Ecuadorean presidential candidate Rafael Correa smiles before the start of a press conference in Quito, Nov. 26. (AFP Photo)

QUITO, Ecuador,
Nov. 27--Ecuador’s leftist Rafael Correa, an ally of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, appeared close to victory in Sunday’s presidential run-off election after exit polls and unofficial counts showed he had surged ahead of his banana magnate rival.
According to Reuters, a win by Correa would make him Ecuador’s eighth leader in a decade and bolster Chavez’s campaign to forge an alliance of left-wing governments to counter US influence in the region with his own brand of socialist revolution.
“We accept this victory with dignity and humility,“ Correa told a press conference in Quito as supporters cheered and honked car horns outside in the streets. “This is a clear message that the people want change.“
The US-trained economist, who rattled Wall Street with talk of debt renegotiation, cast himself as an outsider vowing to challenge the political elite blamed by many disenchanted Ecuadoreans for years of instability in the world’s top banana exporter.
Correa rival Alvaro Noboa, Ecuador’s wealthiest man, quickly rejected poll results and said he could demand a scrutiny of the ballots if necessary. Tallying the full official results could take until Tuesday.
“I have won and I will keep fighting for the poor from the presidency,“ a visibly irate Noboa told local television.
A quick count carried out by local election observation group Participacion Cuidadana gave Correa 56.4 percent and Noboa 43.6 percent with 94.4 percent counted of a sample of ballot boxes nationwide. Three exit polls gave similar tallies favoring Correa.
Correa, 43, has irked Washington with vows to oppose a US free trade pact and a local US military base, while Noboa, a tycoon with holdings ranging from coffee to construction, had promised closer US ties and market-friendly policies.
Political analysts believe a Correa government could struggle to press through reforms without representation in the Congress, where lawmakers loyal to Noboa hold more than a quarter of the legislative seats.

People displaced by the two-year conflict in Sudan's shattered western province of Darfur, filling buckets with water in Abu Shouk, Sudan. (AFP File Photo)

KHARTOUM, Sudan, Nov. 27--More people have fled their homes within Sudan’s Darfur region than at any time since the conflict started there nearly four years ago, said the UN on Monday in a report on the worsening humanitarian crisis, AFP said.
“The number of IDPs (internally displaced people) has reached nearly two million, the highest level since the conflict started in 2003 and an increase of some 125,000 since the July 1 report,“ said a summary of the report.
The report comes amid efforts to upgrade peacekeeping operations in Darfur where violence continues between government forces and rebel factions and threatens to spill over into neighboring countries.
Darfur mainly borders Chad and Central African Republic, and last week the UN Security Council expressed “serious concern“ about the growing instability along those border areas.
The report released on Monday reviews the humanitarian situation in Sudan’s western region of Darfur covering the months of July, August and September.
“Another two million Darfurians directly affected by the ongoing crisis are in need of humanitarian aid, again the highest number ever since the beginning of the current crisis,“ the report added.
The conflict started in February 2003 when ethnic minority rebels demanding a greater share of the country’s resources took up arms, prompting a scorched earth campaign by the government and its allied Janjaweed militia.
According to the UN, at least 200,000 people have died from the combined effect of civil fighting and famine since then. Some sources say the toll is much higher, with villages burnt and mass rape being blamed mainly on the militia.
A contingent of some 7,000 observers from the African Union has failed to stabilize Darfur, an arid region roughly the size of France.
The African body and the United Nations have agreed to join forces in a bid to increase the number of peacekeepers in Darfur and offer them better equipment.

