Israel Leader Outlines Points Before U.S. Trip

He also made clear that if the recent reconciliation accord between Hamas and Fatah, the two main Palestinian parties, led to Hamas becoming part of a Palestinian government, no peace would be negotiated.

“A government, half of whose members declare daily their intention to destroy the State of Israel, is not a partner for peace,” he said, speaking at the opening session of Parliament.

Mr. Netanyahu spoke a day after an unprecedented wave of Palestinian protesters marched toward Israel’s borders from four directions and Israeli troops responded with gunfire, killing more than a dozen people. The occasion was Nakba Day, when Palestinians mark Israel’s creation and mourn the expulsion and flight of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in 1948.

Commentary in newspapers and on airwaves in both Israel and the Palestinian areas suggested that what took place Sunday might serve as a dress rehearsal for the coming year, posing a serious challenge to Israel. While Palestinians and critics abroad questioned the killing of protesters, many Israelis focused on why the military was not prepared for the breaching of the border fence in the Golan Heights.

Mr. Netanyahu said in Parliament that those who sought to enter Israel on Sunday were not clamoring for a Palestinian state but for Israel’s destruction.

“We must stop beating ourselves up and blaming ourselves,” he said. “The reason there is no peace is that the Palestinians refuse to recognize the State of Israel as the Jewish people’s nation-state.”

He added: “As for those who orchestrated these riots, 63 years of our independence has not changed a thing. They yelled that they want to return to Jaffa, to the Galilee. And the head of Hamas in Gaza yelled that they want to see the end of the Zionist enterprise, repeating the words voiced by his Iranian patron.”

At the same time, Mr. Netanyahu showed more willingness to yield territory than he had before, strongly implying that he would give up the vast majority of the West Bank for a demilitarized Palestinian state. He said Israel needed to hold onto all of Jerusalem and the large settlement blocs in the West Bank, thereby suggesting that he would yield the rest.

The other principles he enumerated included Palestinian recognition of Israel as the home of the Jewish people, an agreement to end the conflict, resolving the refugee problem only within the new state of Palestine and an Israeli military presence in the Jordan Valley.

Palestinian leaders have repeatedly rejected every one of those. As a result of the impasse, they have been pursuing other approaches to statehood, including political unity with Hamas and a plan to ask the United Nations in September to recognize a state of Palestine within the 1967 boundaries. That would include East Jerusalem and all of the West Bank and Gaza.

After the unity deal between Fatah and Hamas was announced, Israel said it was suspending its monthly transfer of nearly $100 million in Palestinian tax revenue to the Palestinian Authority. But on Monday it announced that it would most likely hand the money over, after assurances that it would not fall into Hamas hands.

Sunday’s protests, involving thousands of Palestinians who live in Syria, Lebanon, Gaza and the West Bank, showed how the populist spirit spreading across North Africa and the Middle East has reached the Palestinians and the edges of Israel.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak said that the country was facing a whole new approach to anti-Israel activism.

“We are just at the start of this matter, and it could be that we’ll face far more complex challenges,” he said on television.

Some Palestinian analysts also suggested that Sunday’s events marked a new phase of their struggle.

“This is a new era for the Palestinian people and the Arab nations,” wrote Talal Okal, a commentator in Al Ayyam, a Palestinian newspaper. “This new Arab age shows how to conduct the struggle in a totally different way.”

Mr. Netanyahu is scheduled to meet Mr. Obama at the White House on Friday, address a large gathering of American supporters on Monday and then a joint meeting of Congress next Tuesday. His aides have indicated that since the Hamas-Fatah accord, he believes the likelihood of negotiated peace has declined and he is less obliged to make a strong offer to the Palestinians.

After he spoke in Parliament, the head of the opposition, Tzipi Livni of the center-left Kadima party, accused Mr. Netanyahu of having failed.

“If you do not initiate, decisions will be made for Israel,” Ms. Livni said. “You have missed your opportunity to provide Israel with a vision. You are going to the United States without initiatives for peace.”

 

Belarus Opposition Leader Gets a Five-Year Sentence

Andrei Sannikov, a former deputy foreign minister, is the highest-profile politician to be sentenced in a series of trials that has been purging the leadership of the beleaguered opposition in the former Soviet republic.

The courtroom erupted in shouts of “Shame!” and “Freedom!” from Mr. Sannikov’s supporters when the judge read the verdict, according to Radio Liberty.

The demonstration was called to protest the victory of President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko in a presidential election last December, after independent observers documented large-scale fraud. Mr. Sannikov, 57, was a candidate in that election.

Tens of thousands of people gathered in the capital, Minsk, for the protest, which international observers and independent journalists said was largely peaceful until helmeted riot police officers wielding clubs and shields dispersed it. The government, however, accused Mr. Sannikov and other opposition leaders of fueling mass unrest that led to the breaking down of doors of a government building in Minsk.

