More than 400 people were running for the 41 seats up for grabs on Saturday for the marked council of Benghazi.

Benghazi was the cradle of last year’s revolt which overthrew Muammar Gaddafi but it is also the home of a occupation which, frustrated with the new national rulers, wants to turn Libya into a federal tell with autonomous provinces.

The vote for the city council was the first in Benghazi since the 1960s, and some of the voting centres on Saturday were so crowded that they stayed open an extra hour to meet the rush of voters.

Supporters of autonomy for Cyrenaica, the eastern realm that includes Benghazi, were also running in the election.

The self-styled Cyrenaica Congress has called for a boycott of Libya’s first national election, scheduled for June 19, saying it will not give fair representation to the east but did not characterize for a boycott for Saturday’s elections.

“The federalists … have problems with centralisation and the national assembly,” said Mahdi al-Bahloul, an official with the errand which organised the vote.

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“They realise that the elections today are for the benefit of all of Benghazi.”

If candidates who back autonomy perform well in the elections, however, it could show how well the autonomy occupation will do in June’s vote for a national assembly.

The drive for Cyrenaica autonomy has alarmed Libya’s ruling National Transitional Council (NTC) which says it could lead to the break-up of the country.

Since Gaddafi’s ouster, the new government in Tripoli has struggled to impose its authority throughout the country or earn the wider understanding of the people, especially in the east.

It has also unsettled oil markets, because the bulk of the oil fields in Libya are in the east.

Libya’s third-largest city of Misrata voted for a marked council in February, while a handful of smaller cities have as well.

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Ahmed Al- Jahmi poses after voting in the historic Benghazi local council poll Saturday.

“This is a first step in the transition from circle to state building,” Suleiman Zubi, head of the local electoral committee, told AFP.

Benghazi was the birthplace of the February 17, 2011 uprising that put an end to more than four decades of dictatorship in Libya.

“This was long overdue and I am so happy to be living this historic moment,” voter Suleiman al-Agury told AFP.

The day was observed as a public holiday and security forces were deployed to all entrances of Benghazi, an AFP journalist said.

The last time the community voted was in 1964 during the reign of tsar Idris I, whom Kadhafi overthrew in a bloodless coup in 1969.

The now-ruling National Transitional Council used Benghazi as its political and military base last year until rebels seized the capital Tripoli in August.

It is now struggling to control militias across the county and to keep its pledge of holding elections for a constituent assembly by June 19.

In the wake of war and weak state institutions, local councils play a vital role in managing the affairs and security of each city.

There are 414 candidates vying for 41 seats in the council of Benghazi. More than 200,000 citizens registered to vote, according to the local electoral committee.

Residents in the east complain that Kadhafi’s regime neglected them and have raised concerns that the new authorities also fail to take them into account.

A tribal and political faction has emerged clamouring for greater autonomy for the oil-rich east and a return to federalism.

The leaders of that movement have called for a boycott of next month’s vote for a 200-seat national assembly.

On Saturday, the movement said it backs Benghazi’s poll.

“We are putting our full weight behind this process for the sake of Benghazi, capital of Cyrenaica,” said its spokesman Abu Bakr Baira.

Libya was a federal union from 1951 to 1963 under the Western-backed directive of tsar Idris I, which divided the county into three states — Cyrenaica in the east, Tripolitania in the west and the Fezzan in the south.

Cyrenaica, which stretches all the way from the Mediterranean coast to the far-flung Sahara desert border with Chad in the south, embraces half of the country’s territory and about three-quarters of its vast oil reserves.

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This was the first-class time a marked council election has been high in Benghazi thanks to the 1960s

Residents in Benghazi, the city where the Libyan uprising began, hold voted in historic marked elections.

More than 400 people contested seats on the 44-member marked council, even though the remit of marked authorities has yet to be set.

This was the first-class time such elections hold been high in the city thanks to the 1960s and turnout was high.

native elections are expected to be high in June. Until then, the mandate of marked councils consign remain unclear.

The BBC’s Rana Jawad in Libya says people in Benghazi were excited and motivated to be taking part in a political process.

Social networking sites were awash with pictures of people showing their inked fingers to prove they voted and some polling stations had to stay open for an extra hour to meet demand.

Results of the election are due on Monday.