MAKHACHKALA, Russia, Nov. 27--Police on Sunday killed a top Arab leader involved with separatist fighters in Russia’s troubled North Caucasus, AFP quoted regional security officials as saying.
Abu Havs was killed in a four-hour gunbattle with police in the Dagestani town of Khasavyurt, not far from the Chechen border, along with four other militants, said Mikhail Merkulov, deputy director for the Dagestani branch of the Federal Security Service.
Merkulov called Abu Havs “a foreign mercenary of Jordanian origin“ who was the main Al-Qaeda contact for the North Caucasus.
“We have information that the operations conducted in Chechnya that were aimed at counteracting federal actions were planned and carried out with the direct participation of the terrorist Abu Havs,“ he said in comments broadcast on state-run television. He said Abu Havs also planned “bandit operations“ in Dagestan.
Footage broadcast by state-run television showed a house apparently ravaged by gunfire, along with the bodies of at least five of the alleged militants.
One FSB officer was wounded in the operation, said Iraina Volkova, a spokeswoman for the service.
According to Russian security officials, Abu Havs was a commander of foreign mercenaries who once were active participants in Chechnya.
As large-scale fighting has died down in Chechnya, however, the number of foreigners fighting there has dropped. In recent years, violence in the Russian region has mainly taken the form of hit-and-run attacks against federal forces and local allied paramilitaries.
Russian forces have killed or captured a number of top Chechen rebel leaders in recent years, including the notorious warlord Shamil Basayev and Abdul-Khalim Sadulayev, who was the one-time president of the separatists’ self-declared government.

LONDON, Nov. 27--Britain expects to be able to withdraw “thousands“ of its troops from Iraq by the end of 2007, Reuters quoted Britain’s Defense Minister Des Browne as saying on Monday.
Browne refused to give specific numbers, but said: “By the end of next year I expect numbers for British forces in Iraq to be significantly lower by a matter of thousands.“
In a speech in central London, he said military planners had been working on a possible troop reduction for some months.
“I have been asking our planners to look at all the options to make sure we do not ask a single soldier to remain in Iraq longer than is necessary,“ he said.
Britain has around 7,200 troops in southern Iraq, mostly stationed in and around Basra, Iraq’s second largest city.
Shiite factions are battling each other for control of the city and British troops are sometimes attacked.
Britain has handed over to Iraqi forces control of Muthanna and Dhi Qar, two of the four southern provinces it took responsibility for after the US-led invasion in 2003. Maysan province is due to meet the conditions for handover in January.
Browne stressed that the 2007 troop reduction would only be possible if efforts to boost Iraq’s own security capabilities went according to plan.
“We need to be clear that handover does not mean withdrawal,“ he added.

RAMALLAH, Occupied Palestine, Nov. 27--The Palestine Times, the first English-language Palestinian daily newspaper since the Palestinian Authority was created in 1994, went on sale for the first time on Monday, reported AFP.
“Maintaining our independence is the primary objective of our newspaper,“ editor in chief and one of the newspaper’s proprietors, Othman Alhaj Mohammed told a news conference in Ramallah where the daily is based.
The Palestine Times is the first foreign-language daily to appear in the Palestinian territories since the English-language Al-Fajr went out of business in the 1990s.
The newspaper, whose first edition was 12 pages in color, will also circulate in Israel.
Three Arabic-language newspapers are published daily in the Palestinian territories, Al-Quds, Al-Ayyam and Al-Hayat Al-Jadida.

TAMPERE, Finland, Nov. 27--EU president Finland said it had failed to achieve a breakthrough in talks on Monday to resolve a row on Cyprus that threatens to derail Turkey’s bid for membership of the bloc, Reuters reported.
“Unfortunately, we have come to the conclusion that at this stage circumstances do not permit that an agreement could be reached during the Finnish Presidency,“ said Finnish Foreign Minister Erkki Tuomioja after separate meetings with the foreign ministers of Turkey and Cyprus.
Tuomioja said no date had been set for new talks on the issue and the EU would need to decide the implications for Turkey’s membership bid.
“Together with the Commission, we will prepare the decision on how we will handle the continuation of the accession negotiations,“ Tuomioja said, adding that the EU’s General Affairs Council would decide the matter on Dec. 11.
He said he could not go into details about the exact implication for Turkey’s accession process.
“We will consult with all member states before putting forward our proposals,“ Tuomioja said.
“It is clear that Turkey remains a candidate country.“ The EU says Turkey, which began entry talks last year, must meet a treaty obligation to open its ports to ships from Cyprus this year or face consequences for its accession negotiations.
Turkey says it will only do so if the EU ends the economic isolation of Northern Cyprus, the breakaway Turkish Cypriot state recognized only by Ankara.

