuries of feuding between chieftains and religious leaders.) Turbulent experiments in democracy -- and dismal results -- in some other South Asian countries such as Pakistan and Bangladesh were less than encouraging.

On his nationwide tour to explain his decision, some of his subjects wept and begged him to reconsider. Almost to a person, the Bhutanese credit the king's wisdom and ability for the impressive strides in literacy rates, life expectancy and other social indicators the nation has made since he inherited the "Raven Crown" as a teenager in 1972.

New hydroelectric projects, partly funded by energy-hungry India, which buys up all the power, are bringing in much-needed revenue to what remains a fairly poor country of mostly small farmers who plant rice, wheat and other crops. Annual per capita income is more than $1,400 -- high for the region but low by international standards.

Some speculate that the example of another Himalayan kingdom may have triggered the push for democratic reform. In April 2006, a violent popular revolt forced the king of Nepal to end absolute rule; that country now stands on the verge of abolishing the monarchy altogether.

In Bhutan, the royal palace has, in effect, opted for peaceful evolution now rather than possible revolution later. After setting the democratic process in motion, the fourth king abdicated in December 2006, handing the throne to his Oxford-educated son, Jigme Khesar Namgyal Wangchuck, then 26.

"We are blessed to do this peacefully, literally as a gift from the king. Everywhere else it's at the point of a gun," said Ugyen Tshering, a candidate for the DPT in north Thimphu.

For 10 days, Tshering hiked and rode horseback to visit the more remote parts of his constituency, pressing the flesh in three far-flung villages with about 300 voters, out of an overall roll of 4,888.

"Every ballot is going to count," he said one afternoon while out canvassing a hillside of whitewashed mud-and-wood homes just a few miles, as the tiger flies, from central Thimphu. Campaigning "wasn't something we were used to. It took a little time to get into the rhythm of it."

Now, putting aside the characteristic Bhutanese modesty that frowns on self-promotion, he waves down passing cars and motorcycles to introduce himself. He shakes hands. He sips tea in living rooms. At a silversmith's house, he gamely climbs a narrow staircase that is little more than a hollowed-out tree trunk.

Everyone who receives him is unfailingly polite. Some are bewildered. Few give any inkling as to what they think. There are no opinion polls.

"The Bhutanese people are consummate diplomats," said candidate Dorji, who is running in south Thimphu. "They listen to both sides, but none of us can get inside their minds."

Wangdi, the tour operator, has not been impressed with any of those who would be his new leaders. "People can yap and convince and talk," he said, "but when it comes to the realities, we don't know if they can handle it."

He hasn't made up his mind which party to support, but he plans to cast a vote Monday anyway.

It's what the king would want.

henry.chu@latimes.com

Belgium Forms Coalition Government, Ending Standoff

By STEPHEN CASTLE

BRUSSELS — Belgium finally got a new government on Thursday, after a nine-month political crisis that prompted speculation that the country might split, but many voters say that the new five-party coalition may be too weak to last.

Yves Leterme, leader of the Flemish Christian Democrats and the winner of elections last June, was sworn in as prime minister by King Albert II.

After the elections, warring Flemish and French-speaking parties were not able to agree on a coalition government. The dispute was so acrimonious that it prompted fears that Belgium, formed in 1830, might divide along linguistic lines.

Although those concerns have subsided for the time being, polls indicated that confidence in the new coalition was extremely low even before it took office.

One recent opinion poll of a representative sample of 1,027 people commissioned by the broadcasters RTL and VTM found that almost two out of three of those surveyed thought the government would fall within the next three years.

After the elections, Mr. Leterme, 47, tried to form a government but failed after the collapse of complex negotiations. In desperation, the king turned in December to the departing Flemish prime minister, Guy Verhofstadt, to lead a caretaker administration.

A division of powers is at the center of the political crisis. Many functions of the state are already carried out by regional authorities in Flanders in the Dutch-speaking north, and Wallonia in the poorer, French-speaking south.

But the Flemish parties want more economic power for the regions, and that has provoked fears in Wallonia that subsidies from the richer part of the country will dry up.

In most respects Belgium has two parallel political systems with different parties fielding candidates from the two biggest populations and appealing to voters through separate newspapers and television channels.

