Nigerian president's state votes amid tight security

By Austin Ekeinde and Tife Owalabi

YENAGOA, Nigeria (Reuters) - Nigerians voted amid tight security in a governorship election on Saturday in President Goodluck Jonathan's restive and oil-rich home state of Bayelsa, where last week militants attacked a major oil pipeline.

Nigeria's 36 state governors are some of the most powerful politicians in Africa's most populous nation, in some cases controlling budgets larger than other African countries and gubernatorial elections can stoke violence.

At least one person was killed and several injured at a pre-election rally on Tuesday in the southern Ijaw region in Bayelsa, witnesses said.

"Ten thousand to 15,000 policemen are deployed for the election, these include anti-bomb squads from Delta, Edo and Rivers states to ensure that all key points are saved," said Chris Olakpe, Bayelsa's police commissioner.

"We are going to effectively police all polling booths and normal patrols would go on to ensure miscreants do not hijack the process," added Olakpe, who took up his position this week.

Even with a huge police and military presence it will be difficult to guard all ballot boxes in Bayelsa, where thousands of kilometers (miles) of labyrinthine creeks weave through swamplands, sitting on top of billions of dollars of crude oil.

"Soldiers, police are all over so I'm hopeful there will be no problem of shooting, killing, burning of houses and all that," said John Masi, a 35-year old laborer.

"I want the new governor that will be elected today to quickly construct the new university so I can get work to do and make money to get out of this wooden shack and have a better life for my wife and two children."

Bayelsa is one of the three Nigerian states that make up the oil rich Niger Delta, where militant gangs held the government to ransom for years by sabotaging pipelines and stealing industrial amounts of oil until an amnesty in 2009.

Attacks have been rarer and less destructive since the amnesty but they still occur. Last week the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), formerly Nigeria's main militant threat, claimed a strike on a pipeline owned by Italian firm Eni, which confirmed 4,000 barrels per day of output had been cut by the attack.

MILITANTS

Under the amnesty thousands of militants gave up their weapons, joined training schemes and drew stipends. Security sources say remaining gangs in the Niger Delta do not have the capacity to do the damage seen in the past, which at its height cut more than a third of the OPEC-member's output.

Several false threats purporting to be from MEND have been sent in the past and recent damage caused to Nigeria's oil infrastructure has been done by gangs stealing oil for illicit refining and sale, rather than the result of militant strikes.

Diplomats and security sources have said violence in the Niger Delta is often stoked by rival politicians and the race for the Bayelsa governorship post has been fierce.

Nigeria's Supreme Court removed Governor Timipre Sylva from his post last month because it said his tenure should have expired, replacing him with Bayelsa's speaker of the house of assembly.

The dominant ruling People's Democratic Party (PDP) didn't allow Sylva to run in its primary last November, the first time the PDP has stopped a sitting governor from seeking a second term. Thousands of soldiers were then deployed to Bayelsa, prompting outrage from Sylva's team.

The winner of that primary, Henry Dickson, is the clear favorite to win Saturday's vote. President Jonathan is backing Dickson and is traveling from the capital Abuja to his home state to cast his vote, the presidency said.

Western diplomats said Sylva was snubbed because he fell out with his former ally Jonathan. Sylva will not run in the election but is seeking to nullify the most recent PDP primary, hoping to revert back to the primary he won last year.

Bayelsa has a population of around 1.5 million, the least populous state in a country of more than 160 million but it is key to Nigeria's economy due to its substantial oil wealth.

(Additional reporting and writing by Joe Brock, editing by Rosalind Russell)

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Mexico cartels paid $4.5 million political bribes: court

By Isabella Cota

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexican drug cartels paid $4.5 million in bribes to buy protection and political favors in a state run by the country's main opposition party, U.S. court documents said on Friday, as the party leads polls to win the presidency in July.

The money-laundering case in Texas charges Antonio Pena, arrested on Wednesday, with funneling cash from the feared Zetas cartel to officials in the state of Tamaulipas, according to documents from the U.S. District Court in San Antonio, Texas.

