Rashid DUYSEMBAEV
ALMATY, August 19
(THE GLOBE)
�Most probably, Akezhan Kazhegeldin will be permitted to take part in the election,� a member of RPPK announced on August 19 in Almaty.
According to Bigeldy Gabdullin, this will be the second PR action of the authorities to demonstrate democracy of the election.
Besides, according to his information, on August 18 there was a long meeting of the US Ambassador with the President Nursultan Nazarbaev, where a half of the time was devoted to the Parliamentary election and the situation around the ex-Prime Minister Kazhegeldin.
�We expect that after Mr. Kazhegeldin arrives, the rating of RPPK will abruptly change,� the member of the party stated.
The deputy of the chairman of RPPK said that at the party conference held on August 18 in Almaty they taken resolutions, according to which the list of candidates in one-mandate districts, the composition of the party�s list, the party�s slogans and platform were approved.
Gaziz Aldamzharov emphasised that candidates in one-mandate districts enjoyed authority with the population in their districts and supposedly, 5 to 6 of them would win.
It is noteworthy that in the initial documents of the congress in the list of candidates in one-mandate districts, which includes 20 persons, 6 of them (Bisenov, Shekeev, Toguzbaev, Aldongarov, Chernyonok and Danilevskaya) have no data, except family names, that is not clear and arises questions.
The composition of the party�s list is also interesting. It consists of 10 candidates, but, as Mr. Aldamzharov remarked, they count on approximately two sits. Then only Akezhan Kazhegeldin and Nurbolat Masanov will be elected.
The deputy of the chairman of RPPK announced that they had taken a decision to boycott the Parliamentary election by the party�s list, if the Central Election Commission would not allow the ex-Prime Minister to take part in the election.
According to evaluations of one of the members of RPPK, despite the supplementation to the law �On elections�, in fact the situation has not changed, as the authorities are still to form the district election commissions which will calculate election bulletins and prepare the protocol.
Mr. Aldamzharov emphasised that after the Parliamentary election, the political life would be also active, as according to their prognosis, this autumn the economic situation in the republic would significantly worsen.
Moreover, he announced that we might expect the new election soon.
August 18
(THE GLOBE, basing on materials of the mass media)
The number of victims of the destructive earthquake in Turkey has come to 5300 persons. This is the official information of the government, which were announced in Ankara on Thursday. The number of wounded is 30 thousand people, the France Press agency states.
According to the data of RBK, World Bank has allotted US$ 100 million to restore the country after the earthquake. WB will take part in rendering aid to regions damaged by the earthquake. The WB President James Woolfenson presented his condolences in respect to this tragedy. WB is also going later to transmit another loan in the amount of US$ 120 million to Turkey as an extraordinary aid.
IZMIT, Turkey, Aug 19 (AFP)
Turkey was keeping up hopes early Thursday of finding more survivors among the debris of crushed buildings even as the death toll of Tuesday�s powerful earthquake approached 4,000.
The government crisis centre in Ankara said 3,839 people were killed and nearly 19,000 were wounded by 10:30 p.m. (1930 GMT), but the death toll was expected to rise as rescuers continued to sift through the rubble for possible survivors.
The tremor, measuring 7.4 on the Richter scale, claimed 2,033 lives and injured 5,000 in Izmit on the Marmara Sea, where the epicentre was located.
In neighbouring Sakarya, 723 people were killed and 3,346 were hurt while in Yalova on the Marmara shore 340 people died and 2,500 were injured.
In Istanbul some 460 people died and more than 5,000 were injured. Scores of people were killed in Bolu (240), Bursa (48), Eskisehir (28) and Zonguldak (three).
Amid reports of several hundred people trapped under rubble in the quake zone, Turkish and foreign rescue teams � from Britain, Bulgaria, France, Germany, Israel, Russia and Switzerland � scrambled to save more lives as residents camped out in the open for a second night in fear of continuing aftershocks.
In Duzce, in northwestern Anatolia, a woman and a teenage girl were freed from the debris of a five-storey building some 44 hours after the quake, as British and Turkish rescuers continued work to rescue two more people thought to be under the rubble, the Anatolia news agency reported.
