Togo election rivals claim victory

Togo's incumbent president and his main rival have both claimed victory ahead of the announcement of official results in the West African nation's presidential election.

Election officials said Faure Gnassingbe, the incumbent, and opposition leader Jean-Pierre Fabre, were nearly neck-and-neck following Thursday's poll, with one-third of precincts counted by Saturday afternoon, the Associated Press news agency reported.

Official results were to be announced later on Saturday, but both parties had already claimed victory by late Friday.

"All the results we have confirm that President Faure has resoundingly, I mean resoundingly, won this election," Pascal Bodjona, a government spokesman, told Radio France Internationale on Friday.

Earlier that day, Fabre, a deputy in Togo's parliament and candidate of the opposition Union of Forces for Change (UFC), also said he had won.

"On the basis of the counts from certain prefectures, the UFC candidate has won an average of 75 to 80 per cent of the votes," he said in an address to party supporters.

"We conclude that we have won the presidential election of March 4, 2010."

Call for calm

Their competing claims came after election officials called on citizens to remain calm while results from Thursday's poll are tallied.

In a statement broadcast on state television, the independent electoral commission urged candidates and voters to "exercise patience and serenity while the commission makes every effort to centralize the results from various polling stations".

The race pitted six opposition candidates against Gnassingbe, 43, who came to power in 2005 after the death of his father, General Gnassingbe Eyadema, whose dictatorial rule lasted 38 years.

Gnassingbe, a former mines minister and financial adviser under his father, is seeking a second-term mandate but the opposition dismisses him as a candidate of "a system" that froze development over the past 43 years.

Gnassingbe vowed that this poll will raise Togo to new heights, on the basis of "a state of law".

Voting deemed 'peaceful'

With the main opposition party expressing concern over possible electoral fraud, 40 international observers were deployed by the African Union, 130 by the European Union and 150 civilians and 146 soldiers by the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas) to oversee the elections.

The commission had vowed to stage a free and fair poll, devoid of violence, and observers agreed the voting was peaceful.

Election officials were trying to prevent a situation similar to Togo's presidential election in 2005 when hundreds of people died in post-election violence.

The violence that followed the disputed vote in 2005 left up to 800 dead according to various sources, but the UN put the toll at 400 to 500 deaths.

Yet parliamentary elections two years later were peaceful, raising hopes of an end to Togo's long history of political violence and leading to the restoration of foreign aid.

UN pledges aid to quake-hit Chile

Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary general, has renewed a pledge to provide international aid to Chile one week after a massive earthquake struck the South American country.

Ban toured the hard-hit city of Concepcion on Saturday, a day after arriving in the country in an effort to show solidarity with the people.

"The Chilean government is asking for international aid and we will give it," he said.

"Your people were generous enough to rush to Haiti when it was hit, now it is the moment for the international community to stand with the Chilean people.

"I can feel all this, for your loss, for your struggle."

Food distribution

Ban spoke as the first shipment of food from the United Nations' World Food Programme arrived in Chile in response to the government's request for help.

"This is the first shipment of 70 tonnes (of food)," the Reuters news agency quoted Francisco Espejo, a WFP representative, as saying.

"The total is to help 35,000 children over the next five days, giving them portions that total 480 calories.

"We are channelling the aid jointly with national organizations that will ensure an adequate distribution throughout the most affected zones."

The food distribution came a day after powerful aftershocks rattled buildings and sent terrified residents fleeing into the streets in Concepcion.

Fears of additional damage in the tremors before dawn on Friday led officials to evacuate some patients from the regional hospital.

The strongest of the aftershocks was a magnitude 6.6.

Death toll revised

Officials were still struggling to determine the death toll of the magnitude-8.8 quake, as well as the damage to roads, ports and hospitals.

Disaster officials announced they had miscounted scores of missing people who later turned up alive.

Officials on Friday said they had now identified 452 victims, though they did not give a number for unidentified bodies or missing people.

Doubts over the death toll are likely to persist, partly because an undetermined number of victims were washed out to sea in the ensuing tsunamis and some bodies may never be recovered.

Chilean official sacked

Meanwhile, the government said on Friday that it had fired the head of its Oceanography service, saying he had failed to provide clear warning of the deadly tsunami that followed last Saturday's quake.

Mariano Rojas, the chief of Oceanography, was removed from his post on Friday, and the Navy launched an investigation into "the decision process after the natural catastrophe," an official statement said.

Port captains in several towns issued their own warnings, but a national alert never came, and some say that failure led to deaths.

Al Jazeera's Lucia Newman, reporting from Concepcion, said Rojas was seen as being the person most responsible for the tragedy that ensued.

"In the chain of events, it was the Navy that had to sound the alarm and say, 'Yes, there is a tsunami coming' and [instead] they kept saying, 'No there is no imminent danger yet'," she said.

"Luckily thousands of people didn't believe it [and] many people took to higher ground. But on the coastal areas there were also hundreds of people vacationing that didn't know where to go and who perished or are still missing at his hour.

"That commander is seen as being the person most responsible and [people believe] that many lives would have been saved if he had given the notice in time."

Iceland votes on bank payback deal

Icelanders have headed to the polls in a referendum on repaying the equivalent of $5.3bn to the UK and the Netherlands in the wake of the collapse of Iceland's online Icesave bank.

The majority of voters on Saturday are expected to roundly reject the unpopular repayment legislation.

