Voter turn-out was 65 per cent and the elections have been remarkably clean the result of stringent electoral laws

Voter turn-out was 65 per cent, and the elections have been remarkably clean, the result of stringent electoral laws introduced by Mr Kim.But despite these changes and a booming economy, President Kim’s personal- approval rating has plummeted this year from a peak of 90 per cent to as little as 30 per cent. A former deputy prime minister, Cho Soon, and member of the opposition Democratic Party (DP), was expected to win. In 14 other races to govern provinces and big cities, the DLP was set to win only four, including President Kim’s home base, the southern port of Pusan.Korean local officials have not been chosen democratically since 1960, and yesterday’s elections represent a landmark both for national politics and for Mr Kim, who succeeded a run of unelected generals in 1992. RICHARD LLOYD PARRY

Tokyo
President Kim Young Sam of South Korea faced a serious political setback after yesterday’s local elections, with polls suggesting that opposition parties had gained control of key areas of the country, including the capital, Seoul.A survey by a national television station, MBC, predicted that in the race for mayor of Seoul, Chung Won Shik, a former prime minister and member of President Kim’s Democratic Liberal Party (DLP), was expected to win little more than one-fifth of the vote to take a humiliating third place.

Mr Wu told a US Senate hearing in May that the Chinese authorities regularly removed body parts from prisoners who had been executed and then sold them for up to $30,000 (pounds 18,000) apiece.The Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman said yesterday that Mr Wu was being put up in a hotel for free and was undergoing a medical check-up.. Washington – A Chinese-American human-rights activist who has accused the Peking government of selling organs from executed prisoners and promoting the health value of eating aborted foetuses has been detained while trying to visit China, the US State Department said yesterday, writes John Carlin. The detention of Harry Wu, who has testified before the US Senate against the Chinese government, comes at a time when relations between Peking and Washington are under stress. The US last night called on China to release Mr Wu.
China withdrew its ambassador from Washington two weeks ago in protest at a private visit to the United States earlier this month by President Lee Teng-hui of Taiwan, whose claims to sovereignty China scornfully rejects.Last week, the White House said that it was considering imposing economic sanctions on China after the CIA claimed in a report that China had been selling missile technology to Iran and Pakistan, possibly in contravention of international arms-trade accords.A State Department official said yesterday that under a consular agreement, China is supposed to inform the US within 48 hours of the detention of an American citizen.But while Mr Wu had been detained on 19 June, the US Embassy in Peking had only been notified on 23 June.A spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry said that Mr Wu, who had spent 25 years in Chinese labour camps before emigrating to the US, had been detained as he tried to enter China from Kazakhstan.While Mr Wu had a US passport and a valid Chinese visa, he had been detained because of illegal trips that he had made into China last year, the spokesman said. It was an extract from an unpublished book Rabbi Korff wrote called The President and I and took the form of an imaginary letter written by Nixon to his grandchildren: “I raise my lantern to your glowing eyes and beaming faces and pray they never fade … the rhythm of your pulse, the rhapsody of your laughter, the gaiety of your feet, your harp and song reverberate in my being as I close my eyes.”On the day of Nixon’s funeral Rabbi Korrf received two phone calls from publishers who said they had no interest in his book.. The day Nixon resigned, the rabbi was the only man with him at Old Executive Office in the White House.

After the resignation, the rabbi founded the President Nixon Justice Fund, where he raised $500,000 to pay for the Watergate legal fees.Rabbi Korff, a Ukrainian immigrant, was initially attracted to Nixon because he saw the president as a friend to the Jews, the saviour of Israel during the Yom Kippur War of 1973.When Nixon died last year he observed the tribute of the mourners, Republicans and Democrats, with a sense of bitter-sweet vindication. “They were afraid to praise Nixon when he was alive, for fear he would rise again,” he said “Now I guess they feel safe. It’s a sad comment on human integrity.”At a fund-raising dinner for Nixon, he predicted that the US would one day create a new “day of atonement” to crave God’s forgiveness for the sins committed against a fallen president.Rabbi Korff was unable to attend Nixon’s funeral due to illness but paid tribute in a long obituary published in the New York Times. “There is no evidence that Diane Sawyer in her kind of subsidiary role in the Nixon White House would have that kind of knowledge.”The rabbi stood by Nixon at the time of Watergate, even though members of the president’s Quaker faith publicly called for his impeachment three months before he resigned in August 1974.During the Watergate hearings, Rabbi Korff founded the National Citizens Committee for Fairness to the President. Rabbi Korff based his conclusion on the “special relationship” Ms Sawyer had with Nixon’s press secretary, Ron Ziegler. Ms Sawyer responded yesterday through her agent that the claim was laughable.Bob Woodward, one of the reporters who broke Watergate, said the rabbi was wrong. “For 20 years we’ve always said that Deep Throat was a man,” Mr Woodward said.

“I have no solid evidence of it, but everything points to her.” Ms Sawyer worked in the White House press office at the time of Watergate. JOHN CARLIN

Washington
The words “journalist” and “integrity” go no better together in some people’s minds than “military” and “intelligence” do in others’. A famous deviation of the rule was provided by the Watergate scandal. More than two decades have passed but the two Washington Post reporters who broke the story have yet to reveal the name of the legendary Deep Throat, the Nixon-administration insider who gave them their first tip-off.On Monday night, Richard Nixon’s most steadfast defender and closest confidant, Rabbi Baruch Korff, sought to unravel the mystery with the claim that Deep Throat was none other than Diane Sawyer, the ABC correspondent who achieved the signal distinction last week of obtaining the first a deux TV interview with Michael Jackson and his wife, Lisa Presley.”I believed it was her,” said Rabbi Korff, who is 80 and dying of cancer. The drones could also monitor arms shipments being made in defiance of the embargo.. However, there were more such attacks yesterday, according to UN officials.The Bosnian Serb leader, Radovan Karadzic, sensing that the Rapid-Reaction Force will have much more ambitious objectives than Western governments first suggested, said he would not consider it a hostile army.

“If they don’t attack us, we are not going to consider them as our enemy,” he said.The US is sending unmanned spy planes to reinforce Nato surveillance over the former Yugoslavia. The Predator unmanned reconnaissance vehicles will be based at Gjader airfield in Albania, initially for 60 days, although the Pentagon said they would be kept there longer if needed.The Bosnian Serbs’ unexpected success in bringing down a US F-16 fighter on 2 June is one incentive to use unmanned drones for reconnaissance. Another is the desire to avoid further hostages being taken, although the Serbs did not succeed in capturing the US pilot, Captain Scott O’Grady. The recent Bosnian government initiatives around Sarajevo have underlined the need for the UN to have an accurate picture of what is going on, although Nato and the UN do not always share intelligence.The Predator, which entered service with the US forces this year, can stay aloft for 24 hours at a time, cruising at up to 25,000ft as far as 580 miles from its base, providing continuous pictures through a satellite link. The UN has looked anything but robust in recent weeks as the Bosnian Serb army has forced the collapse of the UN-patrolled heavy-weapons exclusion zone around Sarajevo.The British commander of UN troops in Bosnia, Lieutenant-General Rupert Smith, sent a letter on Monday to the Bosnian Serb commander, General Ratko Mladic, complaining about Serb attacks on UN personnel and “safe areas”.