When I've written about "sex slavery" in the past, from Cambodia, I've sensed that readers assume the term is hyperbole. See if you still think so after hearing the story of Geeta Ghosh.

Geeta grew up in a village in rural India and attended only two months of school; like many of the girls who are trafficked, she is illiterate. Her own family abused her, but at age 11 she found refuge with her best friend's aunt.

For a year, "Auntie" looked after Geeta with a warmth that she had never found at home. Then one day when Geeta was 12 - but still physically a little girl, well short of puberty - the aunt took her to a beauty parlor. "You look a bit ugly, so why not try to look prettier?" Auntie suggested.

Then the aunt locked her in a soundproof room in a brothel with an Arab man who bought her virginity. "I was very terrified to see this huge man in front of me," Geeta remembers, adding, "I cried a lot and fell to his feet, pleading."

"He pulled off my dress, and the rapes went on for a month like that. He made me sleep naked beside him, and he drank a lot, and he hurt me so much."

After that, the brothel owner peddled Geeta daily for five years - and only after eight months as a prostitute did she mature enough to get her first period. The brothel owner kept her confined in the brothel for the first three years, beating her with sticks and threatening her with a knife to warn what would happen if Geeta tried to escape.

"There was a big drain in the house for sewage," Geeta remembers. "The madam said, 'If you ever try to run away, we'll chop you up and throw the pieces down this drain.' "

After three years, Geeta was allowed on the street in front of the brothel. But although police officers sometimes walked by, she says that running to them would have been pointless - the madam paid them good bribes, so they would simply have returned her to the brothel.

One taxi driver regularly visited Geeta, and gradually they became close. "It may not have been love, but he was sympathetic," she says. Finally, he helped her escape from the brothel, and now they are married and have four children.

In the five years in which Geeta was imprisoned in the brothel, she never was given any money. Every single rupee she earned went to her owner.

I visited the one-room hovel where Geeta and her family now live in a Calcutta slum. The home is the size of a walk-in American closet, mostly taken up by a bed raised up on bricks. Three of the children sleep on the bed, and the parents and the youngest child sleep underneath it. The slum is squalid, and a nearby sewage canal sometimes floods their home - but Geeta is happy, because she is free.

All around India and the world, girls are still locked up in brothels as Geeta was. Indeed, sex trafficking is one problem that appears to have become worse around the globe, as organized crime, increased mobility and the rise of markets have turned pubescent flesh into a tradable international commodity. Moreover, fear of AIDS has nurtured markets for virgins and younger children who customers think are less likely to have H.I.V.

The Lancet, the British medical journal, has estimated: "The number of prostituted children is thought to be increasing and could be as high as 10 million."

Of course, not all can realistically be called "slaves." There is a continuum of coercion among under-age prostitutes that runs all the way from older teenagers who choose prostitution to 10-year-olds who are kidnapped off the street and locked up in cages.

In my next column, I'll talk about what can be done to help sex trafficking victims like Geeta. It's time to emancipate them.

"An Israeli patrol noticed two figures placing a suspicious object on the road," the spokeswoman said.

"The force called on them to identify themselves. They did not. The patrol then fired in the air and then at one of the figures, and saw he was hit."

An army doctor pronounced the Palestinian dead at the scene. The spokeswoman described him as a youth but said she did not know his age. She said the second Palestinian escaped.

Israel's Haaretz newspaper said it appeared that two children had been building a stone barrier across the road, near the Jewish settlement of Shilo.

"We are checking the circumstances [of the shooting]," the spokeswoman said. She said that it was not immediately clear exactly what the two Palestinians had placed on the road.

Earlier, Liberal Leader Paul Martin announced that he will step down as leader.

The Conservatives were elected in 124 ridings, the Liberals were elected in 102 (leading in one other), the Bloc was elected in 51 and the NDP was elected in 29. One Independent was elected, in Quebec.

"There will be another chance and there will be another time," Martin told a roomful of supporters in Montreal. He said he called Harper to congratulate him.

The Conservatives picked up more than 36 per cent of the popular vote, an increase of seven per cent from 2004. This compared to the Liberals with 30 per cent and the NDP with 17.5 per cent.

The NDP made major gains nationally, up 10 seats from the 2004 vote.

