Deaths in China coal mine fire

At least 25 miners have died after a fire broke out at an illegal coal mine in central China, state media has said.

The fire at a mine near Zhengzhou, capital of Henan province, is thought to have been caused by an electrical fault, the official Xinhua news agency said.

The mine's owner, manager and an investor were detained by police late on Monday following the blaze, Xinhua said.

The incident is the latest in a series of to hit China's disaster-prone mining industry.

Six miners in the pit at the time of the fire managed to escape, but others working in mine were burned to death, police said.

China's coal mines are the world's deadliest, claiming the lives of thousands of miners every year.

Labour rights groups say safety standards often ignored in the quest for profits and the drive to meet surging demand for coal, which provides about 70 per cent of China's energy.

The government has vowed to step up enforcement of workplace safety laws and crackdown on illegal and unsafe mines.

But a high demand for coal and a ready supply of cheap and willing labour means that for many mine operators the temptations of a fast profit are too great.

Earlier this month, more than 30 miners were killed in a flood at a coal mine in the Inner Mongolia region in northern China.

Thailand caught in protest standoff

Tens of thousands of anti-government protesters in Thailand have rallied outside a military base on the outskirts of the capital in an effort to increase pressure on the country's prime minister to stand down and call fresh elections.

The protesters, known as the Reds Shirts, had set a deadline of noon on Monday (0500GMT) for Abhisit Vejjajiva to resign or face what they say will be crippling mass demonstrations in the Thai capital.

That deadline has now passed and Abhisit has rejected their demand for fresh elections.

"Elections must be held under common rules and genuine calm. We have to listen to other people's voices, not just the protesters," Abhisit said in a televised statement from the 11 infantry army barracks.

He left the barracks by helicopter before the demonstrators arrived.

Following the demonstration, the protesters are heading back to the capital to continue with their protests.

Grenade attack

Amid the standoff, there have been reports of two soldiers being injured in a grenade attack on an army base in Bangkok.

Four grenades exploded at the base in the centre of the capital at 1.30pm (0630 GMT), injuring one soldier in the arm and the other in the stomach, Colonel Sunsern Kaewkumnerd, a military spokesman, told AFP news agency.

The incident occurred even as tens of thousands of soldiers and police patrolled the streets of Bangkok to prevent any outbreak of violence in view of the protests.

Abhisit had moved his government to army barracks outside of Bangkok as a precautionary measure.

Thousands of Red Shirt demonstrators had been gathering in Bangkok since Friday, with around 150,000 attending a huge rally in the city on Sunday.

Most Red Shirts are supporters of Thaksin Shinawatra, the former Thai prime minister ousted in a 2006 coup.

They believe the current government, led by Abhisit, did not take power legitimately and is propped up by segments of Thailand's traditional ruling class who were threatened by Thaksin's popularity, especially among the poor.

Many of the protesters travelled to Bangkok from Thailand's poor, rural northern and eastern provinces – areas where support for Thaksin has traditionally been strongest.

So far the protests have been generally peaceful and leaders of the Red Shirts, known formally as the United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship (UDD), have pledged they will remain that way.

But Abhisit has warned the public not to be complacent about the potential for violence.

Wayne Hay, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Bagkok, said that despite Abhisit's rejection of their demands the mood among the Red Shirts was one of determination.

Determined demonstrators

"They say they will achieve their goal of bringing down the government within days," he said.

"The government in response to that has said they can protest as long as they want as long as they do not break any laws and disrupt the daily lives of the residents of Bangkok."

In Bangkok several main roads near government offices were blocked off either by protesters' pick-up trucks and motorcycles, or cordoned off by police and soldiers.

Authorities have deployed 50,000 police, soldiers and other security personnel at key points in the capital, with thousands more placed on alert at barracks across the city.

An army spokesman said security had been beefed up with hundreds of extra troops at the infantry base where Abhisit and other key ministers along with the country's top brass were staying during the protests.

Last April, mass protests by the Red Shirts led to violent clashes on the streets of Bangkok with at least two people killed and 120 injured in the capital's worst unrest in almost two decades.

Red Shirt leaders say the violence was stirred up by gangs of hired pro-government thugs.

The Red Shirts have held a number of rallies since Abhisit came to power in December 2008, after a court decision removed Thaksin's allies from government.

Thaksin, who now lives mostly in Dubai, to escape a jail term for corruption, has extended his support for the latest protests.

Last month Thailand's supreme court confiscated $1.4bn of his assets after ruling the money had been obtained through abuse of power when he was prime minister.

Greece debt rescue plan approved

Finance ministers from Eurozone member countries have agreed on a potential rescue mechanism for Greece should it need help getting out of its budget crisis.

