Reuters - April 30th, 2005

NEAR SAMAWA, Iraq (Reuters) - Investigators have uncovered a mass grave in southern Iraq containing as many as 1,500 bodies, most of them thought to be Kurds forcibly removed from their homes in the late 1980s.

The site, near the town of Samawa, about 180 miles south of Baghdad, consists of 18 shallow trenches dug by earth-moving vehicles into hard limestone rock.

Most of the victims were women and children who were apparently lined up in front of the pits and shot with AK-47 assault rifles, according to a U.S. investigator.

Around 110 bodies have been excavated from the site so far, nearly two thirds of them children and teenagers.

They are being forensically examined and evidence gathered will be used to build cases against Saddam Hussein and his top deputies for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.

The site appears to have been carefully chosen and was well concealed, factors prosecutors believe will convince a court of the systematic nature of the crime.

Many of the victims were wearing clothing that is traditionally Kurdish, and even specific to certain villages. They were wrapped in multiple layers, suggesting they knew they were being moved somewhere, investigators said.

The site was first identified early last year by the U.S. Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, but proper examination did not begin until early this month and finished on April 24.

A reporter was taken to visit the site with Iraq's minister of human rights, an Iraqi judge and international experts.

It is one of around 300 suspected mass graves that have been discovered around Iraq since Saddam was overthrown. Some contain as few as a dozen bodies, while others, including one near the southern city of Basra, contain several thousand.

In the area around Samawa, a largely Shi'ite Muslim town where Saddam cracked down against locals after an uprising in 1991, 27 suspected grave sites have been found.

An official from the Regime Crimes Liaison Office, a U.S. body working with Iraqi authorities to build evidence of crimes committed by the former government, said the Kurds were probably moved south during the Anfal campaigns of 1987-88.

During that period, Saddam and his top lieutenants oversaw the rounding up and forced removal of hundreds of thousands of Kurds from towns and villages across northern Iraq.

Saddam's armies crushed Kurdish opposition throughout the region and are accused of gassing residents of Halabja, near the Iranian border, killing more than 5,000 people.

The excavation of grave sites at this point is focused on gathering evidence for trials against former Iraqi leaders due to begin this year. Precise identification of victims, including DNA analysis, is not expected to happen for some time.

Bakhtiar Amin, Iraq's outgoing human rights minister, who is a Kurd, said Iraqi authorities needed to set up some sort of fund for the victims of Saddam's rule. He suggested that five percent of oil revenues be allocated for compensation.

``Compassion is not sufficient,'' he said. ``Something tangible needs to be done for the victims of Saddam's regime.''

Editor's commentary: Anything but death sentence for Saddam would be an insult to these innocent women and children slaughtered for no logical reason at all. Those who advocate reprieve for Saddam or mercy are nothing better than him, Satan followers who want to destroy humankind (world of men as Aragorn would say in LOTR).

BEIJING (AP) -- A Chinese journalist who worked for a financial newspaper was sentenced Saturday to 10 years in prison on charges of giving state secrets to foreigners.

Shi Tao's family said the sentence was the minimum possible under his March conviction ''illegally providing state secrets to foreigners.'' They said the maximum was life in prison.

Shi worked at the Contemporary Business News, a financial publication, and was convicted of leaking the contents of a confidential memo at the paper to a foreign publication, the official Xinhua News Agency said in the first detailed account of charges against him. It didn't explain the nature of the memo or identify the foreign publication.

Besides working as a journalist, Shi also published Internet essays advocating reforms to China's one-party system.

The 37-year-old Shi was sentenced by a court in the central city of Changsha. His arrest in November prompted appeals for his release by activists including the international writers group PEN.

A series of Chinese journalists have faced similar charges of violating vague security laws as communist leaders struggle to maintain control of information in the burgeoning Internet era.

Prosecutors said Shi attended a meeting last April at his newspaper at which a memo was read out ''with a special warning saying the contents were classified and should not be spread further,'' Xinhua reported.

''Shi sent the main contents of the document abroad via e-mail and had it published in an overseas publication. The e-mail was picked up time and again by several overseas Internet portals,'' Xinhua said.

Shi was arrested at home in the northwestern province of Shanxi. Police confiscated his computer, writings and other personal belongings, according to the U.S.-based Independent Chinese PEN Center, part of PEN.

HAVANA (Reuters) - The leaders of Cuba and Venezuela relished their roles as Washington's bad boys in Latin American on Friday and vowed to build a socialist alternative to U.S. policies in the hemisphere.