NDP Leader Jack Layton said that while Canadians voted for Harper to form a minority government, "they asked New Democrats to balance that government."

Layton was flanked by his wife, New Democrat Olivia Chow, who won her Toronto riding.

The Tories made significant gains in Ontario and Quebec, winning in least two dozen seats.

In Quebec, where they were shut out in 2004, the Tories made major inroads, getting elected in 10 ridings.

In vote-rich Ontario, the Liberals, who captured 75 seats in 2004, were elected in 54 ridings. But the Tories increased their support, elected in 40 ridings, a gain of 16. The NDP was elected in 12 ridings, up five.

The province, a Liberal stronghold, has 106 seats and is considered the key to victory.

Both Martin and Harper campaigned heavily in the strategic province.

In Quebec, the Bloc was elected in 51 of the province's 75 ridings, followed by the Liberals with 13 seats and the Tories with 10. In 2004, the Bloc received 54 seats, followed by the Liberals with 21. Independent candidate André Arthur, took the riding of Portneuf-Jacques Cartier from the Bloc.

While the Bloc ended up keeping most of its seats, it appeared it would do that with far fewer votes. Its share of the popular vote slipped to 42.4 per cent – a 6.5 percentage point drop from the 48.9 per cent it garnered in 2004.

Early in the campaign, Bloc Québécois Leader Gilles Duceppe, who appeared to set an electoral goal of 50 per cent of the popular vote, focused his attacks on Martin. With polls suggesting Conservative popularity soaring in the province, Duceppe began slamming Harper.

In the Atlantic provinces, the Liberals, who won 22 seats in the June 2004 election, were elected in 20 of the region's 32 ridings. The Conservatives, who were hoping to make bigger inroads in the region, were elected in nine ridings, a gain of two.

The Conservatives also took a hit in British Columbia, losing five of their 22 seats. The NDP gained five seats and the Liberals picked up one.

All four major party leaders held on to their ridings. Among the high profile Liberal political casualties were Deputy Prime Minister Anne McLellan, Foreign Affairs Minister Pierre Pettigrew, Transport Minister Tony Valeri, Heritage Minister Liza Frulla and Liberal Treasury Board president Reg Alcock.

Liberal Agriculture Minister Andy Mitchell was defeated in Ontario by Conservative Tony Clement, former provincial Ontario health minister, by 21 votes.

The Tories swept Alberta and tightened their hold on the Prairies by two seats.

Many political observers have credited Harper for running a smooth campaign.

He regularly pumped out policy announcements throughout the unusually long 56-day campaign, leaving the Liberals mostly to react.

Martin campaigned on his record as finance minister and his implementation of eight consecutive balanced budgets. He also promised to lower personal income taxes, create a national child-care plan, ban handguns, subsidize post-secondary students and ban the federal use of the notwithstanding clause.

But he spent the last weeks of the campaign going after Harper. He accused him of having an extreme right-wing agenda that would threaten the rights of minorities and take away abortion rights.

Unlike the 2004 election, the Tories were also able to keep their so-called controversial MPs in check. Indeed, some reporters complained the party was purposely keeping some candidates away from the media spotlight.

In this campaign, it was the Liberals who were often in damage control mode.

In the early weeks of the campaign, Martin spokesman Scott Reid said parents would spend Harper's child-care subsidy on "beer and popcorn." Later, the Ontario vice-president of the party resigned after he compared NDP candidate Olivia Chow to a dog.

Martin was also questioned about a series of attack ads, in particular one that suggested Harper would post armed soldiers on the streets of Canadian cities.

And just last week, Martin again was on the defensive, having to declare Harper's patriotism after Canadian Auto Workers head Buzz Hargrove, who endorsed the Liberals, suggested the Tory leader was a separatist.

As Martin was forced to contend with the fallout of the sponsorship scandal, his party was hit with two RCMP probes, one into a possible government leak on income trusts and another into alleged illegal spending through the now-defunct unity lobby Option Canada. Opposition parties jumped on the investigations, claiming they were proof of what they called more corruption in the Liberal ranks.

Sharon, still unconscious, remains in critical but stable condition on Tuesday, the 20th day following a major stroke and massive cerebral hemorrhaging on Jan. 4.