Grim faces cheered up a little in Golcuk, a small town on the Sea of Marmara, as rescuers disentangled a 15-day-old baby girl after eight hours of intensive work.
In Izmit, firefighters managed to bring under control a fierce blaze that broke out in a state-owned oil refinery following the temblor.
�The fire is under control although we cannot yet say one hundred percent under control,� Husamettin Danis, general director of the Tupras refinery, told Turkish state television TRT.
Of the six oil tanks that were on fire, three of them with a capacity of 10,000 tonnes each, had collapsed after their contents were burned out, while another tank, capable of holding 8,000 tonnes, was still engulfed in flames, Danis said.
Danis added the fires at two smaller tanks � one with a capacity of 3,000 tonnes and the other with 1,000 tonnes � were nearly extinguished.
All measures were in place to keep the blaze from spreading, eliminating the possibility of explosions.
Once the fire was extinguished and the necessary repairs were made, large parts of the refinery � which processes 11.5 million tonnes of crude per year and accounts for 86 percent of Turkey�s oil consumption � would be fit to become operational again, Danis said.
State officials, meanwhile, speeded up efforts to restore power, phone and water lines and repair damaged roads to facilitate the delivery of relief aid as doctors in Izmit warned of an imminent risk of disease and epidemics.
But local reports on Wednesday commented on the insufficiency of the government�s humanitarian aid as residents in Sakarya complained of not receiving food more than 24 hours after the quake and bodies started to decompose in morgues filled to the brim in Izmit.
�We hope this disaster will be a warning to officials,� Defence Minister Sabahattin Cakmakoglu told TRT. �We need to be more organized�.
There have been no announcements yet as to the extent of the devastation wreaked by the earthquake as teams are not due to begin damage assessment studies until next week when continuing seismic activity is expected to subside a little.
But observers say the already fragile Turkish economy, suffering from years of chronic inflation, will be hit hard by the damage in its industrial heartland.
According to 1997 state statistics institute figures, northwest Turkey accounts for 34.5 percent of the country�s gross domestic product, with Istanbul alone representing about 22.5 percent of this total.
MAKHACHKALA, Russia
Aug 19 (AFP)
Russian warplanes carried out some 30 bombing raids overnight, pounding positions held by Moslem rebels in southwest Dagestan, the press center of the interior ministry said Thursday.
Several munitions depots, a fuel storage facility and two command posts of the Islamic fighters were destroyed during the air raids on the village of Tando in the Botlikh district bordering Chechnya, the ministry said.
Eight Russian soldiers were killed and 20 others injured Wednesday in an apparent failed raid on Tando, the largest single day death toll announced by Russian officials since the violence began nearly two weeks ago.
Moslem rebels from breakaway Chechnya crossed into Dagestan on August 7 and seized several mountain villages, prompting Moscow to send in troops and deploy air power to root out the fighters.
The fighting in Dagestan is the worst on Russia�s volatile southern flank since the 1994-96 Chechen war that killed 80,000 people and left the region chronically unstable.
At Bank Of New York
WASHINGTON, Aug 19 (AFP)
Russian organized crime may have moved billions of dollars through the Bank of New York in what could be the biggest money laundering scheme ever detected in US history, The New York Times said Thursday.
�What we have here is the penetration of a major U.S. organization by Russian organized crime,� an unidentified US official investigating the case told the daily.
From October to March some $4.2 billion in more than 10,000 transactions moved through one account with the bank, investigators said.
They believe as much as $10 billion dollars may have passed through that and other related bank accounts since early last year.
The investigators stressed that the inquiry is in its initial stages and said they did not know the full scale of the money laundering scheme nor where the money ended up.
Alerted more than a year ago by British authorities investigating Russian organized crime, the accounts at the Bank of New York have been linked to Semyon Yukovich Mogilevich, believed to be a top boss in the Russian mob.
The activities of Mogilevich, 53, whose fortune is estimated by British intelligence at $100 million, have been watched closely by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and European counterparts for the past five years.
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