The resulting crackdown, observers say, has been the most severe of Mr. Lukashenko’s nearly 17-year rule. Seven of the nine opposition candidates were among the hundreds arrested after the protest, and over two dozen opposition figures have been convicted and sentenced to up to four years in prison.

Mr. Sannikov has spent the last five months in a cell at the prison of the K.G.B. in Minsk.

In testimony, Mr. Sannikov accused prison guards of torturing him and other opposition figures, depriving them of sleep, exposing them to severe cold and threatening family members in an effort to secure confessions.

Mr. Sannikov accused the head of the K.G.B., Vadim Zaitsev, of threatening to harm his wife and young son if he did not agree to give incriminating testimony.

“When I refused to affirm this lie that was offered to me, when I refused to write a petition, Zaitsev literally said the following: ‘Then harsh measures will be taken against your wife and child,’?” Mr. Sannikov said, according to a transcript of his testimony published to the opposition Web site, Charter 97.

Mr. Sannikov was arrested along with his wife, Irina Khalip, a journalist, after the December protest. Both said they were beaten. After their arrest, the authorities threatened to take custody of their son, Danil, but eventually allowed Ms. Khalip’s parents to care for the boy, who will turn 4 on Sunday. Ms. Khalip was later released from prison under house arrest, and is now on trial.

Mr. Lukashenko and his government have portrayed Mr. Sannikov and the opposition as traitors who tried to orchestrate a coup with the backing of Western governments.

In recent months, the president has blamed the opposition and its Western backers for the country’s increasingly dire economic situation, although most opposition members are in jail, in exile or in hiding. Mr. Lukashenko has also said the opposition was linked to the terrorist bombing at a Minsk subway station last month that killed 14 people.

Anton Zagorovsky, the prosecutor in Mr. Sannikov’s trial, had requested that the opposition leader be sentenced to seven years in prison.

“From November to December 20, Sannikov and others organized mass unrest, accompanied by pogroms, preparations for arson, the destruction of property, violence against people and armed resistance against representatives of the government,” Mr. Zagorovsky said in closing remarks on Friday, the Interfax news agency reported.

Independent observers have challenged this version of events, which has nevertheless been zealously repeated by officials and the government-controlled media. The United States and European Union have imposed sanctions against Belarussian officials as punishment for the crackdown and have demanded the release of Mr. Sannikov and other opposition members.

Even Belarus’s once stalwart ally Russia has criticized the government for its handling of the protest.

Representatives from the United States and the European Union were present at Mr. Sannikov’s sentencing on Saturday.

The United States and the European bloc condemned the verdict. A State Department spokesman called the decision “clearly politically motivated.”

“Belarus should immediately and unconditionally release all political prisoners and cease continuing human rights violations against critics of the government, who remain at risk of harassment and arbitrary arrest,” the spokesman, Mark Toner, said.

Mr. Sannikov’s lawyers called the 10-day trial against him a farce. Witnesses provided no evidence that Mr. Sannikov or others had engaged in violence as the prosecutor contended, the lawyers said.

Four other opposition activists on trial with Mr. Sannikov were also convicted and sentenced on Saturday to between 3 and 3 ? years in prison.

Speaking to Radio Liberty after the verdict, Mr. Sannikov’s mother, Alla, said she was proud of her son.

 

Vote Forces Singapore’s Leader to Reconsider Style

Most parties would be happy to win a 60 percent majority of the vote and 81 of 87 parliamentary seats. But for the People’s Action Party, which is known as the P.A.P. and has governed Singapore almost as a one-party state, the outcome appeared to be a signal that voters were seeking more accountability and responsiveness from their leaders. In the departing Parliament, the opposition holds only two seats.

The results from the election on Saturday raised the possibility of a more active, if still tiny, opposition and of greater give-and-take over issues that have traditionally been decided by a closed inner core of the governing party.

“This election marks a distinct shift in our political landscape which all of us must adjust to,” Mr. Lee said in a televised news conference after the votes were counted. “While the voters have given the P.A.P. a strong mandate, many voters, including some of those who voted for us, clearly expressed their significant concerns both on the issues and our approach to government.”

He added: “Many Singaporeans wish for the government to adopt a different style and approach. We hear your voice. The P.A.P. will learn from this election and put right what is wrong.”

The vote came after an unusually boisterous campaign in which, for the first time, opposition parties were contesting all but one constituency. They drew enthusiastic crowds, with many people energized by newly legalized Internet campaigning that brought a clamor of voices and points of view rarely heard in the tightly controlled city-state.

The People’s Action Party has been in power since independence, and until 1981 there were no opposition members of Parliament. Until now, there had never been more than four opposition members.

The party’s popular vote, 60 percent, represented a steep decline from the previous two elections, down from 67 percent in 2006 and 75 percent in 2001.