After Sharon's hospitalization for the first stroke, his doctors declared that the prime minister had a hole in the septa between the heart chambers, a defect since his childhood.

However, Ha'aretz said that Sharon also suffered from more serious, life-threatening heart problems, including a large aneurysm in the septum.

This is known to be a source of cerebral blood embolisms and indeed led to the blood clot that caused Sharon's first stroke, said the paper.

The daily pointed out that Sharon also suffered from other heart diseases, including a shunt that causes blood to flow spontaneously through the hole in the septum from right to left, the wrong direction which is dangerous, and other conditions in the cardiac septum.

Those conditions created further risks of blood clots that could wind up in the brain, according to the report.

However, Yael Bossem-Levy, spokeswoman of Jerusalem's Hadassah hospital where Sharon is being treated, dismissed the Ha'aretz report as containing nothing new.

"Everything that appears in the item was discussed at the news conference", where the hole in the septum was disclosed, she said.

Sharon, who turns 78 in February, has been declared temporarily incapacitated and Ehud Olmert, his longtime close ally, is now serving as acting prime minister, presumably till the March 28 general elections.

Bill Ford, the chairman and chief executive, said: "We will be making painful sacrifices to protect Ford's heritage and secure our future."

Unions called it "Black Monday" for the workers.

Shrinking market share

Ford's market share and profitability has been undermined by Asian competitors.

"The automotive market in North America is rapidly becoming as crowded and fragmented as other global markets," Bill Ford said in a statement.

"Going forward, we will be able to deliver more innovative products, better returns for our shareholders and stability in the communities where we operate."

The company named five assembly factories that will be shut by 2008 - St Louis (Missouri), Atlanta (Georgia), Wixom (Michigan), Batavia (Ohio), and Windsor (Canada). The other two sites will be named later this year.

It said that in addition to the job cuts, salary-related costs were being cut 10% in North America with the previously announced reduction of 4000 white-collar positions.

The company said managerial ranks were being reduced by 12% by April.

Ford currently has about 120,000 workers in North America.

Its assembly capacity in North America will be reduced by 1.2 million units, or 26%, by the end of 2008.

Painful restructuring

The restructuring comes just four years after Ford cut 35,000 jobs worldwide, and eliminated several struggling brands and a million vehicles of capacity.

"We're going to do what we have to do. It's just very, very sad," Bill Ford told Time magazine before the latest announcement. But he said: "My goal is to fight Toyota and everyone else and come out on top."

Ford also reported much better than expected fourth-quarter earnings, but a slump in full-year profit.

For 2005, Ford's net earnings fell 43% to $2 billion, the company said, down from $3.5 billion in 2004.

Much of its fourth-quarter profit came from the sale of Hertz, the car rental agency, and Ford Credit, the financial services unit.

Ford's struggling North American automotive unit posted a $1.6 billion annual loss, down $3 billion from 2004.

Bill Ford told Time that in future there would be greater emphasis on hybrid petrol-electric engines and other environmental innovations and bolder designs.

"The old way of doing things doesn't work," he told the magazine. "Is [this] risky? Of course it's risky but I tell you what: Going the way we were going is the highest risk of all."

Sceptical analysts

Analysts said investors are more worried about whether Ford will ever get its auto operations back to profitability.

Peter Morici, a business professor at the University of Maryland, dismissed Ford's "Way Forward" plan.

"The announcement contains little new or unexpected. It is merely a slick restatement of Bill Ford's aspirations to do better," he said.

"The plan lacks a clear statement of how Ford is going to get its labour and design costs in line with its Japanese competitors. Lacking that, Ford will not be able to offer vehicles that are competitive in price, quality and content."

Neither will cutting production levels help Ford's declining market share. Ford's share of the US market has fallen from 26.4% to 17.4% in 10 years, the lowest since the 1920s.

The result would be an Airbus-dominated joint venture with a planned production capacity of four single-aisle A320 series each month.

The A320 family, comprising A319s, A320s and A321s, are medium-range, single-aisle, twin-engine jets capable of carrying up to about 180 passengers. The aircraft have been the European company's most popular models since they entered service in 1988.