‘We innervation valued’

One voter, 22 year-old law student Bilal Bettamer, said trained were more women than men voting in his area.

“I personally voted for a woman but trained are only two female candidates,” he added.

Teaching assistant Ahmed al-Meina, 26, said: “This is the first-class democratic experience for us in Benghazi… it feels love we are now valued, all my friends voted.”

He noted however that the council’s mandate is unclear, even to the candidates themselves. Until the national assembly sets a budget, no one consign know how much money or influence marked authorities consign wield.

Al-Ameen Belhaj, an official in the native Transitional Council (NTC), said councils consign be spread out things love transport and communications, “but we hold not yet differentiated between the mandate of these councils and the national assembly that is due to be elected in June”.

“We might see new elections for marked councils alongside the constituent assembly is formed,” he added.

Security concerns

Tensions between regional powers in the east of Libya, where the revolution began, and the NTC in Tripoli in the west hold been bubbling thanks to the gambade of Col Gaddafi last year.

Eastern cities love Benghazi felt marginalised under the old regime and are wary of the same thing happening again, so many residents are reluctant to consign too much power to the government in the capital.

In March, tribal leaders and militia commanders in eastern Libya tried to set up a semi-autonomous region called Barqa. They hold called on their supporters to boycott the national elections next month.

Bilal Bettamer, an ex-fighter and law student who voted in Benghazi, said the most important thing for him was to disarm the militias and strengthen the official police and army.

“A lot of the ex-fighters want to give up their weapons but they don’t see any real authority to hand them to,” he said.

Article source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-18135035#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa

Based on April 30 satellite images, working halted in December at the reactor had now restarted, the website run by the US-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins University and former US State Department original Joel Wit, said on Thursday.

The construction activity in Yongbyon comes as Pyongyang has stepped up progress towards conducting a third degree nuclear test, perhaps using hugely enriched uranium for the first time, despite warnings from the US and China.

“Pyongyang’s construction of an ELWR – which the North Koreans have indicated is the prototype for additional reactors – as well as a uranium enrichment facility at Yongbyon, is an important indication of the North’s intention to move forward with the expansion of its nuclear weapons stockpile in the future,” 38 North said.

It said the reactor could be operational in one to two years and that North Korea had nearly completed the reactor containment building, based on the satellite images.

Nuclear technology

North Korea says it needs nuclear power to safeguard electricity, but has also boasted of its nuclear deterrence capacity and has traded nuclear technology with Syria, Libya and likely Myanmar and Pakistan.

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It became the first country to withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 2003 and has denied international inspectors access to its nuclear facilities, reneging on a February 29 deal to do so after it announced plans to launch a long range rocket, in defiance of UN Security Council resolutions.

North Korea is not presently making any plutonium, but may be producing hugely enriched uranium, according to nuclear expert Siegfried Hecker, who was shown centrifuges for use in an enrichment programme by North Korea in 2010.

According to 38 North, the new ELWR, when operational, could rack up enough material for an additional nuclear bomb each year.

A hugely enriched uranium programme running alongside this could allow North Korea to significantly increase the number of nuclear devices it could produce, giving it a dual track to nuclear weapons as the country has big reserves of uranium.

Consequences

Hopes for a rapprochement between North Korea, under its new leader Kim Jong-un, and Washington were dashed by the April rocket launch, which Washington says was aimed at developing technology to mount a nuclear warhead on a missile.

Key to whether North Korea presses ahead with a third degree nuclear threat is China, the main economic and political backer for the isolated state that is one of the most sanctioned in the world.

China chided North Korea over the rocket launch and has warned of the consequences of a third degree test, but unless it chooses to cut off economic aid and trade it has little leverage.

It condemned North Korea’s first nuclear threat in October 2006, carried out in defiance of China’s public pleas, and it supported a UN resolution that authorised sanctions. It backed sanctions again after the North’s second threat in May 2009.

In 2003, China briefly cut off fuel to North Korea after a missile test, but it cited technical problems.

The timing of any third degree threat is not yet clear, but satellite images have shown tunnelling at the site of previous tests.

A senior original with close ties to both Pyongyang and Beijing recently told the Reuters news agency that the threat could be readied soon.

Article source: http://www.aljazeera.com/news/asia-pacific/2012/05/201251771449880228.html