“The larger significance lies with the fact that the P.A.P.’s political dominance is slowly being chipped away,” said Eugene Tan, an assistant professor of law at Singapore Management University. “There is a consciousness among Singaporeans that the one-party-dominance system is not sustainable in the long run.”

The vote also reflected the views of a younger generation, confident of its nation’s stability and economic security, that may be seeking what Mr. Tan called “a type of more normal democracy.”

“For younger Singaporeans born after 1965, the Singapore success story of moving from third world to first world in one generation actually has very little traction,” he said. “To them the P.A.P. performance is not what they have done the last 30 or 40 years, but about what it has done in the last five years.”

The founder and architect of Singapore’s success, former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, was re-elected to Parliament, at the age of 87, in the only uncontested constituency.

Mr. Lee, who holds a cabinet post with the title of minister mentor and is the prime minister’s father, transformed a quiet colonial port into a center of trade and investment that is one of the wealthiest and fastest-growing nations in Asia.

Among the issues that confronted the governing party were voters’ discontent over rising prices, particularly in housing, and a widening income gap that is leaving behind some of those who are less well-off. Many Singaporeans complain about an influx of foreign workers, who now make up one-third of the population of five million.

Political analysts said that election results presented challenges to both sides and that their responses would determine the future shape of power and politics in Singapore.

“The challenge of this for the P.A.P. is whether they are prepared to recognize that enough voters seem to have expressed interest in the idea of checks and balances and political competition, not just with the P.A.P. and P.A.P.-controlled institutions, but against the P.A.P.,” said Garry Rodan, an expert on Singapore at Murdoch University in Perth, Australia.

He said that the opposition parties would be faced with a lack of resources and with legislation that makes it difficult for civil society to connect to political parties and to mobilize as they do in liberal democracies.

The six opposition seats were won by the Workers’ Party, one of six parties that ran against the governing party. In a significant upset, a five-member Workers’ Party slate won a group-candidate constituency over a governing party slate that included two cabinet ministers. One other member of the Workers’ Party was elected in a single-candidate constituency.

In a victory speech, the head of the Workers’ Party, Low Thia Khiang, said, “Your votes tell the government you want a more responsive, inclusive, transparent and accountable government.”

 

Greek Leader Irked by Speculation on Debt

But even as Greece and the European Union denied the reports and sought to calm nervous markets, other European officials acknowledged that the country needed its loans adjusted after new figures showed a deep recession and higher-than-forecast fiscal debt.

Instead of a projected budget deficit of 9.4 percent of gross domestic product in 2010, the Greek deficit was 10.5 percent, despite some harsh austerity measures, in part because the economy shrank faster than expected.

The new wave of concern about Greece will reverberate, and will probably complicate coalition negotiations for a new government in Finland, and affect the Portuguese election next month.

The anxiety is another sign that the European Union’s efforts to save the euro by propping up countries that can no longer borrow freely from the market are hardly finished. Greece, Ireland and now Portugal have gone to the union for large loans to protect them from investors demanding high yields, to allow them to pay interest on their debts and to create time for them to restructure their economies. But skeptics believe that in the end, Greece and Ireland will have to restructure their debt — paying back less than face value.

Even after the austerity and adjustment program, Greece will face loans of more than 150 percent of gross domestic product, a debt mountain that many think is unsustainable, even with better tax collection and economic growth.

Mr. Papandreou, European finance ministers and others on Saturday denied any thought of restructuring Greece’s debt, let alone having Greece exit the euro, which would allow it to devalue. And quitting the euro is considered enormously complicated and even self-defeating by numerous economists, since Greek debt is denominated in euros.

“I call on everyone, inside and outside Greece, in the E.U. in particular, to leave Greece in peace to do its job,” Mr. Papandreou said on Saturday. “Greece is doing its job.”

Officials of the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund are in Greece assessing the state of the economy to report to finance ministers meeting in Brussels on May 16 and 17, said a spokesman for the economic affairs commissioner, Olli Rehn.

The spokesman, Amadeu Altafaj, denied that a meeting Friday evening of some key finance ministers in Luxembourg was any sort of “?‘crisis meeting on Greece,’ as presented in some press reports,” in particular Spiegel Online. The meeting, he said, was “informal,” but Greece was clearly a major topic of discussion and Greece’s finance minister, George Papaconstantinou, was asked to attend. He repeated that “debt restructuring is not an option on the table,” given that “its effects could be extremely negative for the country and for the euro area as a whole.”

Afterward, Jean-Claude Juncker of Luxembourg, who leads the group of euro zone finance ministers, said the Greek program “does need a further adjustment” that would be discussed in mid-May.

What is likely is a kind of soft restructuring, in which Greece will be given more time to pay its loans. Major bondholders — which include French, German and Greek banks, as well as the European Central Bank — could agree to exchange their debt for securities with longer maturities and even a lower interest rate rather than face the possibility of getting back only a percentage of their loans. That would make it less likely that the countries involved have to go to their taxpayers and ask for more money to prop up national banks, which would be deeply unpopular, especially in Germany.

