South Korean presidential candidate, Lee Myung-Bak

SEOUL, South Korea, Dec. 19--South Koreans on Wednesday elected as president Lee Myung-bak, a right-wing former CEO vowing to improve the economy and stand up to North Korea, TV exit polls showed.
Lee won 50.3 percent of the vote, well ahead of his closest rival liberal candidate Chung Dong-young who had 26.0 percent, according the exit poll and projections by state-owned KBS TV and private MBC TV, Reuters reported.
It would be the largest margin of victory since democratic elections began 20 years ago in South Korea, the world’s 13th largest economy.
The former Hyundai Group executive and ex-Seoul mayor Lee Myung-bak has been well ahead throughout the campaign for a single five-year term and ending 10 years of liberal presidents.
But fresh allegations of financial corruption that surfaced days before polling day have threatened to undermine his authority and he faces the prospect of being the first-president elect under criminal investigation.
On Monday, parliament voted to appoint a special investigator to look into charges that Lee, who denies any wrongdoing, was linked to an investment firm suspected of swindling millions of dollars from investors.
Even if he is implicated, the outcome of the probe is unlikely to be resolved before the inauguration on February 25.
A sitting president cannot be prosecuted for such crimes.
Voters put the economy first in this race, pollsters said, and were ready to make Lee the first former top executive to run the country.
They have sent an ex-general, two dissidents who fought decades of dictatorship and a human rights lawyer to the presidential Blue House.

NDJAMENA, Chad, Dec. 19--Six members of a French charity accused of trying to kidnap 103 children in Chad go on trial on Friday in a new test of France’s relations with its former African colonies.
The six members of the Arche de Zoe (Zoe’s Ark) charity face 20-year hard labor terms if found guilty and there have been a lot of calls for them to serve any sentence in their home country, AFP said.
But the case has also sparked anger in Chad where France is soon to lead a EU peacekeeping force near the border with Sudan’s troubled Darfur region.
Eric Breteau, head of Zoe’s Ark, and five comrades, were detained in the eastern town of Abeche on October 25 as they were about to put the children on a leased Spanish plane bound for France.
Breteau and his supporters insist that the aim of the operation was to rescue orphans from Darfur.
Seventeen Europeans, including the Spanish crew of the plane, and journalists accompanying the mission, were detained in all.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy flew to Chad and was able to negotiate the release of most of them.
The six charity workers are the only Europeans left in detention, which has sparked protests in Chad of political interference. Three Chadians and a Sudanese are also to go on trial.
Breteau and his colleagues began a hunger strike on December 8, and his wife has expressed concern for the health of the accused, who looked weak and tired during a brief court appearance for jury selection this week.
The French nationals face criminal allegations of child abduction and risk terms of between five and 20 years hard labor if found guilty.
Breteau’s wife Agnes told French radio this week that “physically and emotionally, they are in a critical state,“ and she hoped the six would be able to cope during their trial.
And they face a difficult case.

Four Bolivian departments declared radical autonomy from the central power last weekend, rising fears of balkanization in the South American nation.
The gas-rich provinces of Santa Cruz de la Sierra and Tarija, as well as the Amazonian departments of Beni and Pando, said they want to have full autonomy from the central power to handle their earnings. This will pave the way for their complete independence from Bolivia. These provinces in the eastern parts of the country have plenty of gas resources. They supply two thirds of Bolivia’s national gross product. Also, more than 35 percent of the 9.5-million population of Bolivia are settled in these four provinces.
During the recent presidential campaigns, Bolivian President Evo Morales as the leader of the opposing party promised an agrarian reform to redistribute lands and wealth by setting aside some parts of the income to poor provinces of the east gathered from selling gas. Morales initiative was received extensively among the poor people of Bolivia but rejected transparently by the then statesmen and multinational energy enterprises.
With the elections of Morales to presidency, he put this initiative top on his agenda. In the first step, he declared Bolivia’s gas industry a national asset. His opponents with western inclinations then tried to encourage gas-rich provinces to declare independence. Opponents hope to reap huge income in Latin America by separating gas-rich nations from Bolivia.
The reality is that opponents of the just distribution of wealth in Bolivia are backing the separation of the four gas-rich provinces.
Morales is, however, trying to stabilize his political status and at the same time to alleviate poverty in the four rich provinces of his country. One thing is taken for granted: Without Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Tarija, Beni and Pando, Bolivia will face major economic problems. And this can entail very dangerous outcomes for the whole region. That’s why no Latin American country is backing Bolivia’s separation which has the potential of turning into a civil war in the case of which, millions of poor families will have to migrate to neighboring states. There is no doubt such concerns will not related to the US and multinational energy enterprises in Bolivia which are worried about Morales economic and social reforms which will jeopardize their interests there.

