Reuters - August 31st, 2005

BESLAN, Russia (Reuters) - Beslan's bereaved mothers will tell Russian President Vladimir Putin he is to blame for the death of their children and that unless lessons are learned from official blundering the tragedy could be repeated.

Susanna Dudiyeva, whose 12-year-old son Zaurbek was among 331 people, half of them children, killed after Chechen rebels seized their school in southern Russia, said late on Tuesday her grief gave her the right to speak frankly to Putin.

She and the Beslan Mothers' Committee she leads will tell him in the Kremlin on September 2 -- a year and a day on from the start of the siege -- that official incompetence that made the bloodshed worse is being covered up, she said.

``I will say that we think President Putin is to blame for what happened. As for what else I will say, well I am unpredictable and I can't tell the exact words I will use but it will be serious,'' she said in the group's office, where black-clad women meet daily to discuss their plans.

For a year, Beslan residents have demanded a meeting with Putin to ask how the tense stand-off collapsed into a bloody gunfight and inferno on September 3.

The meeting is unusual because Putin usually steers clear of potentially embarrassing public encounters with angry voters. Ordinary Russians he does meet are almost always deferential.

Putin visited Beslan immediately after the bloodshed but arrived at night, stayed a few hours and spent most of the time in meetings with officials.

The mothers also want to complain about the incompetence they say allowed Chechen rebels to drive to their small town from Chechnya along Russia's most heavily guarded roads.

Shamil Basayev, the Chechen warlord who says he organized the raid, said late on Tuesday security forces allowed his fighters to reach Beslan as part of an ambush planned by Russian intelligence that went wrong. Officials rejected his version.

``THE PRICE OF OUR CHILDREN'S LIVES''

``We have the right to speak out. Our right to speak out was forced on us. We got this right at the price of our children's lives,'' said Dudiyeva, slim and pale in her mourning outfit of black dress and headscarf.

North Ossetian President Taimuraz Mamsurov joined the growing chorus of Russian politicians and officials demanding that Putin scrap a mid-1990s moratorium on death sentences.

``If there is no moratorium to kill children on this planet, there should be no moratorium for killing murderers,'' he said in a dramatic televised statement.

But Mamsurov, nominated to his post in North Ossetia, which includes Beslan, after the siege, urged people not to give in to their emotions.

``Hatred and revenge. I know that some of us would put these feelings in the first place,'' he said. ``But hatred is blind, while our wrath should be open-eyed and pragmatic. All those responsible should be punished.''

An opinion poll published on Wednesday by Levada-Centre, a polling organization, said half of the Russians questioned share the Beslan mothers' view that officials mishandled the response.

But there has been very little political fallout for Putin, who enjoys consistently high levels of popularity and has overseen a booming economy fueled by high oil prices.

The siege followed other hostage-takings by Chechen rebels fighting a 10-year war to end Moscow's rule over their homeland, which borders the North Ossetia region.

The Beslan mothers say the other raids, notably the Nord-Ost theater siege in Moscow in 2002 and the Budyonnovsk hostage-taking in 1995 -- which each cost more than a hundred lives -- brought no reforms.

They want their loss to be the last.

``I think that if after this, after our visit, nothing changes, like nothing changed after Nord-Ost or Budyonnovsk ... then we will know that nothing is going to change and that we will have to do it all for ourselves,'' Dudiyeva said.

MOSCOW (AP) -- A Bosnian Serb sought by the war crimes tribunal in The Hague has been arrested in Russia, the RIA-Novosti news agency quoted a Siberian official as saying.

Dragan Zelenovic was arrested in the Khanty-Mansiisk region of Siberia, the report said. He was a military police officer indicted for alleged crimes against humanity during the 1992 Bosnian Serb assault on the Bosnian town of Foca.

''We detained Dragan Zelenovic in connection with his being wanted by the international tribunal on the former Yugoslavia,'' the agency quoted Anatoly Vorotov, head of the region's criminal investigations department, as saying.

Regional prosecutors have prepared documents needed for Zelenovic's extradition and were planning to send them Wednesday to the office of Russia's chief prosecutor in Moscow, the Interfax news agency quoted deputy regional prosecutor Vladimir Tylkov as saying.