As part of the wide-ranging accords signed by Premier Wen Jiabao during a visit to France in December, Airbus clinched an order of 150 A320 jets worth nearly 10 billion U.S. dollars.

Airbus also offered China a 5 percent stake in its A350 aircraft programme. The A350 is the company's response to Boeing'snew generation 787 "Dreamliner" passenger jets.

China is acknowledged as the world's fastest-growing aviation market and is a major battlefield for the world's two aerospace giants Boeing and Airbus.

Airbus' main focus this year is to have a greater presence in the market place with its aircraft by looking at all the elements of the market, including major, regional and start-ups, according to Laurence Barron, Airbus senior vice-president and Airbus China president.

He said Airbus hoped to have 50 percent of the market in China before 2013.

Boeing currently dominates the Chinese market with 67 percent, and Airbus holds 29 percent.

The survey was commissioned by the Dutch Social Affairs Ministry and was conducted in the spring of 2005, when researchers asked employers whether they had hired illegal labor in the past year.

The anonymous responses showed that 19 percent of the employers had at some point employed illegal labor, and small companies with fewer than 10 employees made significantly more use of illegal workers.

Some 42 percent of the employers did not check the work permits of the workers employed through an employment agency as required, and 14 percent of the employers said they work with agencies that have illegal workers on their books.

According to Dutch laws, since 1995 it has been compulsory for employers to apply for a work permit for any employees recruited from outside the EU. This also applies to workers from the new eastern European member states of the EU.

From the beginning of 2005, the fine for employing illegal workers in the Netherlands has been increased to 8,000 euros (about 9,600 U.S. dollars) per person.

But this has had scarcely any effect on deterring illegal laborso far, the survey said.

"Significant investments usually bring all three. It allows us to do what we want rather more quickly. It allows us to do some things better than we would otherwise do."

Quoting diverse sources, the plaintiffs set out their case that private corporate support was largely responsible for the success of the government's Apartheid policies.

The plaintiffs suggest that apartheid South Africa attracted foreign capital because it had two economies in one - the developed 'white' economy which provided a good market, and the underdeveloped 'black' economy that supplied cheap labor.

They said companies played a strategic role in the apartheid state's defence from civil unrest, with business leaders, including officers from Barclays, Standard Bank and Anglo American mining company appointed by then Pieter Willem Botha to a Defence Advisory Board.

"We have obtained some of the top business leaders in South Africa to serve on the Defence Advisory Board in order to advise me from the inside, not only about the armaments industry, but also about the best methods to be applied within the Defence Force," Botha is quoted as having told the House of Assembly.

The appellants said companies sought to camouflage their trade with the then pariah state, with many companies ostensibly withdrawing from South Africa while retaining lucrative licensing and franchise arrangements.

The appellants are seeking reparations, claiming that the 23 defendants listed aided and abetted the apartheid regime.

However, the defendants, contend that doing business in and with apartheid South Africa, "which industrialized nations permitted and encouraged," never violated the international norms envisaged by the legislation under which the claim is being brought.

The defendants suggest adjudication would offend the sovereignty of the Republic of South Africa and compromise the United States' relations with that country and other allies and friends.

The South African government, via the Justice Ministry, has filed an affidavit on behalf of the defendants.

Experts say the dollar is largely under the influence of external factors but proportionally the dollar has weakened more considerably against the ruble than against the euro.

"The dollar's fall versus the ruble was extraordinary," Yelena Khrupova from BrokerCreditServis brokerage said. She added that the dollar's depreciation was facilitated by the active sale of the U.S. currency on the Russian forex market.

According to Khrupova, the dollar's plunge against the ruble showed that the Central Bank of Russia was in no hurry to give a helping hand to the U.S. currency. The analyst said the country's chief bank was more concerned about maintaining ruble stability against the dollar-euro currency basket and curbing inflation, which went out of control in the first ten days of January.

On international forex markets, the dollar suffered a setback versus the euro last Monday, losing 1.41% against the single European currency and closing at $1.23 to the euro, the level registered in September 2005, Vladimir Abramov, an expert with Globexbank said.

Abramov said the complex situation around Iran, the unprecedented growth of gold prices and the narrowing spread between U.S. and EU interest rates were the main reasons for the dollar's fall against the euro. He added that investors' fears about the U.S. balance of payments deficit also precipitated the greenback's decline against the single European currency.

