2A - The Michigan Daily - Monday, September 19, 2005 NATION/WORLD Afghans vote despite threats of attack NEWS IN BRIEF KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) - Trooping into schools, mosques and tents, millions of Afghans defied a Taliban boycott call and militant attacks to vote for a new parliament yesterday, taking the last formal step in starting a democracy aimed at ending decades of rule by the gun. Officials hailed the polls as a major success, although initial estimates suggested voter turnout was lower than hoped for because of security fears and frustrations over the inclusion of several war- lords on the ballot. Results were not expected for more than a week. Many people looked to a big vote to marginalize renegade loyalists of the ousted Taliban regime by demonstrating public support for an elected govern- ment built up under the protection of 20,000 soldiers in the American-led coalition and 11,000 NATO peacekeepers. Washington and other governments have poured in billions of dollars trying to foster a civic system that encourages Afghanistan's fractious ethnic groups to work together peacefully and ensure the nation is never again a staging post for al-Qaida and other terrorist groups. "After 30 years of wars, interventions, occupations and misery, today Afghanistan is moving forward, making an economy, making political institutions," President Hamid Karzai said as he cast his ballot nearly a year after his own victory in an election that defied Taliban threats. He praised Afghans for going out to vote for the parlia- ment and 34 provincial councils "in spite of the terror- ism, in spite of the threats." Fifteen people, including a French commando in the U.S.-led coalition, were killed in a spate of violence during the day. But there was no spectacular attack as threatened by Taliban militants, whose stepped- up insurgency the past six months caused more than 1,200 deaths. Heavy security kept most violence away from polling stations. Election officials reported three people wounded and no one killed in attacks near polls and said only 16 of the .6,270 voting stations did not open because of security threats. Ima.I OWAIin alEMS.u-900 m-A Yn, MAIN oral 12 m m usmasral $-. Afghan women go to vote in a polling station in a school in Heart, Afghanistan yesterday. Afghanistan held land- mark legislative elections, the first of their kind in more than three decades. Vote counting begins tomorrow, and with don- keys and camels being used to collect ballots in some remote areas, preliminary election results are not expected until early October. Even then, it likely will take time to figure out who has the power in the new Wolesi Jirga, a par- liament with 249 seats, 68 of which are set aside for women. Most of the 2,775 candidates ran as independents, and Karzai was careful not to pub- licly favor anyone, fearing renewed tensions if any political blocs become too powerful. Rights activists viewed the election as a big step for women in this traditionally male-dominated soci- ety. The 5,800 candidates for parliament and the provincial assemblies included 582 women, and a quarter of legislative seats are reservedd for women. Enthusiasm was generally high as Afghans clutch- ing voter identification cards filed into schools with lessons still scrawled on blackboards or stepped over piles of shoes to cast ballots in mosques. Tents served as polling stations in remote areas Some 12.4 million Afghans were registered to vote, up from 10 million for the presidential election. BAGHDAD Kurdish lawmaker assasinated in Iraq Insurgents assassinated a Kurdish member of parliament and police found 20 bodies shot to death and dumped in the Tigris River north of the capital, where there was no major violence yesterday for the first time in five days. Faris Nasir Hussein, a member of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan party, was killed along with his brother and their driver in an ambush 50 miles north of Baghdad. A second Kurdish lawmaker, Haidar Shanoun, was wounded in the attack near the town of Dujail. Police and PUK officials said the men were murdered Saturday night as they drove to the capital for yesterday's session of the legislature which signed off on minor amendments to Iraq's draft constitution and delivered it to the United Nations for printing. The U.N. will distribute 5 million copies in advance of the Oct. 15 referendum. Lawmakers sat for a minute of silence to honor their dead comrade. The terrorists have launched a war of aggression against all Iraqis (but) we are up to it," said Deputy Speaker Hussain al-Shahristani. BERLIN Merkel leading in German election Vote counts and exit polls showed conservative challenger Angela Merkel's party leading in German parliamentary elections yesterday but falling short of the majority she needed to form a center-right coalition as the nation's first female chancellor. Gerhard Schroeder, written off as a lame duck a few weeks ago, finished stron- ger than expected and refused to concede defeat, saying he could still theoretically remain in power if talks with other parties were successful. An exit poll by the Forsa agency showed Schroeder's party winning more seats in parliament even though Merkel's Christian Democrats received more votes overall. "I feel myself confirmed in ensuring on behalf of our country that there is in the next four years a stable government under my leadership," he said to cheering supporters at his Social Democrat party headquarters while flashing the thumbs-up signal and holding his arms aloft in a gesture of triumph. UNITED NATIONS U.S., Europeans want swift action on Iran Iran's president proclaimed his country's "inalienable right" to nuclear energy