Ex-speaker Shevchuk wins vote in rebel Transdniestria

Former parliament speaker Yevgeny Shevchuk (C) attends a session of the central electoral committee in Tiraspol in Moldova's self-proclaimed separatist Dnestr region December 26, 2011. Former parliament speaker Yevgeny Shevchuk won the presidential election in Moldova's breakaway Transdniestria region with 73.88 percent of the vote, according to preliminary results announced by the republic's election authority on Monday.
Credit: Reuters/Stringer
By Alexander Tanas

TIRASPOL, Moldova (Reuters) - Former parliament speaker Yevgeny Shevchuk won the presidential election in Moldova's breakaway Transdniestria region, the territory's election authority said on Monday, the second setback for regional power Russia within two months.

"According to preliminary results, he (Shevchuk) received 73.88 percent of votes while his opponent Anatoly Kaminsky received 19.67 percent," Central Election Commission chairman Pyotr Denisenko told reporters.

Shevchuk competed against current speaker Anatoly Kaminsky, who was backed by Russia, in a run-off on Sunday.

Kaminsky's defeat comes after a Kremlin-endorsed candidate lost a presidential election in November in Georgia's rebel region of South Ossetia, leading to court battles, public protests and legal chaos.
Kaminsky indicated he would not challenge election results.

"...I recognize Shevchuk's victory," he told Reuters.

President Igor Smirnov, who ran the mainly Russian-speaking territory as an independent fiefdom since it broke from Moldova and fought a brief war against Moldovan forces in 1992, was voted out in the first round on December 11.

Not recognized internationally, Transdniestria relies on Russian financial and political support for its half a million people. Moscow still has about 1,500 troops in a strip of land along Moldova's eastern border with Ukraine.

Transdniestria is the most westerly of the former Soviet Union's "frozen conflicts" - ethnic disputes that flared into wars when the superpower collapsed and remain latent and unresolved two decades later.

SHEVCHUK INSISTS ON INDEPENDENCE

Talks with Moldova have failed to make progress under Smirnov who insisted on sovereignty while Moscow suggested Transdniestria should be part of Moldova with a special status.

Shevchuk, 43, fell out with Smirnov in 2009 after suggesting constitutional reform to limit presidential powers. His campaign in this election focused on fighting corruption and nepotism.

Although he has not spoken in favour of rejoining Moldova, Shevchuk has called for compromise solutions that would make travelling and doing business easier for Transdniestrians.

"The issue of joining Moldova is beyond the president's powers. It is up to the people who clearly showed their preference at a referendum on September 17, 2006," Shevchuk told Reuters after he was declared winner.

In the 2006 referendum, 97 percent of Transdniestrians voted in favour of winning formal independence from Moldova and joining Russia. Moscow, however, has never approved such an idea and Transdniestria has no border with Russia.

At the same time, Shevchuk said he would seek to build "good neighborly relations" with Moldova and Ukraine, continuing talks to resolve the dispute over sovereignty with Moldova.

"My first task will be to work with our neighbors to ensure free movement of people and goods," Shevchuk said.

(Writing by Olzhas Auyezov; Editing by Louise Ireland)

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Colombia says the FARC rebel leader killed

 1 out of 2. Colombian rebel Alfonso Cano, Chief ideologue of the revolutionary armed forces of Colombia (FARC), del Caguán in this photo of 2 February 2001 file speaks to the media in the vicinity of San Vicente.Credit: Reuters/Eliana Aponte / files

Luis Jaime Acosta and Jack Kimball

BOGOTÁ | Saturday, 5th November 2011 1: 22 am EDT

BOGOTA (Reuters) - Colombia's armed forces top FARC rebel leader Alfonso Cano on Friday in the biggest blow yet to Latin America longest uprising and a triumph for President Juan Manuel Santos killed, the Defense Ministry said.

While unlikely, that a rapid end to almost five decades of war in the Andes nation to bring, will his death further damage of the rebels ability to collect and coordinate the high-profile attacks that it have brought worldwide fame.

There were few immediate details about the killing, which occurred during the fight, an official of the Ministry for.

"It is true that he is dead," he told Reuters.

Before his beheading the FARC or the revolutionary armed forces of Colombia, had broken was that of a U.S.-backed military campaign, which in 2002 and the decreasing uprising has lost several other key commanders in the past four years.

"This us closer to victory and peace, so that we can stop killing each other", said Jorge Cordero, 19-year-old soldier in the North of Bogotá

The death of Cano, 63, who took over as head of the rebels after the death of its founder, 2008, was a major strategic victory for Santos, who came into Office last year, to keep an uncompromising stance against the guerrillas promises.

The Government had offered up to $3.7 million for information leading to his capture.

The death of the bespectacled and bearded rebel commander, a former student and Communist Youth Member, followed the killing end last year of one of his main henchmen, Mono-Jojoy, in a bombardment and attack on his camp.

REBELLEN WEAKEST IN DECADES

"It's always hard for them to get over the next years," said Alfredo Rangel, an independent security analyst.

"There is no leader with the intensity, the Cano has and it will be difficult to replace someone around him." In the short term, there is a lack of leadership. "At the end of non-automatic or immediate but we come to the end of the FARC."

Cano went away, a middle-class youth in the capital, Bogota on the Supreme Leader of the FARC after taking part in peace talks in the neighbouring Mexico and Venezuela in the 1990s.

The strike, which killed him underlined how now the leader of the able to attack Colombia's military deep in the mountains and jungle. Once a powerful force is control large swaths of Colombia, the FARC the weakest in decades.

Violence, the bombings and the kidnapping of the conflict have greatly eased, Colombian forces, better intelligence and U.S. education and technology, use the fight to bring the rebels.

Foreign investment in Colombia has increased since the military crackdown in 2002, in particular began oil and mining. But the FARC and other armed groups continue to have a threat in rural areas, where the State presence is weak and trafficking cocaine to the rebels to finance their operations.

Leaves and military operations have cropped rebel ranks about 7,000 fighters, but the FARC has survived for more than 40 years, and has still a cadre of experienced mid-level commanders. Rebels rely increasingly on hit and-run tactics and ambushes in rural areas.

The FARC, whose Rebellen have made incursions into Venezuela and Ecuador at times to escape the Colombian army, are on the US list of terrorist organisations.

(Additional Nelson Bocanegra and Helen Murphy;) Written by Daniel Wallis. (Editing by Andrew Cawthorne and Todd Eastham)

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