WASHINGTON,
Nov. 27--Jordan’s King Abdullah said Sunday the problems in the Middle East go beyond the war in Iraq and that much of the region soon could become engulfed in violence unless the central issues are addressed quickly.
“We could possibly imagine going into 2007 and having three civil wars on our hands,“ he said, citing conflicts in Iraq, Lebanon and the decades-long strife between the Palestinians and Israelis, AP wrote.
“Therefore, it is time that we really take a strong step forward as part of the international community and make sure we avert the Middle East from a tremendous crisis that I fear, and I see could possibly happen in 2007,“ he said.
Speaking on ABC’s “This Week,“ Abdullah said he remained hopeful a summit he will host this week in Amman with President George W. Bush and the Iraqi prime minister, Nouri Al-Maliki, will somehow lower the sectarian violence that threatens to push Iraq into all-out civil war.
“We hope there will be something dramatic. The challenges, obviously, in front of both of them are immense,“ the king said.
“We have to make sure that all parties in Iraq understand the dangers of the ongoing escalation. I hope Prime Minister Maliki will have some ideas ... on how he can be inclusive in bringing all the different sects inside of Iraq together. They need to do it now,“ he said, “because, obviously, as we’re seeing, things are beginning to spiral out of control.“
The king spoke of the urgent for a change in course in Iraq.
“There needs to be some very strong action taken on the ground there today,“ he said. “I don’t think we’re in a position where we can come back and revisit the problem in early 2007. There needs to be a strategy. There needs to be a plan that brings all the parties together, and bring them today and not tomorrow.“
Bush plans to fly to Jordan after attending a NATO summit in Latvia. Vice President Dick Cheney made a quick trip to Saudi Arabia for talks on Saturday as part of the administration’s effort to bring peace to the region.
Abdullah said it is natural that Americans, with troops fighting in Iraq, view that war as the major problem in the Middle East.

Federal policemen clash with members of Oaxaca People's Popular Assembly (APPO) during a protest at the Santo Domingo Square in Oaxaca, Nov. 26. (AFP Photo)

OAXACA, Mexico, Nov. 27--Hundreds of police on Sunday lined Oaxaca’s central Zocalo square with trash cans and barbed wire to keep demonstrators at bay after violent clashes Saturday left 43 injured and up to 150 arrested, AFP said.
“The police attacked us and six of our comrades are seriously injured ... after getting hit by gas canisters,“ Florentino Lopez, a spokesman for the Popular Assembly of Oaxaca Villages (APPO) which has organized the protest movement in this city of 600,000.
Oaxaca state attorney general Lizbeth Cana said the Red Cross reported 43 people injured in the clashes and that police made 105-150 arrests.
Oaxaca Governor Ulises Ruiz, whose resignation the protesters are demanding, told reporters after touring the site of the disturbances that several foreigners were arrested along with local protesters.
The clashes pitted demonstrators wielding home-made bombs against riot police with armored vehicles, tear gas and water cannons.
The battleground was Zocalo square, where in late October federal police cleared out a tent city set up by protestors. Since then the protest movement has been trying to reoccupy the square.
Police said demonstrators set fire to the Oaxaca Court building, several vehicles and dozens of stores during Saturday’s unrest.
Saturday’s clashes were described as the worst since the protest movement began in June to have Oaxaca Governor Ulises Ruiz resign over his rough handling of a teacher strike.