Regional police officials reached by telephone by The Associated Press said they could not confirm the reports.

Rasim Ljajic, head of Serbia-Montenegro government body dealing with the tribunal in The Hague, said Belgrade is unlikely to seek Zelenovic's extradition because he is not a citizen of Serbia-Montenegro. He did not say whether Russian authorities had informed Belgrade about Zelenovic's arrest.

U.N. war crimes prosecutor Carla del Ponte said in June that another fugitive -- Serb police general Vlastimir Djordjevic, indicted for alleged atrocities in Kosovo -- was living in Russia.

The RIA-Novosti report quoted Vorotov as saying that Zelenovic had lived in Khanty-Mansiisk, 1,200 miles east of Moscow for several years under an assumed name and had worked in the construction industry.

PORTO ALEGRE, Brazil (Reuters) - The interim leader of Brazil's ruling party, brought in to rescue it from the worst corruption scandal in its 25-year history, will step down next month in a blow to President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

Tarso Genro, a former education minister and a ruling Workers' Party stalwart, said on Monday he quit because the party was unwilling to change its ways.

``We postulated a vision of breaking (with the past) and that isn't what we're seeing happen,'' he said at a news conference in his hometown, the southern city of Porto Alegre.

Lula handpicked Genro to clean up the party after allegations emerged three months ago it siphoned off public funds to buy votes in Congress and improperly financed election campaigns.

Those allegations prompted the resignation of party leader Jose Genoino, a former guerrilla and a representative in the lower house of Congress.

Putting an end to weeks of speculation, Genro withdrew his candidacy for party leader. Party elections have been scheduled for September 18.

His decision also marked a victory for Jose Dirceu, a former party president who has been locked in an internal power struggle with Genro. Dirceu, who was forced to resign as Lula's chief of staff in June after allegations he helped orchestrate the vote-buying scheme, has resisted calls to withdraw his candidacy to regain the party presidency.

Both Genro and Dirceu are members of a faction called the ''Majority Camp,'' which is credited with steering the party to the political center in the late 1990s, to the dismay of its members on the far left.

Infighting in the Majority Camp has strengthened election candidates from the left of the party who are critical of Lula's fiscal austerity and controls on social spending.

Since taking the helm of the party in June, Genro had threatened to dismantle the machine built by Dirceu, blaming him for the current crisis.

Genro said the party's interim secretary-general, Ricardo Berzoini, would likely replace him on the ballot. Berzoini, who served as social security minister and labor minister in the Lula administration, is also a member of the party's centrist faction.

Congress may expel up to 18 lawmakers from the Workers' Party and allied parties for taking illegal funds or organizing their distribution.

The lawmaker who first accused the Workers' Party of illegal political funding, lower house Deputy Roberto Jefferson, was the first to face possible expulsion in a process launched on Monday.

Jefferson could be expelled from Congress because he admitted to committing an electoral crime by taking 4 million reais in undeclared money from a Workers' Party political slush fund. He has also accused lawmakers of taking monthly bribes from the Workers' Party but has yet to provide evidence for the claim.

MINSK, Belarus (AP) -- A court sentenced two Georgian pro-democracy activists to 15 days in custody Monday, and security authorities accused a former U.S. diplomat of conspiring against the government.

The moves came as authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko said his opponents and foreign forces were plotting to unseat him by fomenting change similar to the protests that have helped bring opposition leaders to power in other ex-Soviet republics.

Security officials had said Friday that they would deport two Georgian activists accused of teaching their local counterparts to stage anti-government protests similar to demonstrations that brought down Georgia's longtime leader two years ago.

But a district court in the capital, Minsk, said it had sentenced Georgy Kandelaki and Luka Tsuladze to 15 days in custody after finding them guilty of ''minor hooliganism.'' The court refused to say what the Georgians, detained Wednesday, were accused of doing.

A Belarusian opposition activist, Dmitry Bondarenko, claimed that the Georgians were beaten and that the sentences were imposed to keep them in custody until their wounds heal. He said authorities often take similar measures against Belarusian opposition protesters.