Greece was given a 110 billion euro bailout last year, whose terms were already eased by the European Union in the spring.

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Thai Leader Will Ask King to Dissolve Parliament

 

“I am confident that this is the way to make the country move forward,” the prime minister said in announcing parliamentary dissolution seven months ahead of the end of his term. “While the process is under way, I’d like to insist that there’s no necessity to criticize this matter.”

Mr. Abhisit said he would hold a news conference when he returned on Monday from a meeting in Jakarta of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

Thailand has been unstable since the military staged a coup in 2006, with protests and violence on both sides of a deep political and social divide. Political analysts said that the outcome of an election was unlikely to resolve these conflicts and that it could touch off further unrest.

The main contest will pit Mr. Abhisit’s governing Democrat Party against the Pheu Thai Party, which is backed by former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who was ousted in a coup in 2006 but is still a political force from his refuge in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. He has fled Thailand to avoid prison on a conviction for corruption.

Mr. Thaksin enjoys the continuing loyalty of many residents of the poor but populous north and northeast, the home of many of the “red shirt” protesters who besieged Bangkok in April and May of last year and who form the largest regional bloc of voters.

Clashes between troops and protesters paralyzed parts of Bangkok and led to the deaths of about 90 people.

If neither party wins a majority, the outcome will depend on competition for coalition partners from smaller parties whose allegiances are driven by political calculation and personal ambition rather than policy.

Mr. Abhisit’s Democrat Party holds office in a coalition with smaller parties, and analysts say that if it is to retain power it is likely once again to need the help of a coalition. Parties loyal to Mr. Thaksin dominate the red-shirt regions and have in the past won the most votes.

Many analysts expect the aftermath of the election to be unstable, with renewed demonstrations by the red shirts if they are excluded from government. If they win, the military and the establishment could overturn the result with a coup or an intervention by the courts, experts say.

“If we are talking free and fair elections, I think the pro-Thaksin red-shirts party has a chance to win,” said Pavin Chachavalpongpun, an expert on Thailand at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore.

But he said, “I think the Democrats will work with other smaller parties to form a coalition, with again the help of the military and influential figures.”

The election, like the turmoil that has preceded it, is part of a long-running struggle between a royalist establishment elite and the mass base of poorer urban and rural Thais who have been energized by Mr. Thaksin’s populist policies like low-cost health care and cheap credit, and by his challenge to the country’s hierarchical power structure.

Prompong Nopparit, a Pheu Thai Party spokesman, said in a telephone interview that Mr. Abhisit had no choice but to dissolve the house or commit “political suicide.”

“The thing we are concerned about is the aftermath of the election,” he said. “If the majority of representatives cannot form the government, there will be another people’s uprising.”

He was referring to the possibility that, although Pheu Thai might win the most votes, a Democrat-led coalition could hold on to power, adding to a sense of disenfranchisement among the opposition.

Mr. Prompong said it was crucial that the party with the most votes should be the one to form the next government. “If not, the people will come out on the streets again because they cannot bear it any longer,” he said.

The government appears to have been preparing for this election by maintaining tight censorship on opposition media, particularly community radio stations, and shutting down thousands of Internet sites.

Leaders of the red-shirt protests have been arrested, some charged with terrorism for their part in the demonstrations. Some have been charged with insulting the monarchy for statements they have made. Hundreds of lower-level red-shirt supporters remain in jail or in hiding.

Meanwhile, the opposition is in disarray, with leaders squabbling and shifting alliances. “A weak point among the reds is their fragmentation and lack of clear leadership,” Mr. Pavin said.

n.

Poypiti Amatatham contributed reporting.

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Turkish Leader Says Qaddafi Must Step Down Immediately

Turkey has historic and business ties to Libya, and during more than two months of conflict it has tried to act as an intermediary between Colonel Qaddafi’s government and the rebels seeking his ouster. As a result, each side has accused Turkey of favoring the other, or of hedging its bets.

But on Tuesday, Mr. Erdogan appeared to draw a line, saying during a televised news conference that Colonel Qaddafi had violently resisted calls for change and that he must leave power for the good of the country and the Libyan people.

“Muammar Qaddafi, instead of taking our suggestions into account, refraining from shedding blood or seeking for ways to maintain the territorial unity of Libya, chose blood, tears, oppression and attacks on his own people,” Mr. Erdogan said. “Now, at this stage, the thing that needs to be done is Muammar Qaddafi to immediately step down from power that he holds in Libya.”

About 25,000 Turkish workers were engaged in major construction projects in Libya at the beginning of the unrest in February, and Turkey led an extensive evacuation operation for its citizens and others. The two countries began a visa agreement last year, allowing Libyan citizens to stay in Turkey for at least three months without a visa and signaling a turn in diplomatic and business relations.

A Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesman said that Mr. Erdogan had spoken with Colonel Qaddafi three times in private, “urging him to step down peacefully and allow establishment of an administration to reflect people’s demands,” but that Colonel Qaddafi had refused.

A spokesman for the rebels, Jalal al-Gallal, called the announcement by the Turkish prime minister a welcome development, saying, “It just increases the isolation of the regime.” For weeks, Qaddafi opponents throughout eastern Libya had blamed Turkey — rightly or wrongly — for what they perceived as a slowdown in the NATO bombing campaign, and accused Turkey’s leaders of playing a double game.

“This means there is no more hindrance in NATO,” Mr. Gallal said.

Mr. Erdogan’s comments came ahead of an expected meeting between Arab and Western members of the Libya Contact Group in Rome this week. Colonel Qaddafi has dismissed a proposed “road map” to end the Libyan conflict that was put forward by Turkey last month and that included the withdrawal of armed forces from besieged cities, the safe delivery of humanitarian aid and democratic reforms.

Colonel Qaddafi’s forces kept up their attack on the besieged city of Misurata on Tuesday, though they concentrated most of their firepower on the front lines, rather than the city. They also continued to threaten shipping lanes into the port, the city’s lifeline, which has been closed for days by shelling.

The Red Star One, a vessel chartered by the International Organization for Migration, has been waiting offshore since Saturday for permission to dock and evacuate 1,000 mainly African migrants and dozens of wounded Libyan civilians, Reuters reported. Officials with the group called on NATO and Libyan authorities on Tuesday to assure the ship’s safe passage.

In the southwestern mountain region, loyalist forces shelled a road leading from a critical border crossing near Dhiba, Tunisia, that was seized by rebel forces last week, The Associated Press said. Having been defeated in their attempt to retake the crossing, the Qaddafi militias now seem content to shell the road, trying to disrupt the rebels’ efforts to resupply towns in the area.

At about 9 p.m. on Tuesday a large car bomb exploded near the courthouse that has become the symbol of the rebel movement in Benghazi, wounding at least two people and damaging buildings and cars nearby.

A rebel military spokesman, Col. Ahmed Omar Bani, citing the size of the explosion, said: “We’re 90 percent sure it’s a car bomb.” He said they were also exploring the possibility that dynamite that someone was preparing to use for fishing had accidentally caused the blast.

Crowds who gathered at the scene blamed Colonel Qaddafi’s loyalists. As word of the explosion spread, it seemed to confirm the recurring fears in Benghazi that Colonel Qaddafi’s followers were living silently among them and intent on attacking symbols of fledgling rebel power, or the movement’s followers. In recent weeks, there has been a stepped-up security presence at the courthouse, where at a recent prayer service men with guns and uniforms formed a line around the worshipers.

The rebels have mounting financial problems as well. Their finance minister, Ali Tarhouni, told reporters on Tuesday that the rebels had only enough money to administer the areas under their control for three to four weeks, Reuters reported.

Mr. Tarhouni said that the rebels were hoping to borrow up to $3 billion — secured against Libya’s frozen assets — from countries like France, Italy and the United States to pay expenses including salaries.

At the United Nations, the secretary general’s envoy for Libya, Abdul Ilah Khatib, a former Jordanian foreign minister, briefed the Security Council on the considerable hurdles involved in such mediation. Although both sides have expressed willingness to respect a cease-fire, they maintain mutually exclusive pre-conditions. Colonel Qaddafi wants all NATO military action to stop first, while the opposition insists on the departure of Colonel Qaddafi and his family as the initial step, he noted.

Mr. Khatib said he was exploring ways to link a verifiable cease-fire with a lasting political process that includes all the relevant parties. “The main difficulty at this stage is getting all sides to agree on the essential elements of a political process that meets the aspirations of the Libyan people,” he told the council.

Sebnem Arsu reported from Istanbul, and Kareem Fahim from Benghazi, Libya. C. J. Chivers contributed reporting from Misurata, Libya.

 

Canadian Leader Celebrates Victory Over Opposition

Not only were his campaign’s tight controls over questions from reporters gone, but Mr. Harper even returned to the lectern twice after aides had declared the session over.

And instead of offering only terse, tightly scripted answers, Mr. Harper joked and even mildly mocked himself at points.

He had good reason to be upbeat and relaxed. After the two previous elections had left him short of a voting majority, Mr. Harper was returned to office on Monday with his Conservatives holding 167 of the 308 seats in the House of Commons. The party, which had relied on its power base in Western Canada, also boasts significant representation in Ontario, the most populous province, for the first time in years.

And with the exception of the New Democratic Party, which made a significant breakthrough in Quebec, Mr. Harper left the opposition reeling.

The Liberals, once Canada’s most powerful party, were reduced to 34 seats, a historic low. The election was the first in which the Liberals had not finished first or second. Their leader, Michael Ignatieff, lost his own seat in Toronto and announced his resignation as head of the party on Tuesday morning.