BRUSSELS, Belgium, Dec. 19--Belgium’s caretaker prime minister said on Wednesday he would form a five-party, interim coalition government, providing a temporary solution to a political crisis more than six months after elections, Reuters reported.
“The prime minister has unblocked the situation,“ a spokesman for Guy Verhofstadt said.
An interim government could be sworn in on Friday after a French-speaking party agreed to join a five-party coalition that Verhofstadt was trying to form, he said.
The linguistically divided country, home to the European Union and NATO, has been without a new government for a record 192 days, sparking speculation that the 177-year-old state could split into Dutch- and French-speaking regions.
“For Europe, this means the crisis is over for Belgium,“ said long-serving finance minister Didier Reynders, head of the French-speaking Liberals--one of the five coalition parties.
Verhofstadt was asked by King Albert to try to end the political deadlock and form an interim government.
Thousands of Belgian trade union members marched on Saturday in protest against the failure of politicians to form a government and grapple with rising fuel and food prices.
Provided it passed a parliamentary vote of confidence, currently scheduled for Sunday, an interim government would last no longer than March 23, 2008.

Israeli border policemen arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a protest against Israel's controversial wall, Sept. 15.

BEIT-UL-MOQADDAS, Dec. 19-- In the past seven years, the Israeli military has indicted just 10 percent of soldiers suspected of criminal offenses against Palestinians, an Israeli human rights group reported Tuesday, saying the figure raises questions about Israel’s willingness to prosecute.
The Yesh Din group said just 9 percent of investigations led to convictions.
According to AP, the conviction rate was less than 7 percent when the investigations focused on the killing and injury of civilians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, it said.
“The low number of investigations opened and the minute number of indictments served reveal the (military’s) de facto derogation of its duty to protect the civilian Palestinian population against offenses committed by its soldiers,“ said Michael Sfard, Yesh Din’s legal counsel.
Basing its report on statistics solicited from the military, Yesh Din reported that 1,091 criminal investigations were launched between September 2000--the start of the second Palestinian uprising against Israel--and June 2007.
Of that number, 118, or 10 percent, were indicted, and 101, or 9 percent, were convicted.
Of the 239 investigations into the killing and injury of Palestinian civilians, 16 resulted in convictions, or 6.7 percent, Yesh Din reported.

WASHINGTON, Dec. 19--The Senate gave President Bush a big win on Iraq Tuesday night as it passed a massive $555 billion spending bill combining funding for 14 Cabinet departments with $70 billion for US military operations there and in Afghanistan.
But Bush’s GOP allies were divided over whether the omnibus appropriations bill represented a win for the party in a monthslong battle with Democrats over domestic agency budgets, AP said.
In rapid succession, the Senate cast two votes to approve the hybrid spending bill. By a 70-25 vote, the Senate approved the Iraq and Afghanistan war funds--without restrictions that Democrats had insisted on for weeks.
Senators followed with a 76-17 vote to agree to a bundle of 11 annual appropriations bills funding domestic agencies and the foreign aid budget for the budget year that began Oct. 1.
The House is slated to ready the entire package for Bush, though the vote will be only on the Iraq portion of the measure. That vote would cap a parliamentary dance choreographed to ease the overall package through a chamber split between Democratic opponents of the Iraq war and GOP foes of the domestic spending portion of the bill.
The result on domestic spending created a divide between Republicans who thought it was a good deal, such as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, and those who said it was too expensive and larded with pork-barrel spending.

UNITED NATIONS, Dec. 19--Serbia and Kosovo’s Albanian separatist leaders huddle with the UN Security Council Wednesday to make their rival cases on the breakaway Serbian province’s future status, after their recent failure to reach a compromise.
Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica said Monday he would urge the 15 council members to call for more talks between the parties to reach a compromise that would exclude Kosovo’s independence, AFP said.
Pushing Kosovo’s independence claim before the council will be prime Minister-designate Hashim Thaci and President Fatmir Sejdiu.
Also due to take part in the meeting will be UN chief Ban Ki-moon on his return from Algeria where he Tuesday toured the ruins of UN agency offices destroyed last week in car bombings that killed at least 41 people, including 17 UN staff.
UN spokeswoman Michele Montas said Ban would listen to the different views before making any comment on the issue.
The council meeting comes just days after four months of last-ditch talks between Belgrade and Kosovo’s Albanian separatists broke down over the issue of sovereignty for the UN-ruled breakaway Serbian province.

PARIS, Dec. 19--Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said on Tuesday new Israeli settlement activity was posing an obstacle to revived Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts launched in the US town of Annapolis last month.
According to Reuters, plans for new Israeli settlement building this month have drawn rare criticism from the United States, as well as the European Union, and raised fears of widening the rift in the first Israeli-Palestinian peace talks in seven years.
“I think the obstacle that hampers negotiations with the Israelis particularly concerns the construction of settlements. And we have said clearly that Israel must stop the construction and the expansion of settlements,“ Abbas told a news conference.
The first round of peace talks following Annapolis opened in discord last week after Palestinians demanded a halt to Israeli plans to build new homes at a settlement near Beit-ul-Moqaddas known to Israelis as Har Homa and the Palestinians as Abu Ghneim.
One of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s closest confidants, Vice Premier Haim Ramon, told Army Radio that settlement growth was “largely limited“ to the major settlement blocs, which Israel hopes to keep as part of any final peace deal with the Palestinians.