President Fidel Castro and the younger and equally loquacious Hugo Chavez mocked Bush administration charges that their burgeoning partnership threatens to undermine democracy in Latin America.

``I'm realizing that your friendship is hurting my image,'' Castro joked to Chavez during a meeting with hundreds of free trade opponents from across the Americas.

The Bush administration's former point man for Latin America, Otto Reich, recently called Havana and Caracas the region's ``axis of subversion'' and accused Chavez of squandering Venezuelan oil wealth to prop up Castro's 46-year-long rule.

``With the combination of Castro's evil genius, experience in political warfare and economic desperation, and Chavez's unlimited money and recklessness, the peace of this region in peril,'' Reich wrote in an article.

Castro, 78, read out Reich's words to a delighted audience in Havana's Karl Marx theater.

Among the attendees were Bolivian coca farmer Evo Morales, whose peasant movement helped oust a U.S. ally from the presidency in 2003, and former Salvadoran guerrilla Shafik Handal, leader of the Farabundo Marti Liberation Front.

``If we are speaking of an axis, that axis is spreading in all directions and turning into masses of people that are rising up,'' said Chavez, who has aligned his oil-exporting nation with Cuba since his election in 1999.

Appealing to poverty-stricken Latin Americans disillusioned with the promises of free-market capitalism, Chavez last year countered the troubled U.S.-backed Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) with his Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA, also Spanish for dawn).

Editor's commentary: Drug dealers and terrorists are the only followers and supporters of those two assholes that have no shame in their exhibitionism. Good question for those two would be to ask if they ever read Karl Marx and his theories. Marx never mentioned drugs and terrorism as the way of helping people achieving higher living standard and social justice. People in Cuba and Venezuela without employment and rampant government corruption are not going to reach Marx's goals anytime soon. As a matter of fact they are getting farther away from it. All that Castro and Chavez ever did was to systematically loot private property and curb people's rights. Being thief and repressive tyrant is all they managed to accomplish. According to Marx, socialism is the type of society in which people get paid fair for their work. Those who work more earn more and vice versa. Does Cuba looks like socialist society or will Venezuela under Chavez ever reach that goal? They can call themselves socialists, communists (in communism people get paid fair for their work and those who can't work are taken care of as well) or simply tell the truth that whole world knows for long time.

Villagers in India's Andamans and Nicobar Islands have denounced 'paltry' tsunami compensation relief they have received from the local government.

One woman received a cheque of just two rupees (less than five US cents) for damage to her coconut crops.

Thousands of islanders were killed in the 26 December Indian Ocean tsunami and many survivors were made homeless.

India's central government promised millions of dollars worth of aid to the Andamans after the tsunami.

The BBC has seen a cheque for two rupees sent to Charity Champion, who lives in the village of Nancowrie, an island in the worst hit Nicobar group.

"I lost 300 coconut and areca nut trees in the tsunami, with damage running up to 20,000 rupees ($457)," Charity told the BBC.

"But even judging by the government's assessment of damage, I should have received at least five to six thousand rupees ($114-$137).

"You don't pay two rupees even for a broken window pane."

Her nearest bank demands a deposit of 500 rupees to open an account. She said she was in no mood to do that, just to cash in her two rupee cheque.

A spokesman for the islands' agriculture department, who did not wish to be named, told the BBC the compensation paid was "based on objective reality."

Full story here.

Editor's commentary: Just another horrific example of how corrupt governments squander aid money. Millions of dollars of aid never left New Delhi and while people who survived one of the most deadliest tsunamis ever get nickels and dimes, bureaucrats in New Delhi are getting richer on poor's misery. That is sad "objective reality" around the world today. Without stringent controls over aid money any aid is doomed to be squandered by corrupt government crooks.

HAVANA (Reuters) - A Cuban court handed down prison sentences of up to 18 years for 23 men who stormed the Mexican Embassy three years ago in a bid to flee the country, a human rights group said on Tuesday.

The young men rammed a bus through the embassy gates on Feb. 27, 2002. Cuban special forces later entered the compound at the request of Mexican diplomats and took away the asylum-seekers.

Pedro Plasencia, whom prosecutors said master-minded the break-in, received the toughest sentence of 18 years, the Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation said.

The others got sentences ranging from three to 15 years for violating a diplomatic mission, damage to property and theft of the bus.

The jail terms were called ``excessive'' by the head of the rights group, veteran activist Elizardo Sanchez.

``The accused hurt nobody and the Mexican government made no claim for minor damages to the metal gate,'' Sanchez said.