The coalition agreement was reached Tuesday after 21 hours of talks. The new government includes the Flemish and French-speaking Christian Democrats, the Flemish and French-speaking liberals and the French-speaking socialists. The more nationalist Flemish parties remain outside the government, but one is expected to back it. Because the new coalition represents a broad range of political opinion, and more of the big parties are inside the coalition than outside, Mr. Leterme almost leads a government of national unity. The top jobs in the Foreign, Interior and Finance Ministries have not changed hands.

But the agreement does not cover proposed changes regarding the issue of regional powers. The parties are committed to reaching a settlement by July.

“It’s not a new or fresh team, it represents continuity in managing the current situation,” said Caroline Sägesser, a political analyst at Crisp, a sociopolitical research organization in Brussels. “The real negotiation on the constitutional settlement will take place elsewhere.”

Much rests on the performance of Mr. Leterme who, as the son of a Flemish mother and a Walloon father raised in an agricultural region near Belgium’s border with France, ought to be able to straddle the linguistic divide.

He is bilingual and, like many of his countrymen, has a passion for cycling. But having made his career in Flemish politics, where few votes are won by reaching out to French-speakers, he is widely distrusted in the southern part of the country. He has not served as a minister in the federal government and has little experience negotiating with leaders from other linguistic groups.

French-language newspapers have in recent days unearthed a number of comments made by Mr. Leterme that have been taken as slights by French-speakers.

In 2006 he told the French-language newspaper La Libre Belgique that “French-speakers are not intellectually equipped to learn Dutch.”

Last year, on the country’s National Day, he was filmed singing “La Marseillaise,” France’s national anthem, instead of Belgium’s anthem, “La Brabançonne,” in what was interpreted as a dig at French-speakers.

He also has been criticized for mistakenly referring to National Day, July 21, as observing the proclamation of the Constitution instead of commemorating the inauguration of Leopold I, Belgium’s first king, in 1831.

Political analysts point out that Mr. Leterme’s predecessor, Mr. Verhofstadt, was also once viewed with acute suspicion in Wallonia. “Leterme has potential to become more popular in Wallonia as people get to know him better and discover that their worst fears are not realized,” Ms. Sägesser said. “But he is starting from a very low base.”

The winner of last June’s elections, Mr. Leterme can claim the backing of 800,000 voters in a country with a population of about 10.5 million. Governments are elected under a proportional system in multimember constituencies where political parties present lists of candidates. Voting is compulsory in Belgium.

Iraq panel clears obstacle to provincial elections

Under U.S. pressure, the presidential council backs measure after resolving dispute.

By Alexandra Zavis
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

March 20, 2008

BAGHDAD — Iraq's presidential council dropped its objections Wednesday to a law that helps clear the way for provincial elections that are considered key to reconciling the country's ethnic and religious factions.

The unexpected announcement by the council, made up of the country's president and two vice presidents, follows intense lobbying by U.S. officials to make the power-sharing compromises needed to solidify a recent drop in violence.

U.S. patience with Iraq's fractious politicians is wearing thin as the war enters its sixth year. But Wednesday's decision offers American officials here a sign of progress, which they can use to make the case in Washington for time over the summer to assess the impact of U.S. troop withdrawals underway before pulling out more forces. Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, and U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker will make their recommendations to Congress next month.

The measure, which defines the relationship between the country's 18 provinces and the central government, calls for elections by Oct. 1. Iraq's parliament approved it Feb. 13 under a package deal that included a $48-billion national budget and an amnesty plan for some of the mostly Sunni Arab detainees languishing in custody.

But the presidential council withheld its needed approval because of objections from Vice President Adel Abdul Mahdi, a member of the main Shiite Muslim political party, the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council. President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, and Vice President Tariq Hashimi, a Sunni, are the other council members.

The dispute centered on an article that would give the prime minister the authority to ask parliament to remove a provincial governor. Abdul Mahdi argued that the provision was unconstitutional and that the authority to dismiss governors should rest with the provincial councils that select them, an aide said.

Abdul Mahdi's party, a strong proponent of decentralization, won control of most of the overwhelmingly Shiite south in the last provincial elections, in 2005. But the party faces a growing challenge from followers of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr, who helped put Prime Minister Nouri Maliki in office.

Sadr loyalists had accused Abdul Mahdi and his party of trying to delay the elections to hang on to power.

