Reuters - September 29th, 2004

BANGKOK (Reuters) - A top U.N. rights envoy condemned on Wednesday the arrest and jailing of opposition activists in military-ruled Myanmar and said he had received credible reports of rights violations in border areas.

Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, denied entry to the former Burma earlier this year, said the dismal human rights situation in Myanmar had not improved despite the junta's pledge to work toward national reconciliation last year.

``Since the beginning of this year, the Special Rapporteur has received several reports about continuing arrests and harsh sentences for peaceful political activities,'' Pinheiro said in his latest report.

``All political prisoners must be released immediately and unconditionally, and no further arrests or punishment for peaceful activities should take place.''

The Brazilian academic said he had received ``credible and detailed reports'' of rights violations in border areas where government forces are battling ethnic rebel groups.

He gave no further details.

He said there was no sign of when democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi would be freed from house arrest, or curbs lifted on her opposition National League for Democracy (NLD).

Last week, four NLD officials were jailed for seven years after a closed trial inside Yangon's Insein prison. The two men and two women were charged with sending NLD statements to dissident groups on the Thai border.

NLD lawyers said there was no hard evidence against their clients, adding that they confessed under interrogation by military intelligence officials.

In his report, Pinheiro highlighted the case of two NLD members -- Than Than Tay and Tin Myint -- arrested in June and accused of communicating with groups on the border.

``Their whereabouts appear to be unknown and they potentially face long-term imprisonment,'' he said.

The junta is holding more than 1,300 political prisoners and Pinheiro called for the immediate release of 50 detainees he said were in poor health.

A democratic transition under the junta's ``roadmap to democracy'' would be impossible unless Myanmar's generals improved human rights and eased curbs on the opposition, he said.

``If the government wishes to promote a genuine process of political transition, fundamental human rights requirements have to be fulfilled,'' Pinheiro said.

A constitution-drafting National Convention, which opened in May with most of its 1,088 delegates handpicked by the junta, is expected to reconvene in November.

Critics say the process has no credibility without Suu Kyi and the NLD, which refused to take part while she remained under house arrest.

Four top Belarus officials have been banned from entering the European Union and the US, in protest at a crackdown on dissidents.

The EU says Belarus failed to investigate the disappearances of three opposition politicians and a journalist between 1999 and 2000.

The EU asked for the inquiry in May, after a report by the Council of Europe, which campaigns for democracy.

Those banned include the interior minister and the sports minister.

An EU spokesman named the four officials as: Interior Minister Vladimir Naumov, Prosecutor-General Victor Sheyman, Sports Minister Yuri Sivakov, and a high-ranking officer of the special forces, Colonel Pavlichenko.

Full story here.

Voting arrangements in Florida do not meet "basic international requirements" and could undermine the US election, former US President Jimmy Carter says.

He accused Florida Secretary of State Glenda Hood, a Republican, of trying to get the name of independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader included on the state ballot, knowing he might divert Democrat votes.

"It is unconscionable to perpetuate fraudulent or biased electoral practices in any nation," he added.

"With reforms unlikely at this late stage of the election, perhaps the only recourse will be to focus maximum public scrutiny on the suspicious process in Florida."

Full story here.

Editor's commentary: After endorsement of fraudulent, on a magnitude of 9 of Richter scale, referendum in Venezuela he is now back in States to try to invalidate American elections and present them as fraudulent just because Kerry is going to lose it big time. You don't recall Jimmy Carter (Democrat) saying that elections in America were fraudulent in 1992 or 1996 when Bill Clinton won.

It is a crime against people to endorse fraudulent elections or present free and fair elections as fraudulent in any nation.

Jimmy Carter reminds us of Red Cross observers during WWII when they didn't find anything wrong with treatment of prisoners in Nazi concentration camps across Europe. He also never found any wrongdoings during Milosevic years in Serbia. These elections were also free of democracy and opposition and fair to local dictator and his totalitarian party.