Sanchez said President Fidel Castro's Communist government had sought severe punishment to deter new bids for asylum. There was no word from authorities on the sentencing.

The incident was sparked by rumors Mexico was offering exit visas to Cubans, which drew a crowd of several hundred people outside the embassy. The hijacked bus sped up the street and plowed through the gates that night.

The asylum-seekers were peacefully expelled and led away by a special police unit after a tense 30-hour stand-off.

Mexico requested the police operation, calling the intruders criminals who did not request asylum on political grounds but merely wanted to leave the island for economic reasons.

Cuba said the crowd that sought to enter the compound was spurred by the U.S.-funded anti-Castro station Radio Marti, based in Miami, which had distorted remarks by Mexico's foreign minister at the time, Jorge Castaneda, that his country would ``open'' its embassy to Cubans.

Editor's commentary: If all political parties are banned by Castro and every political view different than ruling party's views is punishable with treason and subversion then how come people in Cuba are not persecuted on the basis of political opinion? Poverty in Cuba is sole result of Castro's failed economic reforms and while he blames America for economic blockade fact is that with the rest of the world Cuba conducts trade freely. Is doing business with America that important and essential? Serbia and Iraq had better living standard than Cuba during international sanctions and their expulsion from UN. They had their own dictators as well but yet managed to fare far better than Cuba under Castro. The only reason why Cuba is at the bottom of world living standard ladder is Fidel Castro and his constant terror he imposes on citizens of Cuba. Is Cuba really that poor so that millions must seek their jobs outside as claimed by Castro's government or is there something else. Castro and other Moscow stooges try to enforce idea that human lives can be government property that can be traded with or simply destroyed at government leisure. Moscow stooges around the world claim that they have the right to decide who lives and who dies, that they are the one who created life and therefore they can terminate it at their discretion. The only ones who can live in Cuba today are Castro's henchmen and brainless zombies who can't make any decision for themselves but wait Castro to tell them whether they can live or die. Encouraging this practice around the world will only help destroy human spirit and turn us back to dark Middle Ages when local warlords ruled over peasants and killed whom ever they wanted to without any penalty. Who needs that kind of life anyway, it's better to be dead than to become slave or to use new term, government property. For many people in today's world death is the only salvation they can get.

The former chief of the Yugoslav armed forces, Gen Nebojsa Pavkovic, has left Serbia for The Hague to surrender to the UN war crimes tribunal.

He gave himself up to the Serbian authorities on Friday.

Gen Pavkovic, 59, was indicted along with three other army and police officers, accused of planning and executing a "deliberate and widespread or systematic campaign of terror and violence directed at Kosovo Albanian civilians".

Two of the other accused have already surrendered to the tribunal, while the third is still in hiding.

Full story here.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has met Belarusian dissidents on the sidelines of a Nato summit in neighbouring Lithuania.

She told them there will be "a road to democracy in Belarus", which she has described as the "last true dictatorship" in central Europe. She defended the right to public protests and called for a free media as well as credible elections.

The seven dissidents announced plans for massive street protests against the authorities in the Belarusian capital, Minsk.

Alexander Dobrovoskiy, deputy chairman of the United Civic Party, who was at the meeting, said Ms Rice supported the creation of a credible political alternative to the current regime.

Full story here.

Four Russian soldiers have been found hanged in a forest in the Saratov region of southern Russia.

A defence spokesman said the men - from a helicopter training unit - had been summoned to a local prosecutor's office on suspicion of theft on Tuesday.

He said the four had almost completed their two-year military service. A commission from Moscow is flying to Saratov to investigate the deaths.

A human rights group suggested the four may have been murdered.

Full story here.

Editor's commentary: They probably refused to rape teenage Chechen girls like their senior officers do so they ended hanging on a tree. In Russian military there is only one rule: You become beast and spread terror or you end up dead. Who needs that kind of military anyway expect psychopaths and murderers like Zhirinovsky and company. There are plenty of those in Russia that should be hanged already like mafia members and outlaw Russian officers not some innocent conscripts.

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- The largest political bloc in Iraq's new government demanded the execution of Saddam Hussein if the ousted leader is convicted of war crimes, and said Monday that President Jalal Talabani should step down if he is not prepared to sign the death warrant.

''This is something that cannot be discussed at all,'' said Ali al-Dabagh, a spokesman for the clergy-led United Iraqi Alliance, which holds 140 seats in Iraq's 275-member National Assembly. ''We feel he is a criminal. He is the No. 1 criminal in the world. He is a murderer.''