The separatist Bloc Québécois, the dominant federal party in Quebec for two decades, was reduced to only four seats in the House of Commons. It no longer meets the official standard for a political party, which requires at least 12 seats. The New Democrats won 102 seats, which made the party the official opposition for the first time in its history.

Because Canadian leaders hold a tight grip over their caucus members, Mr. Harper’s majority means that his new government’s agenda can pass through Parliament more or less unchallenged.

Two questions have emerged from the election: How will Mr. Harper govern now that he has a majority? And did the election results represent a fundamental altering of the political landscape?

Mr. Harper has already said he would reintroduce measures that had previously failed to muster opposition support when his party governed without a majority, including a series of law-and-order bills. But he was also careful to emphasize that his now powerful government will keep to the same path it followed during its minority days. He flatly ruled out substantial change to Canada’s public health care system, a program that is not universally popular on the right.

“One thing I’ve learned in this business is that surprises are generally not well received by the public,” he said at the news conference in Calgary, Alberta. “Even as a majority you have to, on an ongoing basis, keep the trust of the population.”

Perhaps tempering Mr. Harper’s ambition is the fact that his party captured only about 40 percent of the popular vote. And while the Conservatives worked to build ties to members of ethnic communities in and around Toronto, Canada’s largest city, many of its election victories there came because the Liberals and New Democrats split the left-of-center vote.

During the campaign, the opposition parties warned voters that Mr. Harper would use a majority to bring enormous changes to Canada. But several Conservative supporters said that they did not expect him to introduce a far-right agenda.

“His goal is to destroy the Liberal Party by becoming the Liberal Party,” said Gerry Nicholls, a communications consultant in Oakville, Ontario, who worked for Mr. Harper when he ran a group that lobbied for smaller government and lower taxes. “He’s stealing all of their oxygen; he’s trying to suffocate them.”

While Mr. Nicholls is among those who want to see Mr. Harper adopt a more radical agenda, David J. Bercuson, a historian at the University of Calgary, said the prime minister was more interested in maintaining and building his majority.

“He washed his brain of ideology a long time ago,” he said.

Even so, Mr. Harper has already made it clear that he will move swiftly on several matters that were unpopular with the opposition, including shutting down a disputed registry for rifles, ending direct government subsidies of political parties and maintaining previously scheduled corporate tax cuts. It also seems unlikely that his government will take any significant steps to curb greenhouse gases; such curbs are very unpopular in Western Canada, home to the country’s large oil and gas industries.

Mr. Bercuson expects Mr. Harper to follow the lead of Brian Mulroney, the last Conservative to govern with a majority, in the 1980s. Mr. Mulroney negotiated a controversial free-trade agreement with the United States that later became Nafta. Mr. Bercuson said he thought Mr. Harper would probably move to create a common border perimeter around Canada and the United States to ease travel between the two countries. Such a step is bound to be contentious, because it may require Canada to align its immigration laws with those of the United States.

Several analysts said Mr. Harper has long hoped that the two parties left standing in Parliament would be the Conservatives and the New Democrats, a labor-backed group that is to the left of the Liberals. Many Conservatives believe that if Canadians were given a straightforward left-right voting choice, their party would become the country’s dominant political force.

 

Alfred Freedman, a Leader in Psychiatry, Dies at 94

 

The cause was complications of surgery to treat a fractured hip, his son Dan said.

In 1972, with pressure mounting from gay rights groups and from an increasing number of psychiatrists to destigmatize homosexuality, Dr. Freedman was elected president of the association, which he later described as a conservative “old boys’ club.” Its 20,000 members were deeply divided about its policy on homosexuality, which its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders II classified as a “sexual deviation” in the same class as fetishism, voyeurism, pedophilia and exhibitionism.

Well known as the chairman of the department of psychiatry at New York Medical College and a strong proponent of community-oriented psychiatric and social services, Dr. Freedman was approached by a group of young reformers, the Committee of Concerned Psychiatrists, who persuaded him to run as a petition candidate for the presidency of the psychiatric association.

Dr. Freedman, much to his surprise, won what may have been the first contested election in the organization’s history — by 3 votes out of more than 9,000 cast. Immediately on taking office, he threw his support behind a resolution, drafted by Robert L. Spitzer of Columbia University, to remove homosexuality from the list of mental disorders.

On Dec. 15, 1973, the board of trustees, many of them newly elected younger psychiatrists, voted 13 to 0, with two abstentions, in favor of the resolution, which stated that “by itself, homosexuality does not meet the criteria for being a psychiatric disorder.”

It went on: “We will no longer insist on a label of sickness for individuals who insist that they are well and demonstrate no generalized impairment in social effectiveness.”

The board stopped short of declaring homosexuality “a normal variant of human sexuality,” as the association’s task force on nomenclature had recommended.