Lukashenko, who has been in power for a decade and plans for plans to run for a new term next year, has warned opponents and the West against attempts to bring the kind of change that swept through Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan in the past to years to his country.

Amid badly strained ties with the United States, Belarus' KGB accused a former U.S. Embassy attache of violating Belarusian and international law, claiming he brought printed materials into the country for the opposition.

The U.S. Embassy said it would not comment on ''baseless and false accusations.''

The United States has called Belarus a dictatorship.

MANILA (Reuters) - About 80 percent of Filipinos want President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo to be removed from office through an impeachment process, an independent survey showed on Saturday.

A lower house committee is due to resume a debate on Tuesday before its 95 members begin voting on whether to proceed with three impeachment complaints.

The telephone survey of nearly 600 people in the Philippine capital Manila was taken on three dates -- after her apology for a ``lapse in judgment'' in June, after her economic team quit and her speech in Congress in July.

The poll by Social Weather Stations showed four out of five respondents favored Arroyo being impeached over allegations she contacted an elections official and ordered him to rig votes on the troubled southern island of Mindanao in the May 2004 presidential election.

Only 12 percent said they wanted the president to remain in power, rejecting calls for her to resign or moves in Congress to remove her from office if found guilty in an impeachment trial.

Arroyo came to power through a bloodless, military-backed ''people power'' revolt that forced her predecessor Joseph Estrada to step down in 2001.

Jailed Russian businessman Mikhail Khodorkovsky has gone on hunger strike over what he sees as the unfair treatment of his ex-business partner.

Khodorkovsky, once Russia's wealthiest man, has refused food and water for several days, his lawyer told Russian TV and radio stations.

Platon Lebedev was placed in solitary confinement last week for allegedly insulting prison guards.

Khodorkovsky was sentenced to nine years in May for fraud and tax evasion.

Lebedev was handed the same sentence. The pair are being held at a Moscow detention centre while they appeal against the verdicts.

Full story here.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (AP) -- The money-for-votes scandal that has engulfed Brazil seems to be reaching the doorstep of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

In a succession of political earthquakes, high-ranking figures have been forced to quit. They are Silva's chief of staff; the president of the PT, or Workers Party; its treasurer; and its secretary general -- the latter for allegedly taking a $32,000 Land Rover as a gift from a private company.

This month 22 PT federal legislators, outraged by the allegations of bribery and suspect campaign funding, declared ''independence'' from party ranks -- a step toward a schism that could cost the party almost a fifth of its congressional force.

It all marks a sharp and lurid turnaround from three years ago, when Silva, or Lula as he is universally known, a union leader and high-school dropout of famously humble ways, was elected president in the first of a series of gains for leftists across Latin America.

''The events of the past few days are making the PT unviable as a democratic alternative that took decades to build. It is a tragedy for Brazil and for Latin America,'' said Inacio Cano, a political scientist at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.

The scandal that has transfixed Brazilians entails secret offshore bank accounts, dramatic airport arrests of politicians with suitcases of cash, and an imprisoned money dealer threatening to reveal more explosive details.

On Aug. 11, Duda Mendonca, manager of Silva's campaign in 2002, told congressional investigators that about $4.5 million had been paid for his advertising work through a secret bank account in the Bahamas.

Coming from the man whose catchy slogans such as ''Lula Peace and Love'' and ''Lula Light'' helped catapult the former lathe operator to the presidency, the allegation has raised suspicions that Silva knew at least part of his campaign was paid for with illegal money, deposited abroad to evade taxation.

Founded in 1980 during the last years of a 21-year military regime, the Workers Party called for ''socialism with a democratic face'' and found a following among unions, disillusioned Marxists and Roman Catholic church groups.

Silva, a co-founder, was jailed by the military regime for leading an auto strike that was deemed a threat to national security. After his release, his party emerged as a defiant challenge to the old political order.

But its clean image crumbled in June, when Rep. Roberto Jefferson, a government ally, accused the party of bribing legislators to support its legislation. However, he said Silva personally was innocent.