Details of the rescue plans were not released after the five-hour talks in Brussels on Monday, except that bilateral aid was favoured over the provision of loan guarantees.

The sum required for the emergency response is believed to be around €20-€25bn ($27.5-$34.4bn), according to diplomatic sources.

The terms will require EU national leaders to initiate the rescue plans to "rapidly" plug gaps in Greece's public financing, if it appears to be losing the fight to cut a deficit of nearly 13 per cent of its gross domestic product.

A Eurogroup statement said the "objective would not be to provide financing at average euro area interest rates, but to safeguard financial stability in the euro area as a whole".

Coordinated response

The ministers from the 16-country currency bloc said in a statement: "It [the Eurogroup] clarified the technical modalities enabling a decision on coordinated action and which could be activated swiftly in the case of need."

They said the mechanism aims to provide Greece with "strong incentives to return to markets as soon as possible".

Jean-Claude Juncker, the Luxembourg prime minister and the head of Eurogroup, said the mechanism will kick in the moment Greece appears unable to finance itself on the market, in spite of the government's austerity measures.

"The member states of the euro area will take coordinated action if such action turns out to be necessary," he told a news conference after the talks.

"We clarified the technical arrangements ... to take coordinated action."

Juncker also stressed the fact that the Greeks "have not asked for aid" and said the ministers "still don't think it will be necessary".

Crippling debt

The Greek economy is burdened with a €300bn debt and the government is looking to raise €54bn this year to finance it, but it is struggling to do so without paying premium interest rates.

Olli Rehn, the Greek economic and monetary affairs commissioner, citing his report to eurozone ministers said the country was on track to cut its annual budget deficit this year by four percentage points.

Greece recently announced an additional $6.5bn in savings through public sector salary cuts, pension freezes and consumer tax increases to deal with its growing deficit.

The latest cutbacks, added to a previous $15.24bn of austerity measures, seek to reduce the country's budget deficit from 12.7 per cent of annual output to 8.7 per cent this year.

The austerity drive has been met by a series of protests and strikes there in recent weeks.

Last month George Papandreou, the Greek prime minister, said that his country's borrowing needs were assured only until mid-March.

Germany has been hawkish on the issue, being openly reluctant to bail out Greece.

Wolfgang Schaeuble, the German finance minister, warned that countries could eventually be kicked out of the eurozone if they did not adhere to tighter restrictions in future.

"We need stricter rules - that means, in an extreme emergency, having the possibility of removing from the euro area a country that does not get its finances in order," he was quoted as saying.

Al Jazeera's Alan Fisher reporting from Brussels says Germany, Europe's biggest economy, was not keen because it feels it is paying for Greece to bend the rules to get into the EU.

Our correspondent said the reluctance was also due to the unpopularity of the idea among Germans back home.

Iraqi PM pulls ahead of poll rivals

Early poll results in Iraq's national elections show a strong lead for State of Law, the bloc led by Nouri al-Maliki, the prime minister, with about two-thirds of the total votes counted.

The coalition is ahead in oil-rich Basra and Karbala, two of Iraq's three biggest provinces, which have Shia Muslim majorities.

Al-Maliki's State of Law is also holding on to leads in Baghdad, whose 70 seats account for more than a fifth of Iraq's 325-member Council of Representatives, as well as Babil, Najaf, Wasit and Muthanna.

The poll results have put Iyad Allawi, the head of Iraqiya, a cross-sectarian bloc, ahead in the disputed oil-rich province of Kirkuk, against the expectations of analysts who had predicted it would probably be won by a Kurdish bloc.

Allawi is also leading in the Sunni-majority region of Anbar, Iraq's largest province geographically.

Fraud claims

Anita McNaught, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Baghdad, said: "We're now seeing two-thirds of the votes counted across the country's 18 provinces ... but those results do not place us in a position whereby we can see who will come out ahead in the end.

"Now, the parties behind the scenes will be guessing how well they are doing ahead of the process of deciding who will sit with who to form a voting bloc big enough to form the government."

The results of the March 7 elections have been overshadowed by over 300 complaints of fraud from within Iraq and overseas, which are being investigated by the electoral commission.

Al-Maliki has dismissed the allegations, which have come largely from opposition blocs.

"We should all believe the election was handled in nothing but a respectful manner and we should comply with its results," he said.

But al-Maliki conceded that "there were some cases of fraud, but it has not been enough to upend the election process".

Election officials also downplayed the claims despite some polling stations in Kirkuk experiencing such a high level of fraud that ballots were nullified.

"Voting anomalies in Kirkuk have been so serious in some polling stations that they have cancelled them,"our correspondent said.

"They have found that there were more votes in the ballot boxes than there were voters on the polling list there," Faraj al-Haidari, who heads the national election commission, said the number of complaints in the general election was less than half that of provincial polls in January last year.