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Protesters storm Mongolian party building
by Ganbat Namjil

The Associated Press    Translate This Article
12 January 2006

ULAN BATOR, Mongolia (AP) - Hundreds of protesters stormed the headquarters of Mongolia's biggest political party on Thursday, one day after it pulled out of the country's 15-month-old ruling coalition. No injuries or arrests were reported.

About 1,500 protesters, who had earlier gathered in the city's central square for a rally, shattered the main doors of the headquarters of the Mongolian People's Revolution Party and entered the building looking for party leaders.

The protesters camped out in the building for several hours, some of them chanting: ``Why did the MPRP dismiss the government?''

There were no party leaders in the building at the time, and the party had no immediate response to the incident. Up to 300 policemen stood by after failing to restrain the crowd.

The MPRP pulled out of the government Wednesday, accusing the current leadership of failing to fight corruption and worsening poverty in the former communist country. Parliament was to meet Thursday to consider the MPRP's withdrawal, which would leave the government without the minimum number of seats required to stay in power.

A four-party coalition government was formed in August 2004 after two months of legal challenges to election results and the refusal of opposition lawmakers to attend parliament. One party pulled out four months later but left the coalition with enough seats to stay in power.

The Motherland Democracy Coalition is led by Prime Minister Tsakhilganiin Elbegdorj, a Harvard-educated former journalist and dissident.

The MPRP, which ruled Mongolia until the end of communism in 1990, on Wednesday demanded that Elbegdorj resign.

``The current government doesn't perform very well in tackling the problems facing Mongolian society - issues such as poverty, unemployment and fighting corruption,'' MPRP chairman Mieagombo Enkhbold said on state television.

In comments also broadcast on television, Elbegdorj responded, ``I don't think these reasons are enough to dismiss the government.''

The MPRP said it would try to form its own government but didn't say who might join. The party has 38 of 76 seats in Mongolia's parliament, the Great Hural, short of the 39 required to take power.

Sandwiched between China and Russia, this sparsely populated land of 2.5 million people has suffered a steep economic decline since it launched radical free-market reforms in the early 1990s.

The capital, Ulan Bator, has been the scene of repeated protests over poverty, corruption and complaints about land reform.

Copyright © 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.



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