Talabani, a former Kurdish rebel leader, told the British Broadcasting Corp. on Monday that signing a death warrant for Saddam would be contrary to his beliefs as a human rights advocate and opponent of capital punishment.

''I personally signed a call for ending execution throughout the world, and I'm respecting my signature,'' Talabani told the BBC. He conceded, however, that he was probably alone in the government in holding this view.

''No one is listening to me, to be frank with you,'' Talabani told the BBC. ''My two partners in the presidency, the government, the House, all of them are for sentencing Saddam Hussein to death before the court will decide.''

Saddam and his top lieutenants will be tried before the Iraqi Special Tribunal established in late 2003. The tribunal has given no official dates for starting the trials, although national security adviser Mouwafak al-Rubaie said this month that Saddam could go on trial by year's end.

The death penalty was reintroduced in Iraq in August 2004 for crimes including murder, endangering national security and drug trafficking. But it is only meant to be a temporary measure in the effort to stamp out the country's insurgency.

Al-Dabagh, a member of the Shiite majority long oppressed under Saddam's rule, said Saddam's execution was not negotiable.

''If the court says he's a criminal, we will follow it,'' al-Dabagh told The Associated Press. Talabani ''is now the president, and he should follow the law. If he doesn't want to sign it, then he should resign the presidency.''

Talabani said he might abstain from making a decision and leave it to his two deputies.

''I can go on holiday and let the two others decide,'' he told the BBC.

Saddam was captured north of Baghdad in December 2003 and has been in custody with several of his top aides at a U.S.-guarded detention facility near Baghdad's international airport.

He spends his days in a 10 by 13 foot cell and ''seems to be enjoying himself'' reading books, national security adviser Mouwafak al-Rubaie said.

''He chooses every day books, from hundreds of choices -- literature, fiction, not political stuff,'' al-Rubaie said.

Saddam was also allowed to watch a recording of the election of the presidency council, and continues to write what al-Rubaie called ''rubbishy'' poetry. He could not provide an example.

GENEVA (Reuters) - The United Nations top human rights body on Thursday kept the pressure on Cuba over its alleged abuses by backing a U.S. call to renew the mandate of a special investigator for the country.

But Havana called the decision ``hypocrisy'' and immediately hit back with a resolution of its own charging the United States with violating prisoners' rights at Guantanamo Bay naval base, where suspects in Washington's war on terrorism are held.

Cuba, whose motion will not be voted on until next week, made a similar attempt to confront Washington over conditions at the naval base on its territory last year, but subsequently withdrew the bid for lack of support.

It was the six successive year in which the 53-state Commission on Human Rights had approved a motion critical of the Marxist government of President Fidel Castro.

``The Cuban government has failed to take the steps that would guarantee its own people the most basic human rights,'' U.S. delegation member Lino Piedra told the commission.

``Instead they have persisted in imposing a totalitarian state that deprives the people of the right of expressing dissent without incurring a decades-long prison sentence,'' he said.

In a bid to ensure the widest possible support, Washington put forward a brief four-paragraph text that merely called on the U.N.'s special envoy for Cuba, French magistrate Christine Chanet, to continue her attempts to visit the Caribbean island.

It was rewarded with a four-vote majority, compared with just one in 2004, with 21 states backing it, 17 voting against and 15 abstaining.

``Cuba does not accept this resolution and will not cooperate with its spurious mandate,'' Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque said at a news conference in Havana.

The United States has ``no moral authority'' to criticize Cuba's human rights record in view of abuses committed by U.S troops on prisoners in Iraq and at Guantanamo, he said.

JAILED DISSIDENTS

The commission called on Cuba to cooperate with Chanet, who in her latest report urged the Communist state to free all political dissidents, grant freedom of expression and lift restrictions on travel.

Havana has yet to allow the French official, first appointed in 2003, to visit the Caribbean island where Castro has governed since 1959. Last week, Castro said he ``couldn't care a less'' about the outcome of the U.N. vote on Cuba.

The European Union, which has been seeking to improve ties with Havana after a two-year rift over the jailing of dissidents, co-sponsored the U.S. resolution.

``The European Union's servile attitude toward the United States is pathetic,'' Perez Roque said, adding that a recent rapprochement between the Brussels and Havana was at risk.

Cuba says the U.S. government has insisted on singling out Cuba on its human rights record as a pretext to justify a policy of ``aggression'' through a four-decade-old trade embargo.