A sworn affidavit from an undercover agent at the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration names former Tamaulipas Governor Tomas Yarrington of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), as having a direct personal relationship with Zeta leaders.

A DEA undercover source "described Antonio Pena as a conduit between Mexican politicians, in particular Tomas Yarrington, and Zeta members Miguel Trevino and Heriberto Lazcano," according to the documents, available on U.S. court database PACER.

Lazcano and Trevino are the leaders of the cartel, which is notorious for decapitations and kidnappings across Mexico.

Yarrington, in office from 1999 to 2005, is under investigation separately in Mexico along with two other ex-governors of the state, which the PRI has ruled since the party's foundation.

The centrist PRI has said the probe is politically motivated ahead of the hotly contested July 1 presidential vote.

The federal attorney-general's office confirmed the investigation but declined to give further details. Mexican media have reported authorities are searching for evidence the politicians are linked to money laundering.

The accusations have given President Felipe Calderon's ruling conservative National Action Party, or PAN, fresh ammunition against the PRI, which ruled Mexico for seven decades until it was ousted in 2000.

Yarrington did not immediately reply to requests for comment. He said via a Twitter account on January 30 that his name had appeared on an alert blocking his travel outside of Mexico.

"I hope that the authorities clarify the motive and scope of this action," his Twitter account said.

The PRI is hoping its youthful presidential candidate Enrique Pena Nieto, who has a big lead in opinion polls, will bring a new face to the party, still remembered by some Mexican voters for corruption and vote buying during 70 years in power.

HORRIFIC VIOLENCE

Members of Calderon's PAN have accused the PRI of negotiating in the past with organized crime, a charge the party vehemently denies.

PAN party chairman Gustavo Madero responded to the Yarrington report by urging a thorough investigation of alleged links between the PRI and organized crime.

"Our concern isn't political posturing, it's an appeal to the conscience of those governing to think again, because this is putting the lives and well-being of all Mexicans at risk," he said in a televised statement.

The PAN's popularity has suffered since the government launched a frontal attack on the cartels five years ago. Since then, more than 47,000 people have died in Mexico as turf wars between the gangs over lucrative smuggling routes intensified.

The Zetas, who began as the armed wing of the Gulf cartel but split off from their former employers, have been blamed for some of the most horrific acts of violence, including the massacre of 72 migrants in Tamaulipas in 2010.

In the Texas court case document, Yarrington is mentioned several times.

"This relationship started with the election of Governor Tomas Yarrington and continued with the placement of other PRI candidates in government positions throughout Tamaulipas who could ensure favorable protection for the cartels," the testimony said.

The DEA agent says Yarrington met with Pena on various occasions in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, and the United States.

The testimony also cites another confidential source who said he delivered $500,000 in drug proceeds from the Gulf cartel to Pena when he was an associate of the mayor of Nuevo Laredo in 2002.

John Ackerman, a political analyst at the National

Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), said the government should have begun probes into the ex-governors much earlier.

It chose not to because the PAN needed opposition support in Congress due to its lack of a majority, he added.

"This is not a witch hunt, this is the reality: governors and government officials in this country are involved with drug dealers," he said. "They are not clean, neither those from PRI nor the PAN."

(Reporting by Isabella Cota; Editing by Mica Rosenberg, Krista Hughes and Philip Barbara)

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Iran to announce nuclear progress: Ahmadinejad

 

EDITORS' NOTE: Reuters and other foreign media are subject to Iranian restrictions on leaving the office to report, film or take pictures in Tehran. Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad speaks during a ceremony to mark the 33rd anniversary of the Islamic Revolution, in Tehran's Azadi square February 11, 2012. Ahmadinejad said on Saturday the Islamic Republic would soon announce ''very important'' achievements in the nuclear field, state TV reported.

Credit: Reuters/Raheb Homavandi

By Parisa Hafezi and Mitra Amiri

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Saturday that the Islamic Republic, targeted by tougher Western sanctions, would soon announce advances in its nuclear program.