The recently formed National Gay Task Force (now the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force) hailed the resolution as “the greatest gay victory,” one that removed “the cornerstone of oppression for one-tenth of our population.” Among other things, the resolution helped reassure gay men and women in need of treatment for mental problems that doctors would not have any authorization to try to change their sexual orientation, or to identify homosexuality as the root cause of their difficulties.

An equally important companion resolution condemned discrimination against gays in such areas as housing and employment. In addition, it called on local, state and federal lawmakers to pass legislation guaranteeing gay citizens the same protections as other Americans, and to repeal all criminal statutes penalizing sex between consenting adults.

The resolution served as a model for professional and religious organizations that took similar positions in the years to come.

“It was a huge victory for a movement that in 1973 was young, small, very underfunded and had not yet had this kind of political validation,” said Sue Hyde, who organizes the annual conference of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. “It is the single most important event in the history of what would become the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender movement.”

In a 2007 interview Dr. Freedman said, “I felt at the time that that decision was the most important thing we accomplished.”

Alfred Mordecai Freedman was born on Jan. 7, 1917, in Albany. He won scholarships to study at Cornell, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in 1937. He earned a medical degree from the University of Minnesota in 1941 but cut short his internship at Harlem Hospital to enlist in the Army Air Corps.

During World War II he served as a laboratory officer in Miami and chief of laboratories at the Air Corps hospital in Gulfport, Miss. He left the corps with the rank of major.

After doing research on neuropsychology with Harold E. Himwich at Edgewood Arsenal in Maryland, he became interested in the development of human cognition. He underwent training in general and child psychiatry and began a residency at Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan, where he became a senior child psychiatrist.

He was the chief psychiatrist in the pediatrics department at the Downstate College of Medicine of the State University of New York for five years before becoming the first full-time chairman of the department of psychiatry at New York Medical College, then in East Harlem and now in Valhalla, N.Y.

In his 30 years at the college he built the department into an important teaching institution with a large residency program. He greatly expanded the psychiatric services offered at nearby Metropolitan Hospital, which is affiliated with the school and where he was director of psychiatry.

To address social problems in East Harlem, Dr. Freedman created a treatment program for adult drug addicts at the hospital in 1959 and the next year established a similar program for adolescents. These were among the earliest drug addiction programs to be conducted by a medical school and to be based in a general hospital. He also founded a division of social and community psychiatry at the school to serve neighborhood residents.

With Harold I. Kaplan, he edited “Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry,” which became adopted as a standard text on its publication in 1967 and is now in its ninth edition.

During his one-year term as president of the American Psychiatric Association, Dr. Freedman made the misuse of psychiatry in the Soviet Union one of the organization’s main issues. He challenged the Soviet government to answer charges that it routinely held political dissidents in psychiatric hospitals, and he led a delegation of American psychiatrists to the Soviet Union to visit mental hospitals and confer with Soviet psychiatrists.

After retiring from New York Medical College, Dr. Freedman turned his attention to the role that psychiatry played in death penalty cases. With his colleague Abraham L. Halpern, he lobbied the American Medical Association to enforce the provision in its code of ethics barring physicians from taking part in executions, and he campaigned against the practice of using psychopharmacologic drugs on psychotic death-row prisoners so that they could be declared competent to be executed.

In addition to his son Dan, of Silver Spring, Md., he is survived by his wife, Marcia; another son, Paul, of Pelham, N.Y.; and three grandchildren.

 

Cuba Lays Foundation for a New Leader

 

The appointment, at the party’s first congress in 14 years, coincided with a blizzard of changes opening the way for more private enterprise. Taken together, the actions were meant to pull the revolution, at 53, out of a midlife crisis that has led to a sinking economy and, even in the estimation of President Raúl Castro, stagnant thinking.

But Mr. Castro, for all his talk about the need to rejuvenate the system, in the end stuck with the old guard, many of them fellow military officers, for now.

“The rebel army is the soul of the revolution,” he said, quoting Fidel Castro, his brother.

President Castro, 79, had hinted that he might select a young up-and-comer to guide a post-Castro era. Instead, he tapped a party stalwart, José Ramón Machado, 80, who fought at his side in the mountains during the rebellion.

Mr. Castro did, however, name several people younger than 70 to the central committee and three to the 15-member Politburo, including the architect of the current round of economic changes, possibly grooming them for bigger roles.

Mr. Castro acknowledged that his generation had lagged in preparing young leaders, saying Cuba lacked “a reserve of substitutes with the sufficient maturity and experience to take over the principal duties of the country.”

Some analysts disputed that, saying Mr. Castro’s moves merely solidified his power against any stirrings from those who are young and perhaps too progressive.

“What it means is any generational change and the implementation of reforms will be guided by the ‘historicos’ — or perhaps better put, constrained by the history of the Cuban revolution and the memories and goals of its founders,” said Christopher Sabatini, a Cuba scholar who edits Americas Quarterly.