Then came a series of arrests of politicians leaving or arriving in Brazil with bags and even underwear stuffed with cash -- in one instance $4.3 million in seven suitcases.

On July 30, Silva delivered a speech accusing conservative ''elites'' of conspiring against him. Two weeks later he was on TV, red-eyed and blinking after an almost sleepless night, and apologizing for any wrongdoing by his government or party.

More details may come from Antonio Oliveira Claramunt, or ''Barcelona Tony,'' an illegal dealer in foreign currency who was arrested a year ago on money-laundering charges and is serving a 25-year prison term.

In letters to his family printed in Veja, a weekly news magazine, Claramunt said he knew how the money was transferred abroad to secret accounts to finance political campaigns and avoid taxes. He said the deposits were made since 1989 -- and he knew who made the transfers.

Brought from his remote penitentiary to Sao Paulo for questioning by congressional investigators, Claramunt said he transferred money abroad illegally for national figures, including Central Bank President Henrique Meirelles and Justice Minister Marcio Thomas Bastos. Both denied the allegation and Claramunt did not substantiate his claims.

Claramunt had told his family he feared assassination because of what he knew. Investigators say they expect him to reveal more information.

RIBEIRAO PRETO, Brazil (Reuters) - An ex-aide to Brazil's finance minister accused his former boss on Friday of receiving kickbacks when he was a mayor, stoking the political crisis surrounding President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's government.

Financial markets fell on the first corruption charge to hit a member of Brazil's economic team since a ruling party bribery and illegal campaign funding scandal broke in June.

The accusations against Finance Minister Antonio Palocci, respected for his tight fiscal and inflation controls, heightened investor fears the crisis could spread into Brazil's economy.

The former aide, Rogerio Buratti, told prosecutors that Palocci got a $20,000 (50,000 reais) monthly kickback from firms with trash collection contracts when he was mayor of Ribeirao Preto, Sao Paulo state, according to a transcript of Buratti's testimony obtained by Reuters.

Leo & Leo, a trash company implicated by Buratti, rejected the accusations. It said it had contributed to Palocci's campaign when he was mayor but followed electoral rules.

Buratti, who faces corruption charges, said he suspected the money was delivered to the headquarters of the Workers' Party -- Lula's ruling party -- and its former treasurer Delubio Soares, the testimony transcript said.

In a statement, Palocci ``vehemently denied'' the accusations by Buratti, who was municipal secretary for the city in Sao Paulo's wealthy farm belt.

Palocci stepped down as Ribeirao Preto's mayor months before joining Lula's center-left government when it took office in January 2003. Palocci worked on Lula's campaign.

Buratti was arrested on Wednesday and accused of money laundering and fraud. He is now in a plea bargaining process with prosecutors.

WAIT AND SEE

The charges gave Lula a new headache as he fights accusations his ruling party and aides siphoned money from public firms and other sources to fund campaigns and bribe lawmakers in Congress to back government bills.

Four ruling party leaders -- including Soares -- and Lula's former Cabinet Chief Jose Dirceu have stepped down after being accused of operating a political slush fund.

Opposition politicians reacted cautiously to Buratti's accusations.

``It's serious news, but at the same time we need proof,'' said Arthur Virgilio, leader of the Senate opposition Social Democratic Party.

Buratti said Palocci ordered the former secretary of finance of Ribeirao Preto, Ralf Barquete, to receive money on his behalf. Barquete died last year of cancer.

``We still don't know where the money went,'' Da Silveira told reporters, citing Buratti's deposition during a wider investigation into corruption in Ribeirao Preto.

Some analysts thought Palocci might have to step down after his credibility was put in question. But most said evidence was needed to take down one of Lula's most trusted aides and a pillar of Brazil's economic growth and financial stability.

``It looks very nasty, but we'll have to wait and see if it's borne out,'' said David Fleischer of the University of Brasilia.

The former leader of the Solidarity movement in Poland has said he would support a people's revolution in neighbouring Belarus.

Lech Walesa who won a Nobel Peace Prize and went on to become Poland's president, was speaking on the 25th anniversary of the union's founding.

In an interview for the BBC's World This Weekend programme, he said Belarus should expect no support from the West.