Among the Latin Americans, whose aligning with Washington provokes Havana's wrath, Mexico, Costa Rica, Guatemala and Honduras joined the United States. Only Cuba voted ``no'' and the other seven, including Brazil and Argentina, abstained.

Perez Roque said Mexico voted for the resolution in exchange for U.S. backing for its candidate for secretary general of the Organization of American States, Foreign Minister Luis Ernesto Derbez.

Cuba accused Washington of putting pressure on impoverished African nations to abstain, threatening to shut off imports of cotton from one country if it voted against the resolution.

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- Iran on Tuesday rejected a Canadian demand for an international forensic team to examine the body of an Iranian-Canadian photojournalist who died in Iranian custody, a decision likely to further sour relations between the two countries.

Canada is campaigning to determine the cause of death of Zahra Kazemi, who died in 2003, several days after being arrested for taking photos of a demonstration outside a Tehran prison.

A spokesman for the Canadian Foreign Affairs Ministry criticized Iran's decision, but said it was not surprising.

``It's consistent with the pattern of cover-up and lies,'' Sebastien Theberge said.

Hard-line authorities said she died of a stroke, but a commission appointed by Iran's president found Kazemi died of a fractured skull and brain hemorrhage that were caused by the impact of a hard object. Iranian reformists have said she was tortured to death.

A doctor who said he examined the 54-year-old photographer in the hospital, Shahram Azam, said her body bore injuries consistent with torture and rape. His allegation prompted Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Pierre Pettigrew to demand an international forensic examination.

Iran's judiciary, however, rejected an international inquiry, saying Iranian authorities would carry out any investigation.

``Such a demand does not conform with Iranian laws or international regulations,'' the spokesman for Iran's judges, Jamal Karimirad, told reporters Tuesday.

``Kazemi was an Iranian citizen. Although she also had Canadian nationality, under Iran's laws, an additional citizenship doesn't negate her Iranian nationality. Therefore, Iran's judiciary is competent to carry out the investigation,'' Karimirad said.

Karimirad also denied that Azam had examined Kazemi. He dismissed Azam's comments as ``baseless and false'' and hinted they were made to gain political asylum in Canada.

``The name of this person doesn't exist in any of the (official) documents. This person for some reason has won the confidence of the Canadian government to obtain asylum,'' Karimirad said.

Theberge said Canada has documents supporting Dr. Azam worked at the hospital the night Kazemi died.

Azam, who spoke about Kazemi's injuries after moving to Canada, said he examined Kazemi in a Tehran hospital emergency ward after she was transferred from Evin prison.

Abdolfattah Soltani, one of the lawyers representing Kazemi's mother, Ezzat Ebrahimi, said he wanted a neutral judge not connected to the hard-liners who dominate the judiciary to carry out the investigation.

``We don't question the fact that Iranian courts are competent to hear the case but we want a neutral judge free from the domination of the Tehran prosecutor general office to prove the death,'' Soltani said.

Last year, an Iranian court acquitted secret agent Mohammad Reza Aghdam Ahmadi of killing Kazemi. Lawyers representing Kazemi's relatives have conceded that Ahmadi was not guilty, but they believe Kazemi was beaten to death by a hard-line prison official.

Hard-liners were angered when the lawyers -- led by Noble Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi -- accused a prison official by name of inflicting the fatal blow.

Karimirad said family lawyers have been invited to attend a hearing in May when explanations for her death will be presented.

But Karimirad declined to reveal more about the hearing. Soltani said he didn't know its purpose but said he and his colleagues will insist on their demand to summon several top officials, including hard-line Tehran Prosecutor General Saeed Mortazavi, to explain Kazemi's death.

BERLIN (AP) -- A partial replica of the Berlin Wall at the former Checkpoint Charlie border crossing must be torn down, along with 1,065 crosses commemorating people who were killed trying to escape former communist East Germany, a court ruled Friday.

The head of a private group that put up the memorial at the former east-west crossing in downtown Berlin said she would appeal.

``We will not give up responsibility for this historic place,'' said Alexandra Hildebrandt, who heads a Checkpoint Charlie museum.

The museum put up the crosses and the rebuilt concrete barrier on leased land. The lease expired at the end of last year and the bank that owns the land has sued to have the memorial removed.

East Germany's communist regime built the Wall in 1961 to keep citizens from fleeing to the West through then-West Berlin. It fell on Nov. 9, 1989 in the popular uprising that peacefully toppled the communist regime, which enforced shoot-to-kill orders at the Wall and elsewhere on the east-west German border.