Ingimar Gudmundsson a 57-year-old lorry driver, said: "I will vote 'no' simply because I disagree very strongly with us ... having to shoulder this burden."

The money would be used to compensate the British and Dutch governments, which paid it out to 340,000 of their citizens who were hit when Icesave collapsed in 2008.

Observers say an Icelandic refusal to repay the money could block the remaining half of a $2.1bn International Monetary Fund (IMF) rescue package, as well as its EU and euro currency membership talks.

It could also damage Iceland's credit rating and destabilise the government, which negotiated the agreement in the first place.

The legislation was passed by parliament last year, but it went to a referendum after Olafur Ragnar Grimsson, the Icelandic president, refused to sign it into law because of huge public opposition.

'Unacceptable' conditions

Magnus Arni Skulason, a founder of the Indefence movement, which is opposed to the repayment deal, said the agreement being voted on was "obtained through coercion, with threats from both the British and the Dutch".

He also noted that most Icelanders felt the demanded 5.5-per cent interest rate was particularly unacceptable.

"You're basically sending the bill to tax payers for the failure of a private bank," he was quoted by the AFP news agency as saying.

But others argue the referendum is largely redundant as the terms of the repayment plan are already being renegotiated.

Johanna Sigurdardottir, the prime minister, described the referendum as "meaningless," saying she saw no reason to go to the ballot box.

Charlie Parker, a financial analyst with the Citywire website, told Al Jazeera: "When the referendum was originally conceived it was conceived in response to the first offer from Britain and the Netherlands to structure this repayment, of course that has since been revised."

But he also noted that Iceland had some "legitimate grievances", including that the UK and the Netherlands chose to repay all of their citizen's lost savings, even above the standard compensation limits.

"It was the government of Britain and the Netherlands that unilaterally decided they would pay back all the money that savers had invested," Parker said.

"I think Iceland can legitimately say 'if these governments made this decision unilaterally, why have we got to pay out for their largess to their citizens?'"

Bank collapse

Jan Randolph, the head of sovereign risk at HIS Global Insight, told Al Jazeera there was no indication Iceland would not repay the debt, but that the referendum was about winning better terms.

"I think the referendum is really about bargaining position. The government will use the 'no' vote to come back to the British and the Dutch and say: 'Look, the people are not behind this, you've got to improve the terms further'."

Iceland's leaders have said they will resume talks to negotiate better terms with London and The Hague after the referendum.

Randolph told Al Jazeera: "The referendum is a chance for the Icelanders to vent their anger - their anger at their government and at Britain for using anti-terror laws to seize Icelandic bank assets, which accelerated the implosion of the banking system."

In the aftermath of the Icesave collapse, the UK invoked so-called anti-terror laws to take control of Landisbanki assets held in Britain. Icesave was the the online arm of Landisbanki.

First results from the referendum are expected shortly after polling stations close at 22:00 GMT, with final results later the same night.

UK Far-rightists Train Tory MPs

Parliament candidates and activists of the opposition Conservatives Party are being trained and indoctrinated by a far-right group fanning extremist ideologies.

"It beggars belief that the Conservative party should be so reliant for the training of some of its candidates and thousands of its young activists on an organization headed by people with such extremist views," Labour MP Jon Cruddas, who chairs a campaign against rightwing extremism in the election, told the Guardian Saturday, March 6.

At least 11 Tory candidates for the May general elections have partook in a recent training course run by the extremist rightwing Young Britons' Foundation.

The YBF is the main provider of training for young Conservative activists, according to sources close to the Tories.

"We have been described as a Conservative madrasah, so we bring the next generation out to the States and bring them back radicalized," YBF Co-founder and Chief Executive Donal Blaney said.

So far, the right-wing group has trained over 2,500 Conservative party activists.

Formed in 2003, the YBF has strong links with the American neo-conservative movement. It regularly sends activists to training trips to the US.

"We go into schools and we proselytize conservatism and we get hold of the best kids and train them up," Blaney said.

In 2008, Blaney took Tory activists to the Blue Ridge Arsenal in Virginia to train on using firearms.

According to his website, Blaney, who is responsible for training young politicians, believes that environmental protesters who trespass should be shot down.

He also supports waterboarding of prisoners and the adoption of America's liberal gun ownership laws.

To the shocking of the majority of Britons, Blaney also calls for scarping the national medical insurance system considering it a waste of money.

Embarrassing

The revelation has embarrassed the Tories, which are tipped to win the May general elections.

"It shows the conflict between the smiling, liberal face of (Conservative Party Leader David) Cameron and the real gut feeling that some Tories have," former deputy prime minister John Prescott told the Guardian.

"Cameron must disown the YBF now.

"This calls into question whether this organization reflects the true face of the Tory party."

When asked about their involvement with the right-wing group, Conservative Party officials tried to distance themselves from it.

"I am not endorsing them," said shadow defense secretary Liam Fox, who spoke at the annual YBF parliamentary rally at the House of Commons, which was chaired by Blaney.

"I was there explaining Conservative party policy on defense.

"I speak to lots of organizations; it doesn't mean I support them."

Conservative Party Chairman Eric Pickles also said he did not know about Blaney's extremist views.

Conservative Central Office also said it has no official links with the YBF and does not pay it for its services.

But it added that it strongly recommends activists to attend Blaney's courses.