Saturday and offered foreign countries and companies a role in his nation's uranium enrichment program to prove Tehran is not producing atomic weapons. He said Iran continues to abide by the NuclearhNonproliferation Treaty and accused some "powerful states" - an apparent reference to the United States and some Europeans - of engaging in "nuclear apartheid" by dis- criminating against access by nonproliferation treaty members to mate- rial, equipment and peaceful nuclear technology. Ahmadinejad rejected European and American claims that Iran doesn't need to enrich uranium because it can obtain it from other countries. BEIJING North Korea nuclear talks reach do-or-die point Talks on North Korean disarmament stood at a possibly pivotal point late yesterday after the chief U.S. envoy praised a Chinese proposal that other delegates said might let the Pyongyang regime have a civilian nuclear program after disbanding its atomic weapons work. Washington previously rejected allowing North Korea any nuclear program, saying its decades of pursuing an atomic bomb showed it cannot be trusted. At the same time, however, Hill said he was leaving at the end of today no matter what happened at a meet- ing scheduled for earlier in the day for all six delegations to state their positions. - Compiled from Daily wire reports CORRECTIONS Please report any error in the Daily to corrections@michigandaily.com. Tbe ltirbitau Juoag 420 Maynard St., Ann Arbor, MI48109-1327 www.michigandaily.com *I New Orleans health system faces crisis NEW ORLEANS (AP) - This city's health care facilities have been shattered to an extent unmatched in U.S. history, and its hospital system faces grave challenges as residents begin returning, the vice president of the national hospital accredita- tion organization said yesterday. The official, Joe Cappiello, said several hospitals were probably damaged beyond repair by Hurri- cane Katrina, while some may try to rush back into business before conditions are safe. Others, while rebuilding, may lose doctors and nurses to communities elsewhere. He also recounted harrowing details of how doctors and nurses felt compelled - against the fun- damentals of their training - to make triage-style choices during the flood. They were forced to aid some patients at the expense of oth- ers with less chance of survival. Essentially the health care infra- structure of New Orleans is gone - it no longer exists," said Cap- piello, who just completed a three- day mission to the city along with a colleague from the Illinois-based Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations. Although the city has more than a dozen hospitals, none have resumed normal operations. Officials at Children's Hospital, which Mayor Ray Nagin had hoped would be ready when residents are allowed to return to the Uptown neighborhood this week, said they may need 10 more days to prepare. Nagin's plan is to start repopu- lating the city neighborhood by neighborhood, starting today with the Algiers section, across the Mis- sissippi River from downtown New Orleans. Over the next week and a half, the Garden District and the French Quarter, the city's historic heart, are due to open to residents and businesses. All are areas that didn't flood, but Coast Guard Vice Adm. Thad Allen, head of the federal government's hurricane response, has urged Nagin not to rush people back in. He didn't want to set a timeline on yesterday, but he said the information he was getting from administrators at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Environ- mental Protection Agency suggest- ed it still wasn't safe enough. Cappiello expressed concern that some hospitals, desperate to get back into business for competitive as well as public-service reasons, might move too quickly, before all mold and contaminants from the flooding are removed. "I hope there's someone looking at all the health care assets and mak- ing sound decisions as the mayor faces overwhelming political pres- sure to let people back in," Cappi- ello said. "The federal government needs to go in there and make sure the hospitals are a safe environment before they're reopened." Many local doctors and nurses are without paychecks, he said: "There's a nationwide shortage of nurses. People will try to recruit them and many may never come back." He cited Charity Hospital, where floodwaters continue to be pumped out, as one that seemed beyond repair. The hospitals seemed to have been well-prepared for Katrina's howling winds, but not for the disastrous flooding that followed, Cappiello said. That foiled plans to evacuate critically ill patients and knocked out backup generators that would keep air conditioning and lifesaving equipment on. At Memorial Medical Center, doctors and staff worked valiantly during the worst of the flood to evacuate more than 200 patients by boat and helicopter, but 45 patients - most of them critically ill - died at the hospital. "We're going to hear of a thou- sand more acts of heroism," Cap- piello said. "But the bottom line is that having a response plan that relies on heroism is not tenable." At a couple of hospitals, he said, officials ordered a lockdown of pharmaceutical supplies, wanting to protect them from looters when their hospitals emptied. They later learned that staff were unable to gain access to the drugs to aid ail- ing patients after flooding thwarted evacuation plans. "Doctors and nurses who stayed behind were scrambling to find drugs for their critically ill patients," he said. "They had to make choices that we ordinar- ily don't make in America, to help those with the greatest chance of survival. ... That's not the way we practice medicine." el JASON Z. 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