He was speaking on the 33rd anniversary of the Islamic revolution that toppled the U.S.-backed Shah. Tens of thousands of Iranians joined state-organized rallies to mark the occasion.

"In the coming days the world will witness Iran's announcement of its very important and very major nuclear achievements," Ahmadinejad told a crowd at Tehran's Azadi (Freedom) Square in a speech relayed live on state television.

Demonstrators carrying Iranian flags and pictures of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei chanted "Death to Israel" and "Death to America." Ismail Haniya, who heads the Islamist Hamas administration in the Gaza Strip, also attended the ceremony.

Ahmadinejad gave no details of how Iran's nuclear work, which Tehran says has only peaceful purposes, has progressed.

The United States and Israel, a country which Iran does not recognize, have not ruled out military action if sanctions fail.

Iran has warned of a "painful" answer, saying it would hit Israel and U.S. bases in the Gulf as well as block the vital Gulf oil shipping route through the Strait of Hormuz.

"If attacked by the Zionist regime (Israel), we will turn it to dust," said a Revolutionary Guards commander, Mohammad Shirdel, semi-official Fars news agency reported Saturday.

"Thousands of our missiles will target Israel and the 40 bases of America in the region," he added.

The nuclear dispute has fuelled tension as the West tightens sanctions. The European Union has agreed to ban Iranian oil imports by July and to freeze the assets of Iran's central bank.

Its measures reinforce those imposed by the United States as the West tries to force Tehran to return to talks before it produces enough nuclear material for an atomic bomb.

Neither side has shown much appetite for compromise. Iran says it will fight EU sanctions with counter-measures and its parliament plans legislation to ban oil exports to the EU.

Iranian officials brush off the impact of sanctions, while also proclaiming that Iranians will endure any hardship in support of their country's right to nuclear technology.

"I am saying openly that if you (the West) continue to use the language of force and threat, our nation will never succumb to your pressure," Ahmadinejad said.

IMPACT OF SANCTIONS

Industry analysts say sanctions are hitting Iran's vital oil sector and say falls in crude output and exports will speed up.

Global oil flows are realigning even though the EU ban on imports from Iran only takes effect in July, the International Energy Agency said in its monthly Oil Market Report Friday.

Asia's two giants, China and India, want to head off new sanctions on Iran. China, Iran's biggest trade partner, is one of six major powers involved in nuclear talks with Tehran.

Ahmadinejad, echoing Iran's official stance, said fresh nuclear talks would be welcome. The last round collapsed a year ago over Iran's refusal to halt its uranium enrichment work.

"They say we want to negotiate. That is fine with us, we have been always ready to hold talks in the framework of justice and mutual respect," Ahmadinejad said. "The Iranian nation will not withdraw even one iota from its path."

Western nations say talking is pointless unless uranium enrichment is on the table, something Iran refuses to discuss.

Iran's economy is around 60 percent reliant on oil. The country is heavily dependent on food imports, buying 45 percent of its rice and most of its animal feed abroad.

Sanctions-linked trade snags risk fuelling already high inflation, which Iranian critics blame on Ahmadinejad's economic policies. The official inflation rate exceeds 20 percent.

But Ahmadinejad said the economy was "flourishing," reeling off figures to back his contention. Critics have in the past accused the government of falsifying economic statistics.

"We have saved over $30 billion for rainy days," he said. "Iran's non-oil exports will reach over $43 billion by March ... Iran's imports in the past 10 months dropped five percent."

Following reforms under which the government phased out hefty subsidies on staples like food and fuel since 2010, Ahmadinejad said billions were saved by not importing petrol.

"We were importers of fuel but ... now we are among main exporters of fuel and oil products," he said.

Fresh U.S. and EU financial sanctions are snarling Iranian payments for staple food and other imports, causing hardship for its 74 million people weeks before a parliamentary election.

The election will be Iran's first since a disputed presidential vote in 2009, which the opposition says was rigged to secure Ahmadinejad's re-election. That sparked eight months of street protests which the government forcibly suppressed.

(Reporting by Parisa Hafezi; Editing by Alistair Lyon)

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