The council, which must unanimously agree to any legislation before it becomes law, dropped its objections after receiving assurances that parliament would consider amendments to the law, said Nasir Ani, the panel's chief of staff.

The measure now must be published in an official gazette, which is expected in the coming days.

Even with approval of the law, the political blocs need to agree on rules for the election.

Most Sunni Arabs boycotted the last elections, as did Sadr's followers, handing a disproportionate share of local power to other factions representing the majority Shiites and to their Kurdish allies. The imbalance has been a source of mounting friction in ethnically and religiously mixed parts of the country, as well as in the Shiite south, where Sadr's followers are pushing for more influence. U.S. officials have said that fresh elections are essential to stave off more violence.

The number of attacks dropped late last year after the U.S. military deployed 28,500 additional troops to Iraq, Sunni Muslim tribesmen rebelled against religious extremists in their areas, and Sadr ordered his Mahdi Army militia to stand down.

But a string of recent suicide bombings has raised the civilian casualty toll as the added troops are being pulled out. Five combat brigades will be gone by the end of July, bringing the number of U.S. troops in Iraq to about 140,000 from a peak of nearly 170,000.

Petraeus has said that he would like time to assess whether the security gains can withstand further withdrawals.

Underscoring the danger, a woman with explosives hidden under her black gown attacked a police convoy Wednesday, killing five people and injuring 11 northeast of Baghdad, police said. It was the ninth suicide attack carried out by a woman this year.

The latest attack happened in a busy commercial district of Balad Ruz, a religiously mixed city in Diyala province. The woman stepped into the street as a convoy drove by ferrying a police captain to work, according to the provincial operations center. Two policemen were among those killed and four were injured, police said.

The U.S. military, meanwhile, announced the death of a soldier Wednesday in a vehicle rollover in Diyala. At least 3,991 U.S. personnel have died since the American-led invasion in March 2003, according to the independent website icasualties.org.

North of Diyala, U.S. forces accidentally killed three Iraqi policemen and injured a fourth on the road between Kirkuk and Hawija. Iraqi police, responding to a report of a possible car bomb, drove into an area where American troops were conducting operations, said Staff Sgt. Sam Smith, a spokesman for U.S. forces.

"Entering into a previously cordoned area at a high rate of speed, the Iraqi police received fire from a coalition force soldier who had perceived the vehicle as a threat," Smith said in an e-mail. "The incident is currently under investigation."

alexandra.zavis@latimes.com

Special correspondents in Baghdad, Kirkuk and Mosul contributed to this report.

Report: Kenya's Post-Election Violence 'Meticulously' Organized

By Stephanie McCrummen
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, March 17, 2008; 6:40 AM

Nairobi, March 17-- Post-election attacks on villagers in Kenya's western Rift Valley were often "meticulously" organized by local opposition leaders who called for "war" against people from President Mwai Kibaki's Kikuyu ethnic group, according to a report by the group Human Rights Watch released Monday.

The report also detailed widespread killings by Kenyan police of opposition supporters, especially in the opposition stronghold of Kisumu in western Kenya. It also found circumstantial evidence to suggest that senior government officials were aware of planned reprisal attacks by Kikuyu gangs against opposition supporters in several other western towns.

A prominent Kenyan diplomat told The Washington Post that it was an "open secret" that certain Kikuyu politicians provided funding for gangs of young Kikuyu men and ferried them to the town of Naivasha, where they helped carry out one of the most brutal revenge attacks in late January.

"This was not done by ordinary citizens, it was arranged by people with money," said one young man who took part in the attacks, according to the report. "They brought the jobless like me. We need something to eat each day."

Violence following Kenya's disputed Dec. 27 presidential elections is estimated to have killed at least 1,000 people and displaced a half million, with most of the violence taking place across the volatile Rift Valley, where longstanding grievances over land fueled much of the violence.

The violence tarred Kenya's image as one of Africa's political success stories, rekindling tribal animosities and controversy over land use and government corruption. After weeks of international negotiation, Kibaki and opposition leader Raila Odinga reached a power sharing agreement meant to defuse the crisis.

China declares "people's war" for stability in Tibet

By Chris Buckley and Benjamin Kang Lim

BEIJING (Reuters) - China gave Tibetan independence protesters an ultimatum to surrender on Saturday after riots in Lhasa which killed at least 10 people in the worst unrest in the region for two decades.