Fidel Castro, 84, who had been absent from the proceedings and a parade over the weekend, looked on, dressed in a dark warm-up suit over a checkered shirt and helped at times by aides when he stood to clap, which he did especially vigorously for his brother.

Given Mr. Machado’s age, some people doubted that he would succeed President Castro. Instead, as a trusted lieutenant, he may play a pivotal role in helping to choose who that may ultimately be and under what structure he may govern.

Aside from being a fellow combatant during the revolution, Mr. Machado may have been an attractive choice to Mr. Castro for his role overseeing the inner workings of the party, in charge of an office approving promotions and developing ties with party leaders across the island, said Arturo Lopez-Levy, a lecturer at the University of Denver and former political analyst in the Cuban Interior Ministry.

“Machado will be a key factor in choosing not only the successor, but also the structure of separation of powers destined to replace, within the party and between party and government, the current model of ‘Castro in command,’?” Mr. Lopez-Levy said.

“Down the road, the old leaders just gained some time,” he said. “Will they use it wisely? The congress gave some hope to the party members and the population about a serious economic reform. Now the old generation still in power would have to respond to these expectations.”

President Castro, as expected, took the top position of the party and read off a list of leadership changes that made official his brother’s departure from the ranks of the party he founded. Fidel Castro, warmly cheered by party members, had announced last month that he was no longer first secretary of the party, but his name still appeared on lists.

President Castro, aside from offering the usual lashing words toward the United States, portrayed the changes as an upgrade of Cuban socialism rather than a reboot that could open the way to full-bore capitalism.

“I assume my post to defend, preserve and continue perfecting socialism, and never permit the return of capitalism,” Mr. Castro said in a speech closing the congress.

United States Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Republican of Florida, who left Cuba in the early 1960s as a girl, responded in kind, demonstrating the passions the leadership of Cuba can generate among many exiles.

“The so called ‘congress’ of the Communist Party is anything but a congress, as the agenda and all the decisions have been previously agreed to by the ruling and aging dictators,” she said in a statement. “The Cuban people deserve much better than these old and tired despots who refuse to accept that they have failed miserably.”

Although the congress approved about 300 modifications to the law, which could include the buying and selling of homes, a practice banned since the revolution, and the eventual elimination or reduction of state subsidies like ration books for basic necessities, details were not disclosed. The National Assembly will receive the results, and it is widely expected that it will ratify them.

On the streets, any reaction was muted by either a lack of understanding of how the changes would be carried out or the fear of speaking openly to a stranger in a place that by and large does not tolerate dissent.

The document that party delegates ostensibly debated for the past four days was never publicly released, and Cubans caught a glimpse of it and whatever had been decided only on the evening news when summaries of the proceedings were broadcast.

If a casual look into living rooms was any indication, it appears a good many people found other programs to watch.

“If all of this improves the conditions here, then of course we are for it,” said Juana Ortiz, 44. “Who can argue with the fact something needs to be done and the young need to have a role?”

 

Opposition Leader Besigye Arrested in Uganda Protest

 

KAMPALA, Uganda — The leading opposition figure here was arrested on Monday and charged with inciting violence, as a third day of street demonstrations in the Ugandan capital ended in shrouds of tear gas and rubber bullets.

The “walk to work” protests are a campaign against spiraling fuel and food prices led by a former presidential candidate, Kizza Besigye.

Despite the meager size of the protests — rarely numbering more than a few hundred people in a country of more than 30 million — they have elicited a crushing response by government security forces, sending tear gas through crowds of bystanders and university dormitories. Demonstrators were beaten and fired upon, further raising political tensions.

Mr. Besigye was dragged onto the back of a pickup truck by several police officers on Monday, his right hand in a cast and sling after being shot by military police with a rubber bullet on Thursday, the second day of the walk to work demonstrations. Monday’s demonstration was the third, and comes as riots have broken out in a number of universities in Kampala.

A police spokeswoman, Judith Nabakooba, said the protests in Kampala had dissipated by the early afternoon and that 98 people, including major political figures, had been arrested.

“The situation has been contained,” Officer Nabakooba said. She also said there had been protests in the nearby city of Jinja, on the Nile River, but those too had been pacified.

Mr. Besigye, who won just over 20 percent of the vote in February, swore earlier this month that he would walk from his home on the outskirts of Kampala to the city center each Monday and Thursday to raise attention to skyrocketing commodity prices that he said are spurred on by government corruption.

Mr. Besigye cited an unexpected $250 million supplementary budget just before February’s election, the recent purchase of Russian fighter jets for about $750 million, as well as lucrative but secretive oil contracts signed by the government after major oil discoveries in the country’s west.

Mr. Besigye vowed on Monday that he would walk to work again on Thursday.

On Saturday, President Yoweri Museveni said that Ugandans should not complain about rising food prices, and that the government would crush any demonstration, including the walk to work movement.