His logic is that because Nader is going to divert votes from Kerry he should be prevented from participating in elections!? How free of challengers and how fair to one candidate. FS Net founds most shocking and disturbing recent developments in democratic process around the world because frequently there are calls for reducing number of candidates and even legally barring them from running for office. All that is in the name of preventing one candidate or one party from getting votes lost to others. That's why authoritarian Russian leader Putin made several changes in election law to prevent parties and candidates from getting into Duma or even to participate in elections by raising percentage of total votes needed to enter Duma and other counterdemocracy measures. Democratic principle is very simple and it says that all eligible citizens may vote or candidate themselves no matter what. Any restrictions imposed to reduce candidates on the ballot, intimidate, harass people, impose additional biased requirements are violation of basic democratic principle that ultimately lead us to dictatorship and totalitarianism. Carter is insidiously trying to imply that Republicans are pushing Nader which is a lie since his views and program have nothing in common with Republicans or even Democrats. The only reason why Nader had to get help from Republicans is because Democrats are against him and since there are only two major parties in America then it is obvious why Nader had to seek support of "enemy of my enemy is my friend". Similar criticism persisted during presidential election in Serbia and governor election in California recently when many complained about too many presidential candidates draining votes from major candidates. Regardless of that, Tadic and Schwarzenegger have won as predicted. You guessed it right if you said that people behind those candidates who lost are the one complaining about. Instead of calling elections foul they should examine their political programs and reasons why people abandoned them for good. Kostunica and his policy of blocking reforms and protecting war criminals and Milosevic's mafia are the reasons why his candidate Marsicanin finished fourth not fraud or some conspiracy against him. Similar thing goes to former governor Gray Davis who ruined California and plunge it into multibillion dollar deficit. Both elections were found to be extremely free and fair and produce exact mirror image of voters' intentions.

We hope that Democratic Party of America will abandon these foul practices and call their leadership to distance themselves from people like Jimmy Carter. There are some good indications and that is recent decision of Democrats' nominees run Florida Supreme Court ruling in favor of Nader and dropout of several law suits against Nader challenging his nomination across America. That is the only democratic way, there are no Milosevic's real truth versions. there is only one principle, one truth and all others are lies. Carter's call for repeat of Gore's adolescent behavior and refusal to accept defeat as a man is simply appalling and if democracy doesn't work in America then we should really ask ourselves where else it works. We certainly don't need international observers from North Korea, Belarus or Cuba where democracy is utopia and nothing else, to tell us if American elections are free and fair. We also remember days of Stalin and his mockery version of democracy in countries with names like German Democratic Republic or Democratic People's Republic of Korea. One Stalin's democracy is down and one is on the way. Keep it that way.

Early results from local elections in Serbia suggest another setback for Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica.

In most municipalities the Democratic Party of pro-Western President Boris Tadic and the hard-line nationalist Serbian Radical Party are ahead.

The focus of interest has been the mayoral election in Belgrade.

The Democratic Party candidate won most votes there - but not enough to avoid a run-off against the SRS contender in two weeks' time.

Full story here.

MOSCOW (AP) -- Teachers from the southern Russian school that was the scene of a deadly siege by armed militants have counted 1,326 people who were held hostage -- a tally far higher than official figures to date, a Russian newspaper reported Saturday.

The Izvestia daily said teachers, working with a U.N.-affiliated refugee organization, looked at official class rolls at School No. 1, then tried to recall if the students had come to school on Sept. 1, when some 30 militants raided the school and herded the victims into a gymnasium.

Teacher Alena Giyoeva said the list was posted on the Web site www.beslan.ru.

Officials have yet to give a final definitive tally for the number of people held hostage from Sept. 1-3. In a published interview this week, Russian Prosecutor General Vladimir Ustinov said ``more than 1,156 people'' were held hostage.

Through most of the crisis, authorities insisted that just 354 people were being held -- a figure that angered many residents of Beslan who said it was wildly inaccurate.