The tough response by the Chinese authorities came after fierce protests on Friday which contradicted China's claims of stability and tarnished a carefully-nurtured image of national harmony as it readies to stage the Olympic Games in August.

Official Tibetan judicial authorities gave protesters until Monday night to turn themselves in and benefit from leniency.

"Criminals who do not surrender themselves by the deadline will be sternly punished according to the law," said a notice on the Tibetan government Web site (www.tibet.gov.cn).

International pressure mounted on Beijing to show restraint. Australia, the United States and Europe urged China to find a peaceful outcome, while Taiwan, which China claims as its own, predictably condemned Beijing for launching a crackdown.

Xinhua news agency said 10 "innocent civilians" had been shot or burned to death in the street clashes in the remote, mountain capital which has been sealed off. The dead included two people killed by shotguns.

Xinhua said 12 police officers had been "gravely injured" and 22 buildings and dozens of vehicles were set on fire.

A source close to the Tibetan government-in-exile, however, questioned the official death toll of 10. He said at least five Tibetan protesters had been shot dead by troops.

Some Tibet monitoring organizations outside the country put the death toll at up to 32.

The riots emerged from a volatile mix of pre-Olympics protests, diplomatic friction over Tibet and local discontent with the harsh ways of the region's Communist Party leadership.

The protests, the worst since 1989 in the disputed region, have thrust China's role as Olympic host and its policy towards Tibet back into the international spotlight.

A rash of angry blog posts appeared after the deaths were confirmed. Hollywood actor Richard Gere, a Buddhist and an activist for Tibetan causes, urged an Olympics boycott.

Official statements suggested the government reaction in coming days would be tough, with Tibetan Buddhist monasteries -- traditional focal point of opposition to Beijing's rule -- and nunneries being brought under tighter control.

PUNISHMENT AND REWARDS

The regional communist-controlled government said those who harbored protesters would be punished and offered rewards and protection to informers. Tibet television urged residents to denounce the "malicious intent" of the Dalai Lama.

Tibetan crowds in Lhasa attacked government offices, burned vehicles and shops and threw stones at police in Friday's confrontations. Many people were injured.

Chinese television showed footage of rioters trashing shops and trying to break down the entrance of a bank, and plumes of smoke floating above the city.

A Reuters picture showed a protester setting on fire a Chinese national flag. Another depicted security personnel shielding themselves against rocks hurled by protesters.

Qiangba Puncog, the top government official in Tibet, told reporters in Beijing that Tibetan authorities had not fired any shots to quell the violence.

John Ackerly, of the International Campaign for Tibet, said in an e-mailed statement he feared "hundreds of Tibetans have been arrested and are being interrogated and tortured".

Hundreds of angry young Tibetans protested on Saturday in Dharamsala, home to Tibet's exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama and the refugees' "government-in-exile".

Not far from where the Dalai Lama was recovering from a cold and keeping up his lifetime routine of praying for peace, the crowd of young Tibetans gathered to vent their rage.

The crowd tore apart a flaming effigy of Chinese President Hu Jintao in normally peaceful Dharamsala in the Indian Himalayas and the protesters decided to march to New Delhi.

A Western tourist said that Lhasa itself was like a ghost town on Saturday, though it was packed with Chinese soldiers.

China has accused followers of the Dalai Lama of engineering unrest in the run-up to the Beijing Olympics. The Olympic torch relay will pass through Tibet in a few weeks time.

Although the Dalai Lama was resting after falling ill with a cold, he released a statement condemning the "brute force" of China on Friday and will meet with journalists on Sunday.

"He is a monk so he follows his routine," explained Chhime Chhoekyapa, the Dalai Lama's spokesman. That includes listening to news on the radio. "He said it's very sad," said Chhoekyapa. "As a Buddhist he prays for peace."

The Free Tibet Campaign organization cited eyewitnesses as saying that thousands marched on government buildings in Xiahe, an ethnic Tibetan area of China, and raised a Tibetan national flag at a school.

In Lhasa, Danish tourist Bente Walle, 58, said: "Today Lhasa is completely closed and there is Chinese military all over."

(Additional reporting by Guo Shipeng, Nick Mulvenney, Ben Blanchard and Lindsay Beck in Beijing, John Ruwitch in Chengdu and Sophie Taylor in Shanghai)

(Editing by Peter Millership)