He said the European Union should be ready to support a reformed Belarus.

Full story here.

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Saddam Hussein could be executed after his first trial if he is convicted and sentenced to death for his alleged role in a 1982 Shiite massacre, even though he faces other charges, an official close to the proceedings said Thursday.

The first trial, which involves the deposed Iraqi ruler's alleged role in the 1982 massacre of an estimated 150 Shiites in Dujail, north of Baghdad, is expected to begin by the fall, said the official. He briefed reporters on condition that his name would not be used for reasons of security and the sensitivity of the case.

Saddam's daughter, meanwhile, has threatened that the ousted leader's defense lawyer could boycott the trial -- and preliminary questioning -- unless the defense gets better access to Saddam. The defense has complained in the past that it has only been allowed to meet Sadddam with U.S. or Iraqi military officials watching.

Iraqi authorities also are building about a dozen other cases against Saddam that they intend to try separately. Those cases include the killing of rival politicians over 30 years, the 1987-88 Anfal campaign that left tens of thousands of Kurds dead or displaced and the crushing of a 1991 uprising by Shiites following the Gulf War.

If Saddam is sentenced to death in the Dujail case, authorities could ''theoretically'' carry out the sentence without waiting for the other trials to begin, the official said.

''If the sentence were to be the death penalty, I think that the court will have to make a decision based on international principles, Iraqi law, whether or not there is need for him in another case for the prosecution or another defendant,'' the official said.

''It's possible but it's going depend on the circumstances when it happens, what other cases are going on,'' he added.

A five-judge panel was expected to set a date for the Dujail trial ''within the next few weeks,'' he said, pledging the proceedings will be fair and transparent.

If the court is allowed to work without political interference, ''you can expect to see trials that are transparent, that are fair, that are up to international standards that are in compliance with international law,'' the official said.

Saddam, who ruled Iraq for 23 years with an iron fist, has been in U.S. custody since he was captured in December 2003 near his hometown of Tikrit. Saddam, 68, was removed from power in April 2003 by a U.S.-led invasion.

His daughter, Raghad, has been running his defense team from Jordan, where she fled after her father's fall. Earlier this week, she fired the entire team except for one Iraqi lawyer, Khalil Dulaimi, because the team of more than 1,500 Arab and Western lawyers only sought fame in the high-profile case.

She threatened that Saddam's lawyer would boycot upcoming proceedings -- including the trial -- unless the defense is allowed to meet privately with Saddam.

''Our defense will boycott all the procedures of interrogation and prosecution until the President is allowed to have the legal advice he is entitled to,'' she wrote in a letter to the Iraqi Special Tribunal, a copy of which was made available to The Associated Press in Amman, Jordan.

She had not yet sent the letter and there was no word on when she intended to send it. Dulaimi could not immediately be reached for comment.

''Your masters who occupy Iraq have denied the President the rights he is entitled to according to the laws of war and to the Geneva Conventions, which provide him the right to choose a legal counsel of his own free choice, along with the right of such defense lawyers to have full access and in privacy to him as they deem necessary,'' she said in the letter.

Raghad disputed the legitimacy of the tribunal, saying it was ''totally illegal and all its (decisions) are deemed null and void.''

NEW YORK (AP) -- A former United Nations procurement officer pleaded guilty Monday to soliciting a bribe under the oil-for-food program, making him the first U.N. official to face criminal charges in connection with the scandal-tainted operation.

Alexander Yakovlev, a Russian, also pleaded guilty in federal court to charges of wire fraud and money laundering for accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes from U.N. contractors in his work outside oil-for-food. He could face up to 20 years in prison for each of the three counts in the indictment.

Yakovlev surrendered to FBI agents in Manhattan earlier Monday, as U.N.-backed investigators released a report accusing him and Benon Sevan, the former chief of the $64 billion program, of corruption. The probe, led by former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, recommended that U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan lift their immunity if asked.

There was no suggestion that the timing of the report and Yakovlev's guilty plea were coordinated. Volcker said Monday that David Kelley, the U.S. attorney for the southern district of New York, had not cooperated with his probe.