Russian officials said that because so many relatives accompanied children to the first day of classes, it was impossible to say exactly how many hostages there were. Investigators say they also are having difficulty identifying some of the remains of those killed.

The siege ended in a hail of explosions and gunfire. More than 330 people were killed, nearly half of them children.

MINSK, Belarus (AP) -- Belarusian authorities have barred dozens of opposition candidates from running for parliament in next month's elections, a move opposition leaders condemned as part of President Alexander Lukashenko's relentless crackdown on dissent.

Only 26 of 58 candidates fielded by the United Civil Party have been cleared for the race. The Belarusian Popular Front would be able to field just 30 from its list of 55 candidates. And the Social-Democratic Party had only 20 out of 30 candidates qualified for running in the Oct. 17 elections.

Most candidates who were denied registration were accused by the authorities of making mistakes in their income declarations and other documents needed to qualify for the race.

Central Election Commission chief Nikolai Lazovik denied any bias Friday, but the opposition cried foul.

``The authorities are doing all they can to prevent the opposition from getting into parliament,'' said Stanislav Shushkevich, the first post-Soviet Belarusian leader who now heads the Social-Democratic Party.

``They are shamelessly using illegal means to falsify the elections and form a parliament fully obedient to Lukashenko,'' said Shushkevich, who was among those candidates whom the election commission refused to register.

Lukashenko called a referendum for the same day as the elections to ask voters to let him seek five more years in office after his second term expires in 2006 and remove presidential term limits.

Lukashenko, first elected in 1994, has made himself an outcast in the West by stifling dissent in the former Soviet republic.

BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese Communist Party chief Hu Jintao called for parliament to take a stronger watchdog role on the eve of a key leadership meeting but ruled out Western-style democracy for China in a sign any reform would be incremental.

Hu's vision of perpetuating Communist Party rule through good governance -- transparency and official accountability -- will top the agenda at a four-day plenum of the party's elite 198-member Central Committee opening on Thursday.

``History indicates that indiscriminately copying Western political systems is a blind alley for China,'' Hu told a gathering on Wednesday to mark the 50th anniversary of the National People's Congress (NPC), the rubber-stamp parliament.

The Communist Party, founded in Shanghai in 1921, has monopolized politics since the 1949 revolution, but in recent years has experimented with modest political change, searching for checks and balances to curb corruption and official waste.

In a 50-minute speech broadcast live on state television, Hu said the watchdog role of the NPC had vitality and superiority and should be strengthened.

``Exercising power without restriction or supervision is bound to result in power abusing and corruption.'' Hu said.

Communist Party leaders have warned in recent years that the party faces self-destruction if it fails to battle corruption, a scourge that helped topple many imperial dynasties.

Hu also indicated that power should be shifted from individuals to institutions through rule of law and making the people ``masters of their own house.''

In enacting and amending laws, Hu stressed adherence to the constitution.

However, he had no qualms about showing his leftist credentials when he called for ``adherence to the party's leadership'' and strengthening the ability of the party to rule -- Communist jargon for tightening the party's grip on power.

MASTERS OF HOUSE?

Pro-democracy dissident Jiang Qisheng was unimpressed with Hu's message, despite his efforts to build his power and popularity by portraying himself as a man of the people.

``If the people are truly masters of their own house, there should be democratic elections,'' Jiang said.

``Hu is no reformer. It's just a game,'' said Jiang, who was jailed for 18 months for his role in the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests, which were brutally crushed by the army.

Indeed, China's experiment with democracy has strict limits. The authorities have introduced direct elections in more than 660,000 villages nationwide, but frown on polls for higher levels of office and ban the formation of new political parties.

Hu supporters said the party chief, just under two years in the post, could not afford to rock the boat ahead of the plenum with rumors swirling about tensions between him and his predecessor, military chief Jiang Zemin.

Jiang, 78, who handed Hu the posts of party chief in 2002 and state president in 2003, has come under increasing pressure in recent weeks to complete the transition by resigning his last post, chairman of the Central Military Commission, at the plenum.

