NY Times - July 3rd, 2008

By JIM YARDLEY

BEIJING — Armed soldiers enforced martial law on the streets of Mongolia’s capital on Wednesday, a day after five people were killed as hundreds angered by election results rioted, Mongolian state news media reported.

President Nambaryn Enkhbayar responded to the unrest by declaring a national state of emergency late Tuesday.

Mongolia’s national news agency, Montsame, said 710 people had been detained after groups of protesters, alleging fraud in last weekend’s parliamentary elections, clashed with the police in the capital, Ulan Bator. Preliminary results of the elections gave a parliamentary majority to the Mongolian People’s Revolutionary Party, the successor to the country’s Communist Party, which dominated the nation when it was a puppet of the Soviet Union.

The opposition Democratic Party rejected the election results but disavowed the violence, Reuters reported.

Both political parties held closed meetings on Tuesday, and Parliament was planning to hold a special session to address the crisis, the national news agency reported. “At this moment, the situation in the capital city is relatively normal,” the Ulan Bator police chief, Amarbold, said on state television, according to Reuters. “It is very peaceful compared to yesterday, but the troops need to stay on the street.”

Landlocked between Russia and China, Mongolia is a remote and hauntingly beautiful country embraced by the Bush administration both for its strategic value and its emergence as a new democracy since the fall of the Soviet Union. The country is also rich in mineral resources and has seen its gross national product soar as foreign investment in mining has hit record highs. At the same time, Mongolia is a country where many people herd animals in the grasslands and enjoy little better than a subsistence livelihood.

The UB Post, an English-language newspaper in Ulan Bator, reported that 74 percent of the country’s 1.6 million eligible voters cast ballots in Sunday’s races. It also reported that the People’s Revolutionary Party had won at least half of the 76 legislative seats even as votes were still being counted. “Based on information we got through our primary units, we have won all mandates in nine provinces,” Yo Otgonbayar, secretary general of the party, said at a news conference in Ulan Bator.

A 16-member team of international election observers confirmed the results of the race. Leaders of the Democratic Party disagreed with the preliminary results but also wanted to meet with the People’s Revolutionary Party to defuse the crisis.

“From the Sea of Japan to the eastern border of Europe, we are the only functioning democracy, and we have a duty to save it,” the Democratic Party leader, Tsakhiagyn Elbegdorj, told Reuters.

Editor's commentary: Paranoid Putin and his KGB clique think that Bush wants to set up missile shield in Mongolia so they continue to block democratic reforms in this country. Elections in Mongolia were free and fair as they were in Russia last year. MPR changed nothing except the name, they are still old time communist lackeys of Moscow.