US Senate votes down amendment to START preamble.

WASHINGTON, December 19 (Itar-Tass) -- The U.S. Senate on Saturday
opted not to cross out the phrase about the interrelationship between
nuclear weapons and missile defence from the preamble of the new START
treaty. The move was initiated by Republicans.

.Belarus elects president Sunday.

MINSK, December 19 (Itar-Tass) -- Belarus holds presidential elections
on Sunday, December 19.
These will be the fourth presidential vote in the country's 20-year
history as an independent state. First elections were held in 1994, then
in 2001, and in 2006. Alexander Lukashenko won the first election, and has
been ruling the country ever since having won all the subsequent
presidential races.
For the first time, the list of contenders contains ten candidates,
including the incumbent head of state, who is the front-runner. Belarusian
and foreign poll centres say Lukashenko would score the majority of votes
in the range from 38 to 90 percent. The country's Central Election
Commission chairwoman Lydia Yermoshina was also positive about the victory
of the incumbent president. "I do not think Lukashenko cannot win an
absolutely majority of votes in the first round. The second round is held,
as a rule, when there are strong candidates. All the others [opposition
candidates] cam hardly compete with the incumbent president," Yermoshina
told Itar-Tass on Saturday, December 18. "There is a joke in the Central
Election Commission: there are two candidates: Lukashenko and all the
others," she added.
According to polls, opposition leaders Vladimir Neklyaev, Andrei
Sannikov and Yaroslav Romanchuk enjoy the biggest support from among
alternative candidates. Observers, however, do not rule out that the
voting might bring about certain surprises. Thus, they say, it is quite
probable that the opposition's nationalist wing leader Grigory Kostusev
from the Belarusian Popular Front or Vitaly Rymashevsky from the Christian
Business Initiative may come third or even second.
Voting will be held at 6,390 polling stations, including 44 outside
the country, 281 in rest homes and recreation centres, 52 in army units.
There are more than seven million eligible voters in the country.
In line with the country's law, early voting started on December 14.
Under law, anyone may cast his or her vote in the early voting, no reason
is needed. A record-breaking number of voters - 17.4 percent - already
cast their votes in the four days of early voting.
More than 1,000 international observers, including from the OSCE
Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, CIS, CIS
Interparliamentary Assembly, and central election commission from a number
of countries, as well as some 20,000 local observers will monitor the
elections.
As many as 1,025 journalists, including 670 from foreign media, have
been accredited to highlight the voting.
Under the national law, the elections will be valid if attended by
more than half of the country's registered voters. The winner shall score
at least 50 percent of the vote. If neither of the contenders manage to
score that much, a second ballot is to be held within two weeks to choose
from among the two front-runners.
Preliminary election results will be made public at 20:00 local time
(21:00 Moscow time). However from the onset of the election campaign, the
Belarusian opposition has repeatedly said the elections were very much
likely to be rigged. They claim election commissions have almost no
opposition representatives. Moreover, according to the opposition, early
voting is a fertile ground for rigging. In this connections the opposition
leaders called on their supporters to come to the central square in Minsk
after the voting is over to protest ballot rigging and to urge new
elections without Lukashenko. The Belarusian Prosecutor General's Office,
however, said that any public events or rallies have been prohibited in
Minsk's Oktyabrskaya Square and issued official warnings to five
opposition candidates, Vladimir Neklyaev, Andrei Sannikov, Yaroslav
Romanchuk, Vitaly Rymashevsky and Nikolai Statkevich, over calls for
unauthorized rallies.
As many as four candidates vied the post of Belarus' head of state in
the previous elections on March 19, 2006. They were leader of the Liberal
Democratic Party Sergei Gaidukevich, leader of the Belarusian Social
Democratic Party (Gramada) Alexander Kozulin, incumbent President
Alexander Lukashenko, and leader of the united democratic forces Alexander
Milinkevich. According to official results, 92.6 percent of eligible
voters took part in the elections. Lukashenko scored 83 percent of the
vote, Milinkevich - 6.1 percent, Gaidukevich - 3.5 percent, and Kozulin -
2.2 percent.
-0-ras


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