Barring last-minute jockeying, however, many analysts doubt Jiang will step down.

Hu's still influential predecessor did not appear on television at Wednesday's gathering and the official Xinhua news agency made no mention of his presence.

The behind-the-scenes rivalry between Hu and Jiang and their allies has emerged subtly into the open but analysts said it was unlikely to blow up into a full power struggle because both camps see stability as indispensable to sustainable growth in the world's seventh-biggest economy.

Hu, 61, has become more assertive in recent months but has yet to fully consolidate power, analysts said.

Editor's commentary: It is time for Hu and other communist high ranking officials to accept that Karl Marx was German and communism was not invented by Confucius. Communism failed in Europe long time ago and it is only matter of time when it will fail in China as well. Prolonging agony of this giant nation for selfish interests of few despots in communist party is road to nowhere.

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - The Vatican accused China Saturday of launching a fresh crackdown on Roman Catholics, upping the ante in its war of words against the Communist state.

Chief Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro Valls said in a statement that eight priests and two seminary students had been detained last month in northern China -- the latest in a long line of Catholics seized by Chinese police in recent years.

``If this news is indeed true, then we would find ourselves yet again facing a grave violation of religious freedom, which is a fundamental human right,'' Navarro Valls said.

China does not allow its Catholics to recognize the Pope's authority and forces Christians to belong to state-backed patriotic associations if they want to worship openly.

Those who refuse, worship secretly and are members of the so-called underground Church.

The Vatican said that among those arrested last month was Paolo Huo Junlong, the vicar-general of the Baoding diocese in northern Hebei province.

``As of September 6, 2004, there are 23 priests in the Baoding diocese who are detained or deprived of their freedom,'' Navarro Valls said.

Among those missing were Bishop Giacomo Su Zhimin, who vanished in 1997, and his number two, Francesco An Shuxin, last heard of in 1996. ``They are detained in a secret location and have not been put on trial,'' the Vatican said.

Another priest arrested in the late 1990s, Giovanni Gao Kexian, died in prison last month, it added. The Vatican appears to have decided on a policy of protesting whenever members of the Catholic hierarchy are arrested. Saturday's statement was at least the third time this year that the Church has criticized the Chinese government.

The Connecticut-based Cardinal Kung Foundation rights group has said the priests and seminarians were seized last month during a religious retreat in the village of Sujiazhuang, near Baoding city.

``About 20 police vehicles and a large number of security policeman surrounded Sujiazhuang village and conducted a house-to-house search in order to arrest these priests and seminarians,'' said group said in statement released in August.

China broke links with the Vatican in the 1950s after expelling foreign clergy.

The Vatican estimates it has about eight million followers in China, compared with about five million who follow the state-backed Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association.

The State Department's Annual Report on Religious Freedom, issued in December, rebuked China, saying that believers who did not belong to state-sanctioned groups suffered varying degrees of ``interference and harassment.''

China rejected the criticism as unfair.

TBILISI, Georgia (AP) -- Test results indicate Russian authorities drugged a Georgian journalist who was detained covering the school standoff in southern Russia, a medical expert said, raising new concern about allegations the government tried to hinder coverage of the crisis.

Nana Lezhava and another journalist from Georgia's independent Rustavi-2 television were detained Friday in Beslan, the site of the school siege. They were accused of violating visa rules when they entered Russia from neighboring Georgia and prevented from covering the aftermath of the tragedy.

The head of the oversight board at a Georgian drug research institute, Gela Lezhava, told a news conference Thursday that urine samples taken from Lezhava showed traces of tranquilizers. He said he suspects the journalist was drugged by Russian authorities.

The tests were conducted at the request of Rustavi-2, which aired an interview with the journalists Wednesday in which she said that after drinking coffee in a holding cell, she slept for 24 hours and woke up feeling weak. Both journalists were later released and returned to neighboring Georgia.

