Briefs

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By Compiled by Serene Assir and Paul Wulfsberg

Slovakian election surprise

VLADIMIR Meciar, an authoritarian former prime minister, has won the first round of presidential elections in Slovakia with 32.7 per cent of the vote and will face Ivan Gasparovic in a run-off on 17 April.

A former ally who split with Meciar to start his own party in 2002, Gasparovic -- who took 22.3 per cent of the votes -- knocked out the government-backed favourite Eduard Kukan -- at 22.1 per cent -- with his second- place finish.

Although the presidency is a largely ceremonial post, the timing of the election results is having a profound impact on national and European politics. Having joined NATO on 29 March, and due to join the EU on 1 May, Slovakia has been on a path towards greater integration with Europe since 1998 elections brought a centre-right, business-friendly coalition to power.

Critics in the West say that Meciar's premiership, for most of the period from 1993 to 1998, was characterised by an authoritarian disregard for democratic principles. Much of his electoral support came from pensioners and others adversely affected by the structural adjustment programme of the last five years. Meciar has, however, recently affirmed his commitment to Slovakia's membership in NATO and the EU.

Prime Minister Mikulas Dzurinda has liberalised the pension system while increasing the flexibility companies enjoy in firing surplus workers. While his measures have been popular with the WTO and the World Bank, Slovakian citizens have generally been less enthusiastic.

While he has admitted that the past year has been economically "really very difficult" for the average Slovakian, Dzurinda was expecting the election of Kukan to provide a mandate for his current policies.

Europe expands east

WITH the expansion of NATO to incorporate seven new Central and Eastern European member-countries on 29 March, the organisation is now on the borders of Russia.

Despite public assurances from Washington and Moscow that NATO's most recent expansion is no reason for anxiety, the admission of the three Baltic states -- Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia -- has not gone down well with Russian nationalists.

Last Thursday, Russian lawmakers in the Duma passed a resolution condemning the NATO expansion by a vote of 305 to 41, with two abstentions. The Duma recommended strengthening Russia's nuclear deterrent and proposed retracting an earlier promise to restrict troop deployment in the isolated Baltic military base at Kaliningrad.

While NATO's deployment on the Russian border, consisting of four F-16 fighters patrolling Baltic countries, constitutes no direct military threat to Moscow, many Russians still see it as an unnecessarily provocative move.

US Secretary of State Colin Powell on Monday reiterated that the former Soviet Union is no longer an enemy, exclaiming: "My God, if I can say that, it is time that you guys start believing it."

German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder visited Russia on Friday, with French President Jacques Chirac following in his footsteps the next day. Both leaders sought to placate Russian worries about European encroachment.

EU expansion is planned for 1 May, when 10 former Soviet republics or client states will join. Over half of Russia's trade will be with the enlarged EU. Moscow is worried about diminishing influence, trade and the loss of special privileges in Eastern Europe.

Freedom -- but for how long?

IN A CLEAR public relations stunt designed to placate the international community, Burma's Foreign Minister Win Aung announced that pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi will be freed from house arrest in time for a landmark constitutional conference scheduled to take place on 17 May. He did not, however, specify the precise date of her release.

Aung told the media that this conference was scheduled to pick up where the last one, held in 1996, left off.

Suu Kyi's party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), has been invited, but its leadership is sceptical of the move: "Let's just wait and see," one party source said.

An icon for pro-democracy activists all around the world, Suu Kyi has been under house arrest and kept virtually incommunicado since September, after being attacked and captured, along with her convoy, by pro-regime thugs in May of last year.

The NLD won an election in Burma in 1990 but was never allowed to take office.

Around 1,400 political prisoners are currently being held by the country's military regime. Despite consistent pressure from the United Nations, the government is not taking any substantial steps towards reform.

Only the beginning?

EVENTS in Spain again made headlines this week when a police operation searching for a group of North Africans living in the Madrid suburb of Leganés -- allegedly among the masterminds of the 11 March attacks -- ended with five of the suspects blowing themselves up. This constituted the first suicide bombing to have taken place on European soil.

Among those who died was Sarhane Bin Abdul-Majid Fakhet -- "the Tunisian". According to police sources, he was allegedly the terrorists' ringleader and mastermind of the 11 March train bombings.

Despite being unable to carry out scientific tests to confirm their theory, police sources are convinced that the only unidentified body belongs to Jamil Ahmidan -- "the Chinese". He was allegedly the cell's second-in- command.

Spanish security forces are still searching for suspects whom they believe may have been initially present at the scene of the latest tragedy but managed to escape. President-elect José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero has announced that when his leadership is inaugurated next week, he will introduce a new Anti-Terrorism Act.

Saturday's confrontation between the bombers and police, which security forces had been planning for 24 hours, began as a shoot-out. Hundreds of police agents had been deployed for the operation. Once the suspects had been located and then surrounded in the building they had been residing in, reports the Spanish press, they made telephone calls to their families to say goodbye, shortly after blowing themselves up, shouting that they preferred to die while killing over surrendering to the police.