Editor's commentary: True reasons for this sacrilege can be found in Reuters report:

The installation has been embroiled in controversy for months. Politicians from Berlin's ruling coalition of Social Democrats and ex-communist PDS have called it tacky and exploitative and criticised the exhibition of crosses just a few minutes walk away from the new Berlin Holocaust Memorial.

What to expect from Stalinist murderers from former Stasi in PDS and their coalition partners led by Marxist Schroeder except "nostalgia" for oppression, terror, propaganda lies, Russian troops, barbed wire and license to torture and kill people at will. Except this memorial there isn't any other that would be a proper replacement which means that victims of commie killers from former puppet regime in East Germany will be forgotten while "nostalgia" will be on every leftist TV station fiannced by Gazprom and other Russian state companies. It is obvious that Schroeder is nothing but Moscow puppet as well as his coalition partners from party of Stasi murderers PDS.

The Berlin Senate said it would present plans for a commemoration of its own, although the city's tortured history of delay and dissent over its other memorials does not suggest that any replacement will be set up quickly.

When we catch horizon, as it is common practice in all Moscow controlled areas around the world. This is also part of "nostalgia" for "good" old days of Stalin.

LONDON (AP) -- Prime Minister Tony Blair asked for a third term on Tuesday, calling a national election for May 5 that he is expected to win despite the unpopular Iraq war, continued public grumbling about public services, and an apparent drop in his opinion poll lead.

``It's a big choice and there's a lot at stake,'' Blair said after Queen Elizabeth II granted his request to dissolve Parliament. ``The British people are the boss and they are the ones who will make it.''

Blair is seeking a third term in office -- his last, he has said -- after eight years in power, commanding a huge majority in the House of Commons.

Opinion polls published Tuesday showed Blair's Labour Party running anywhere from 2 points to 5 points ahead of the opposition Conservatives -- more or less a statistical dead heat.

But Britain's electoral system favors Labour, whose share of the vote is spread more efficiently across the country, and analysts say Conservative leader Michael Howard needs to grab a lead of around 8 points to have a shot at winning. It is more likely, analysts say, that Blair will win with a reduced majority in the Commons.

Still, Blair's position is nothing like the double-digit poll leads Labour racked up before the 2001 election. And he may be vulnerable to apathy among his supporters -- a MORI poll showed Conservatives more likely to vote than Labour supporters.

``Hardworking families -- honest people who do the right thing, who respect others, who provide for their children, who look after their homes and contribute to their communities -- are being taken for granted by Mr. Blair,'' Howard said.

Howard has highlighted issues including immigration, education and health care. But he has been unable to capitalize on discontent about the Iraq war, because he and his party supported it.

Britain's participation in invading in Iraq, based on what proved to be false claims that Saddam Hussein threatened the region with weapons of mass destruction, overshadowed Blair's second term.

Critics accuse Blair of strong-arming his attorney general to declare that the war was legal. The prime minister denies any such pressure.

The government has also faced accusations, ruled unfounded by several official inquiries, that it manipulated shaky intelligence on WMD to bolster the case for military action.

Blair changed Britain's political landscape early in his first term, winning referendums to give a degree of self-government to Wales and Scotland, and then coaxing Northern Ireland's parties into a peace agreement which still holds despite the collapse of local government there.

Blair also pushed through a reform of the House of Lords, ejecting most of the hereditary members, but the government still has not decided on a new way of selecting members.

With the public, however, opinion polls show that what counts most is the government's record on health, schools and the economy.

If the election is about the economy, Blair should be OK. Some 68 percent of the sample in an ICM poll published Tuesday agreed that the economy is doing well.

The prime minister was his party's great electoral asset in 1997, a fresh face who called his party ``New Labour,'' ditched its traditionally socialist image, and wooed the middle class and business vote.

But his credibility and trust ratings have dived. A Populus poll published Tuesday found that 73 percent of the sample thought Blair had a secret policy agenda, 60 percent thought he said what he thought people wanted to hear, and 51 percent thought he had shown bad judgment in a crisis. However, 66 percent rated him a strong leader, compared with 42 percent who had the same opinion of Howard.

Labour has a massive lead in the 659-seat House of Commons, with 410 lawmakers -- 161 more than all the other parties combined.

Most believe that such a lead is insurmountable. But Labour officials fear that a low turnout by core Labour supporters, coupled with a voter backlash over the war, could substantially cut the government's majority -- potentially undermining Blair's authority.