International watchdogs said this week that the detention of several journalists traveling to and from the site of the deadly school siege raised new concerns about press freedom in Russia. More than 320 people died in the siege, many of them children, and the government has been criticized for its handling of the crisis.

There are also accusations that a prominent Russian journalists and critic of the government's military campaign in Chechnya, Anna Politkovskaya, was victim of a deliberate case of food poisoning as she tried to travel to Beslan.

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists said Tuesday it was alarmed at reports Politkovskaya, who fell seriously ill after drinking tea on a flight from Moscow to southern Russia, may have been deliberately poisoned. Soria Blatmann, of Paris-based Reporters Without Borders, called for an investigation.

Relations between Russia and Georgia are tense. The school attack in Russia's North Ossetia region comes on the heels of fighting between Georgian forces and separatists across the border in Georgia's breakaway South Ossetia region, whose leaders are supported by Russia.

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Chechen rebels, in a swift reply to a Russian bounty offer for their leaders, promised on Thursday to give $20 million to anyone helping them to capture President Vladimir Putin.

On Wednesday the government offered $10 million for information that would help track down the two main Chechen leaders, Aslan Maskhadov and Shamil Basayev.

``We offer an award of $20 million to countries, organizations or individuals who give the Chechen republic active help in detaining the war criminal Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin,'' said a statement on rebel Web sites.

It was signed by ``the anti-terrorist center of the Chechen Republic,'' part of Maskhadov's unrecognized government.

The statement accuses Putin of launching war against Chechnya and of being responsible for the school siege in the town of Beslan last week, when at least 326 people died in a battle as Russian forces moved in to free the 1,000 hostages.

``Putin is blamed for ... many planned actions to discredit the lawful national liberation struggle of the Chechen people against foreign aggression, including the organization of the bloody war against children and adults in Beslan,'' it said.

Maskhadov, a relative moderate among Chechen separatists who have been fighting Russia for 10 years, has denied involvement in the hostage-taking. Basayev is yet to comment, but experts say the attack showed all the signs of his leadership.

BESLAN, Russia (AP) -- President Vladimir Putin ordered the borders of North Ossetia closed Saturday as security forces searched the southern region for militants who escaped the Russian storming of a school where they had held hundreds of people hostage, many who fled the building under fire. A news agency reported 322 bodies were pulled from the rubble.

Another 500 or so people remained hospitalized following the bloody and chaotic gunbattle Friday. Many were said to have been killed or wounded when a roof collapsed from an explosion before the Russian assault of the building began.

``All Russia grieves with you,'' Putin said during a visit to the scene Saturday, carried on government television. ``Even alongside the most cruel attacks of the past, this terrorist act occupies a special place because it was aimed at children.''

The ITAR-Tass news agency quoted Russian Deputy Prosecutor Sergei Fridinsky as saying 322 bodies, including those of 155 children, had been recovered from the school. It was a stunning figure because Russian officials had said only a day before that there were only 350 hostages -- a number that turned out to be at least three times lower than now believed.

Putin said he had ordered North Ossetia's borders closed while officials searched for suspects in the hostage-taking, carried out by militants seeking independence for the nearby republic of Chechnya.

``One of the goals of the terrorists was to sow ethnic enmity and blow up the North Caucasus,'' Putin said. ``Anyone who gives in to such a provocation will be viewed by us as abetting terrorism,'' he said.

Valery Andreyev, Russia's Federal Security Service chief in the region, said 10 Arabs were among 27 militants killed. The Arab presence among the attackers would support Putin's contention that al-Qaida terrorists were deeply involved in the Chechen conflict, where Muslim fighters have been battling Russian forces on and off for more than a decade.

The Federal Security Service chief in North Ossetia, Valery Andreyev, said more than 30 militants had seized the school. Channel One and NTV television reported that three of them had been captured.

New evidence suggested the attack had been planned long beforehand. Andreyev said Saturday that investigators were looking into whether militants had smuggled the explosives and weapons into the school and hidden them during a renovation this summer.

