An iron gate at the end of a dusty cul-de-sac is

An iron gate at the end of a dusty cul-de-sac is barred shut. Behind it is a grand, new headquarters building, only half- completed. The giant portico is still swathed in scaffolding.”You can’t see anyone,” said the doorman. “They’ve all been arrested.” It is only a few leading politicians who have been placed under house arrest – the rank and file have been put in jail. The army came here four times, said the doorman, looking for anyone they failed to pick up the first time In all, 42 party members have been arrested.

Two are said to have fled to India.”It’s not right what the king has done in this situation,” said the doorman. But he said it in a quiet, furtive voice – the voice of a man who can no longer speak his mind without fear.The really serious thing King Gyanendra did this week was not sacking the unpopular Mr Deuba. It was the state of emergency he declared, under which he has launched the worst assault on human rights in Nepal’s recent history.Nepalis have had their most basic rights taken away. With his newly restored medieval powers, Gyanendra has “suspended” not only the right to free speech, but freedom of thought He has subjected the press to strict censorship. The papers carried fawning accounts yesterday of the king’s announcement that he was taking power. The king “suspended” the right to assemble peacefully, and the right to privacy.

He also, according to the Kathmandu Post, suspended the right to own private property.Most of these rights have long been abused by the military and the Maoists But this week the king took it a step further. He said no Nepalese citizen could even claim he had those rights any more.. GEORGE BUSH praised the recent elections in the Middle East and Afghanistan yesterday, saying that Sunday’s historic vote in Iraq opened “a new phase” in US operations there, that could lead to a reduction in America’s military presence there. He is also urging Congress to move on several initiatives, including bills to reform tort law, simplify the tax code and modernise US immigration laws.But despite the enlarged Republican majorities in both House and Senate that emerged from the November 2004 election, he faces an uphill path on all fronts, especially his contentious bid to overhaul social security.Democrats are almost to a man against it, and Harry Reid, the party’s leader in the Senate, warned the President this week to “face the fact” that social security reform in the shape Mr Bush envisaged did not have a hope of passage.But many Republicans too have misgivings about the cost of the measure, which could add up to $2 trillion to future budget deficits. ONE OF the worst scandals in Germany’s sporting history took a dramatic turn yesterday, when police raided the homes of three senior football referees suspected of match-fixing and claimed that investigations were leading to the very top of the national game. The organisers surveyed Kurds as they emerged from polling stations across northern Iraq The results have not been independently verified.. An informal referendum conducted by volunteers in parallel with the election found 95 per cent of Kurds supported independence from Baghdad.

Iraqi Kurds have long pushed for independence, but Turkey, Iran and Syria – all with substantial Kurdish minorities – oppose the establishment of Kurdish state on their borders. But after walking fruitlessly from one closed election centre to another for three hours in the Sunni area they went home without voting.”There has been an injustice,” said Ms Yacoub, a 35-year-old cemetery worker.More than two million Kurds in northern Iraq took part in the poll and Kurdish leaders claimed that self-rule is now inevitable if not imminent. Party officials say 8,000 too few ballots were delivered.”The election commission did not distribute ballots according to needs of each centre, especially in Arab areas,” wrote Mustafa Ahmed al-Tamawi, a party official in Kirkuk.Many Sunnis appear to have been torn between outright suspicion of the election process and a desire to influence the new National Assembly.Maisem Khalil Yacoub and her husband, Sabah al-Tayee, tried to vote in the Adhamiya neighbourhood of Baghdad, where gunfire and explosions marked the day. Please, there are not enough ballots in Hawija, not enough in Beiji, not enough in Mosul’.”In one complaint filed by an official of the Homeland Party in Hawija, a violent Sunni Arab stronghold south-west of Kirkuk, voters complained ballots ran out at 11.30am and extra ballots did not arrive until 3.30pm, 90 minutes before the close of voting. Community leaders say a surge of interest in the elections brought larger-than-expected numbers to the polls but many were prevented from casting a vote by a shortage of polling stations, lack of ballot papers and concerns over security.Iraqi election officials have acknowledged ballot shortages in Baghdad, Mosul and Basra, contributing to the low Sunni turnout.