Yakovlev's decision and the Independent Inquiry Committee's findings, put forward in its third report so far, give new ammunition to critics who have labeled oil-for-food a boondoggle at best and huge swindle at worst.

''Our conclusions are obviously significant and troubling,'' Volcker said. ''What's important is that we contribute effectively to the needed reform of the United Nations administration.''

Condemnation from Republicans in the U.S. Congress was swift.

''This report demonstrates the United Nations lacks the institutional red lights and alarms necessary to warn of misconduct,'' Representative Christopher Shays of Connecticut said in a statement. ''This absence of basic oversight has allowed individual corruption to flourish systemwide.

Yakovlev, 52, resigned in June after separate allegations came to light suggesting that he helped his son get a job with a company that did business with the United Nations.

He surrendered to authorities and was released later Monday on a $400,000 bond, and no new court date was immediately set, said Megan Gaffney, a spokeswoman for Kelley.

''We decided that it's in the best interest of the client to enter such a plea,'' Yakovlev's lawyer Arkady Bukh told The Associated Press. ''In term of sentencing we expect much better deal if we enter a guilty plea.''

Volcker's team said it would release a final report -- expected to be up to 700 pages long -- in September. Among other things, that report is expected to consider new evidence suggesting Annan knew more about an contract awarded to a Swiss company that employed his son, Kojo. Both have denied any wrongdoing.

The oil-for-food program, launched in December 1996 to help ordinary Iraqis cope with U.N. sanctions imposed after Saddam Hussein's 1990 invasion of Kuwait, was one of the largest humanitarian programs in history. It was a lifeline for 90 percent of the country's population of 26 million.

Under the program, Saddam's regime could sell oil, provided the proceeds went to buy humanitarian goods or pay war reparations. Saddam allegedly sought to curry favor by giving former government officials, activists, journalists and others vouchers for Iraqi oil that could then be resold at a profit.

The program has become the subject of several congressional investigations, as well as probes by a federal grand jury and the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Some critics have accused the United Nations of squandering millions -- and even billions -- of dollars in its mismanagement of the program.

Mark Malloch Brown, Annan's chief of staff, again defended the United Nations' handling of oil-for-food, saying it was the organization's very willingness to open the books that had attracted so much attention.

''Those who have kind of stayed in the shadows, who have not had a Volcker to investigate their own politicians and diplomats and companies involved in this program, have gotten away a little more lightly,'' Malloch Brown said. ''There's a certain sort of injustice in that.''

One of the most damaging claims in Volcker's latest report was that Sevan, who oversaw the program from its inception in 1996 to its conclusion in 2003, took some $147,000 in kickbacks.

Volcker's team said he helped steer contracts to a small oil trading company with the help of the brother-in-law of former U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali. Sevan's finances were said to be ''precarious'' shortly beforehand.

It also found that two men helped Sevan: Fred Nadler, an African Middle East Petroleum Co. Ltd. Inc. director and brother-in-law of former U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali; and Fakhry Abdelnour, the president of AMEP.

Sevan, a Cypriot citizen believed to be in Nicosia, is under investigation by the Manhattan District Attorney's office. He denies the allegations and accuses Volcker's team of succumbing to pressure from U.N. critics and of scapegoating him.

As for Yakovlev, the Volcker investigators also found that he secretly tried to bribe a company called Societe Generale de Surveillance S.A., which was seeking an oil inspection contract under oil-for-food.

But they also came across more explosive evidence of wrongdoing outside oil-for-food. Investigators said Yakovlev took as much as $1.3 million in kickbacks from companies that had won some $79 million in separate U.N. contracts.

Kelley's office appeared to have been working along the same lines. Both the report and the indictment mention Moxyco, a company that Yakovlev apparently set up as a conduit for the illegal payments.

And while Kelley doesn't mention Societe Generale de Surveillance, his indictment said Yakovlev faxed a foreign company ''information related to that company's bid for an inspection contract under the United Nations Oil-for-Food Program.''

BEIJING (Reuters) - About 800 policemen clashed with armed villagers during a pre-dawn raid in southern China and arrested 47 people after residents defied a crackdown on illegal mining and went on a rampage, a local paper and officials said.