For some North Ossetians, grief had turned to anger.

``Fathers will bury their children, and after 40 days (the Orthodox Christian mourning period) ... they will take up weapons and seek revenge,'' said Alan Kargiyev, a 20-year-old university student in the regional capital Vladikavkaz.

The attack follows a suicide bomb attack outside a Moscow subway station Tuesday that killed eight people, and last week's near-simultaneous crash of two Russian jetliners last week after what officials believe were explosions on board. Those attacks were also linked to the conflict in Chechnya.

Putin arrived with smoke still rising from the shattered school, just hours after the last scattered shooting died away.

On Friday, commandos stormed the building and battled militants as crying children, some half-naked and covered with blood, fled through explosions and gunfire. Other children lay dead on stretchers lined up outside.

Dozens of people crowded around lists of survivors posted at the Beslan hospital, searching desperately for news of loved ones who were not yet accounted for. A man showed hospital nurses a photograph -- a young boy dressed in a suit, like he was going to a birthday party or holiday celebration.

``We run here, we run there, like we're out of our minds, trying to find out anything we can about them,'' said Tsiada Biazrova, 47, whose neighbors' children had yet to be found.

The majority of the dead who were found in the gym were killed by explosions before the assault began, causing part of the roof to collapse, Interfax and ITAR-Tass said, citing North Ossetian police.

An explosives expert told NTV television that the hostage-takers, themselves strapped with explosives, hung bombs from basketball hoops in the gym and set other explosive devices in the building.

Russian authorities said they stormed the building after the militants set off explosions and fired shots as emergency teams approached to collect the bodies of several men killed earlier. They said the hostage-takers had given them permission to take the corpses away.

As hostages took their chance to flee, the militants opened fire on them, and security forces -- along with town residents who had brought their own weapons -- opened covering fire to help the hostages escape. Commandos stormed into the building and secured it, then chased fleeing militants in the town, with shooting lasting for 10 hours.

Fleeing hostages, many of them wounded, streamed from the building into the surrounding area and parents searched frantically for their children. Ambulances couldn't carry all the injured and private cars were pressed into service.

The operation ended a 62-hour ordeal that began when masked gunmen burst into the school courtyard on Wednesday, shooting in the air and herding people into the gym.

The region's governor, Alexander Dzasokhov, said Friday that the militants had demanded that Russian troops leave Chechnya -- the first solid indication that the attack was connected to the rebellion.

Hostages told of more than two days of unspeakable horror -- of children so frightened they couldn't sleep, of captors coolly threatening to kill off hostages one by one. The gym where they were held was so cramped there was hardly room to move and so hot adults encouraged children to strip off their clothes.

When children fainted from lack of sleep, food and water, their captors simply sneered, said Alla Gadieyeva, 24, who was taken captive with her 7-year-old son and mother, all three among the survivors.

``They were totally indifferent,'' Gadieyeva said.

President Bush said the hostage siege was ``another grim reminder'' of the lengths to which terrorists will go. World governments joined Washington in condemning the militants.

Putin warned against letting the latest attack in North Ossetia stir up tensions in the multiethnic North Caucasus region. ``One of the goals of the terrorists was to sow ethnic enmity and blow up the North Caucasus,'' Putin said.

``Anyone who gives in to such a provocation will be viewed by us as abetting terrorism,'' he said.

Putin saw several of the hospitalized victims, stopping to stroke the head of one injured child and the arm of a woman.

Two emergency services workers were killed and three wounded, Interfax reported. Eighteen wounded commandos were being treated in a Defense Ministry hospital in the town of Vladikavkaz, the news agency reported, most of them with bullet wounds.

Intermittent negotiations led to the freeing of about 26 women and children on Thursday, and Russian officials and others had been in on-and-off contacts with the hostage-takers, but with few signs of progress toward a resolution.

Russian officials stressed that they had not planned to storm the school. The militants had reportedly threatened to blow up the building if authorities used force.

Two major hostage-taking raids by Chechen rebels outside the war-torn region in the past decade provoked Russian rescue operations that led to many deaths. The seizure of a Moscow theater in 2002 ended after a knockout gas was pumped into the building, debilitating the captors but causing almost all of the 129 hostage deaths.

In 1995 -- during the first of two wars in Chechnya in the past decade -- rebels led by guerrilla commander Shamil Basayev seized a hospital in the southern Russian city of Budyonnovsk, taking some 2,000 people hostage. The six-day standoff ended with a fierce Russian assault, and some 100 people died.

HAVANA (Reuters) - Cuban authorities called on the island's 11 million inhabitants on Thursday to save electricity in the face of prolonged blackouts that have added discomfort to a hot summer.

Frequent power cuts have brought complaints from Cubans over enduring sweltering nights with no fans or air conditioning and food rotting in their fridges.

The outages began after Cuba's largest power plant, located near the city of Matanzas, broke down in May during maintenance work, depriving the country of 330 megawatts, almost one fifth of its power needs.

Hurricane Charley made matters worse in western Cuba by downing high voltage power lines and electrical poles in and around Havana during its furious passage Aug. 13. The whole of the western province of Pinar del Rio had no power for 11 days.

Electricity Demand regulator Victor Puentes said the Antonio Guiteras generator near Matanzas, 60 miles east of Havana, will be repaired in 10 days, improving power supplies.

But maintenance work on other generators will mean power cuts will continue through the end of the year, Puentes said in an interview with the ruling Communist party newspaper Granma.

``We must continue saving electricity at work places and homes to contribute to the stability of this vital service,'' he said.

For many Cubans, the long outages have brought back memories of long blackouts during the so-called ``special period'' of the mid-1990s, when Cuba was plunged into economic crisis by the collapse of the Soviet Union, which supplied the island with cheap oil.

Cuba now generates 90 percent of its electricity from its own oil and gas production but the heavy crude is high in sulfur, which clots the thermoelectric generators.

Deprived of fans and television sets, Havana residents are once again obliged to sit on doorsteps waiting for blackouts to end or seek fresh air on the city's Malecon seawall.

``You cannot do anything. Yesterday the power was out almost all day, and during the night it went too. We could not see the end of the soap opera,'' said Aida Moreno, a housewife in the Havana suburb of Lawton.

``The food goes off in the fridge. You cannot keep anything,'' said a housewife in the residential district of Miramar. ``People are protesting,'' said shop guard Arnaldo Faure.

Editor's commentary: It seems that Fidel has invested too much into health care so there is not enough money to build more power plants.

THE HAGUE (Reuters) - Former Bosnian Serb Deputy Prime Minister Radoslav Brdjanin was sentenced to 32 years in prison by The Hague war crimes tribunal Wednesday for his role in ethnic cleansing during the 1992-95 Bosnian war.

Brdjanin, who was a prominent member of the Serbian Democratic Party of Bosnia and Herzegovina (SDS), was convicted of supporting killings, torture and persecution of Bosnian Croats and Muslims in 1992 but cleared of the gravest charge against him of genocide.

Brdjanin, who resigned in 1994 from the hard-line Serb Democratic Party founded by Bosnian Serb wartime leader Radovan Karadzic, backed a plan for Bosnian Serb forces to drive non-Serbs from parts of Bosnia by force and fear, the court said.

``The Trial Chamber found that the Accused made one of his most substantial contributions to the implementation of the Strategic Plan by way of a propaganda campaign against Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats,'' the court said.

Serb atrocities in Bosnia horrified the outside world, provoking U.N. sanctions against Serbia and eventually U.S. air raids against the Bosnian Serbs, followed soon after by the Dayton peace accords in 1995.

Bosnian Croats and Muslims were held, killed or tortured in Serb-run detention camps during the war. Television images of emaciated inmates prompted comparisons with Holocaust victims.

Judges said Brdjanin, 56, would be given five years credit for the time he had already spent in detention.