Police raided four villages in Hezhou in Guangxi province on Thursday and seized firearms, ammunition, explosives, detonators and machetes, said the Legal Express, which is published by the Guangxi branch of the Communist Party.

The newspaper's Friday edition did not say if any policemen or villagers were injured in the three-hour raid in which police ``fought bravely.''

Two local officials, contacted by telephone, said no one had been killed.

The local government launched a crackdown on illegal mining at sand quarries and iron ore mines in June after villagers polluted Hejiang river by dumping waste water into it, the newspaper said. The villagers failed to seek government permission or renew their mining licenses.

Disgruntled villagers had gone on a ``beating, smashing and looting'' rampage in June, it said, without elaborating. Officials declined to provide details of last month's turbulence.

Wielding clubs and shields, policemen took 42 men and five women into custody on Thursday, a propaganda official said.

``They're suspected of violently resisting the law in the June 24 incident,'' the official surnamed Li told Reuters.

EDUCATE VILLAGERS the newspaper said, adding that police had educated villagers to ``handle affairs in accordance with the law.''

The Web site of the newspaper published pictures of police cars and vans with smashed windshields and windows. It also showed officers escorting two barechested and handcuffed villagers to a police car.

Yang Shengdong, the number-two Communist Party official in Hezhou city, led the raid, the newspaper said, adding that a vice mayor and the municipal police chief had also taken part.

Land disputes, corruption, abuse of power and a widening gap between the rich and the poor were among the reasons leading to the number of protests shooting up to 74,000 last year from just 10,000 in 1994, a Hong Kong newspaper reported last month.

The number of people involved in those demonstrations jumped to 3.76 million in 2004 from 730,000 a decade earlier, the Beijing-funded Ta Kung Pao quoted Public Security Minister Zhou Yongkang as telling parliament's top advisory body.

Last month, the People's Daily called for perceived threats to stability to be crushed. ``Destabilising factors must be resolved at the grassroots and nipped in the bud,'' the mouthpiece of the Communist Party said in an editorial.

In June, some 300 toughs with rifles, clubs and sharpened pipes descended on Shengyou village in the northern province of Hebei and clashed with farmers, who were angry over a lack of compensation and staged a sit-in on land slated for a new lime plant, in one of the bloodiest in a wave of rural unrest.

Six villagers were killed and scores injured in the clash, which highlighted growing disputes over land rights in China, where rapid development is encroaching on rural property and where the government places an overriding emphasis on the need for social stability.

NEW YORK (AP) -- Investigators have concluded that the former chief of the Iraq oil-for-food program, Benon Sevan, took kickbacks under the $64 billion humanitarian operation and refused to cooperate with their probe, his lawyer said Thursday.

While the amount of money Sevan allegedly took wasn't immediately known -- and may be as little as $160,000 -- the findings would be a major blow because of his stature in the organization and the control he had over it. Sevan is also being investigated by the Manhattan District Attorney's office and could face criminal charges.

The Independent Inquiry Committee plans to release its findings about Sevan on Tuesday, and had sent advance notice to Sevan's lawyer, Eric Lewis, last week. Lewis revealed the findings early and vehemently denied both claims against Sevan, whom the U.N. is paying a symbolic one dollar a year to keep him on payroll so he'll cooperate.

''The fact is, the committee's allegations are baseless,'' Lewis said in a statement. ''Mr. Sevan never took a penny, as he has said from the beginning.''

The committee, led by former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, refused to comment on Lewis' claims. Committee spokesman Mike Holtzman had said earlier Sevan would be one subject of the Tuesday report.

''Our final judgment on him will be rendered on Tuesday,'' Holtzman said.

The oil-for-food program, launched in December 1996 to help ordinary Iraqis cope with U.N. sanctions imposed after Saddam Hussein's 1990 invasion of Kuwait, quickly became a lifeline for 90 percent of the country's population of 26 million.

Under the program, Saddam's regime could sell oil, provided the proceeds went to buy humanitarian goods or pay war reparations. Saddam's government decided on the goods it wanted, who should provide them and who could buy Iraqi oil. But the Security Council committee overseeing sanctions monitored the contracts.

In a bid to curry favor and end sanctions, Saddam allegedly gave former government officials, activists, journalists and U.N. officials vouchers for Iraqi oil that could then be resold at a profit.

According to Lewis, the committee will find that a small trading company called African Middle East Petroleum Co. Ltd. Inc. paid Sevan in exchange for his helping it win oil contracts from Saddam Hussein's regime. It will say that he acted ''in concert'' with a friend named Fred Nadler, who is the brother-in-law of former U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali.

Lewis said the letter of findings that Volcker's team sent to him does not spell how much he got in kickbacks.

Volcker's team has been investigating oil-for-food for more than a year. In an interim report released in February, the committee concluded that Sevan solicited oil allocations from Saddam Hussein's regime on behalf of the company, known as AMEP, between 1998 and 2001. It said Nadler was essentially his middleman and accused Sevan of a ''grave conflict of interest.''

In its report, Volcker's team mentioned $160,000 in ''unexplained funds'' belonging to Sevan. Sevan had disclosed the money earlier, saying it was from an aunt in Cyprus.

Lewis said Volcker's committee will also say that Sevan refused to cooperate with its investigators, apparently because he would not meet face-to-face with them in recent months. Lewis acknowledged that Sevan had refused to do so since January because investigators accused him of lying or changing his testimony when he didn't remember meetings or phone calls he'd had years before.

He said instead Sevan had agreed to respond to written questions.

Lewis accused Volcker's team of treating Sevan unfairly by concealing evidence from him, relying on secret interviews with jailed members of Saddam's former regime and questioning his integrity when he couldn't remember phone calls that took place years before.

He said it was trying to look tough and appease critics in the United States who have accused it of bungling the investigation.

''The IIC wants cartoon villains, not the truth,'' Lewis said in the statement. ''Mr. Sevan has now reached a point in his dealings with the IIC where he questions the Committee's commitment to objective and evenhanded fact-finding and doubts he can receive a fair hearing in this forum.''

After the February report, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan announced disciplinary proceedings against Sevan but said he would wait until the report came out before making a decision.

It is almost certain that Sevan would be fired if the United Nations accepts the Volcker committee claims.

WARSAW, Poland (AP) -- Belarusian police arrested two leaders of an ethnic Polish cultural group on Tuesday after seizing the group's headquarters, raising already heightened tensions between the neighboring countries.

The former president and vice-chief of the Union of Poles were arrested in the western Belarusian city of Grodno, according to Angelica Boris, head of the group representing ethnic Poles.

Poland's Foreign Ministry declined comment on the arrests. Last week, it recalled its ambassador from the capital, Minsk, in protest of what it called heavy-handed tactics against the Polish community.

Warsaw has been pushing for democratic reforms in Belarus, angering the autocratic regime of President Alexander Lukashenko. The former Soviet republic's minority Polish community has complained of being harassed in a government crackdown.

The former president of the cultural organization, Tadeusz Gawin, was sentenced to 15 days in jail for publishing a manifesto against government attempts to wrest control of the organization.

Police also remained outside the group's headquarters for a fifth day on Tuesday. Police seized the building last week, temporarily detaining several of the organization's leaders.

The Belarusian ambassador in Warsaw said he had been urged by his government to ease the friction that has been worsening over the last weeks.

''The atmosphere is very tense,'' Pavel Latushka was quoted saying in Polish daily Rzeczpospolita. ''The foreign minister recommended that ... I work to overcome the crisis, to enter into dialogue with the Polish authorities.''

Authorities in Minsk are worried about the ethnic Polish minority of about 500,000 -- or 5 percent of the population -- concentrated in Western Belarus. Lukashenko has accused them of trying to foment revolution ahead of elections next year.

The State Department on Tuesday condemned the Belarusian government's actions, with its spokesman Tom Casey saying they ''are part of a continuing pattern of harassment against those seeking to peacefully express their views.''

Casey said that in the past two months, Belarus has closed 80 percent of the local offices of three major parties, jailed activists, and levied massive fines against the few remaining independent newspapers.