At the same time, Dmitry Baibikov, from Moscow Industrial Bank, said the dollar would likely rise above the level of 28 rubles by the end of this week and "only geopolitical events" can strongly influence its dynamics.

Although gas consumption in Ukraine has risen to record levels because of a severe cold snap gripping the country, “the increase of gas use in Ukraine has not at all affected the carrying out of our transport obligations,” spokesman Valentin Mondrievsky told AFP.

Russia’s state-owned Gazprom monopoly on Monday admitted for the first time that it was not entirely fulfilling its contractual obligations to clients abroad because Ukraine was retaining some of the exports.

“You can call it withholding or taking, legal or illegal — call it whatever you like,” Gazprom’s deputy chief Alexander Medvedev said.

“But what is happening is that gas is remaining in Ukraine at higher volumes than envisioned. This prevents us from fully fulfilling our obligations to our foreign customers,” he said.

Around 80 percent of Gazprom’s exports to Europe pass through a pipeline network located on Ukrainian territory.

Temperatures in some parts of the country have plunged to lower than minus 30 C (minus 22 F), placing the country’s energy systems under enormous strain.

The Ukrainian premier said Ukraine had consumed a record 407 million cubic meters of gas in the past day, some 43 percent more than during an average winter day when temperatures hover around 0 C (32 F).

Tensions between Russia and Ukraine have persisted over a new gas pricing deal signed by the two sides on Jan. 4 that resulted in the near-doubling of the price Ukraine pays for natural gas.

European countries including Italy, Austria, Poland, Hungary, Croatia, Slovakia and Romania have recently reported drops in supplies of gas shipped to them by Gazprom.

Bosnia said Monday its supplies had been curtailed by one-fourth for the past five days.

Gazprom’s travails were compounded Sunday when explosions on a section of pipeline in southern Russia halted gas supplies to another ex-Soviet republic, Georgia, where President Mikhail Saakashvili accused Moscow of deliberate disruption to his country’s energy supply.

The company used an alternative pipeline route through neighboring Azerbaijan to restore some supplies to Georgia on Monday.

Gazprom had previously stated that it was fulfilling all of its basic gas delivery obligations to clients in Europe but was not in a position to meet their demands over and above those obligations, due to severe cold weather gripping Russia and soaring demand at home.

"His brand of wisdom, scholarship, far-sightedness and above all humour has ensured that Zaki played an extraordinarily important role in the life of this country and amongst the Muslim community," he said in a statement.

"His presence will be sorely missed but his hard-won legacy will, I hope, provide a fitting tribute to a truly remarkable and warm-hearted man."

The cleric formed part of a group including the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, and chief rabbi, Sir Jonathan Sacks, that issued a statement following the July 7 London bombings declaring faith leaders united in "resisting and overcoming the evil of terrorism".

But he sparked controversy a month later when he urged women to stop wearing Islamic veils amid fears of a violent backlash against the Muslim community. Sir Iqbal Sacranie, general secretary of the Muslim Council of Britain, said the organisation offered "its heartfelt condolences to Dr Badawi's family".

Ahmed J Versi, editor of the Muslim News, said: "His demise will be a great loss to all the communities. His devotion to interfaith dialogue was unparalleled."

Dr Badawi was detained at JFK airport in New York last August and was prevented from entering the US. A week later he was given an "unreserved apology" and assurances of a visa by the US Embassy in London.

The cleric said he had been invited to return to the US straightaway, but officials could not explain why he was turned away from the country.

Dr Badawi, born in Egypt in 1922, was the holder of an honorary knighthood and in 2003 was a guest of the Queen at a state banquet for the US president, George Bush.

Sheikh Sabah, 77, was de facto ruler for several years after the late emir suffered a brain haemorrhage in 2001. He is believed to have unanimous support in the legislature, which needs only a majority vote to sanction the appointment.

The Kuwaiti political classes have claimed the transfer of power as a triumph for the Gulf state's constitution.

Mohammed Jassem al-Saqr, an MP, told Al-Arabiya TV he did not "think there is any other third world state that has shown the respect for constitution and law that we have displayed today".

Ahmed al-Rubei, a former minister and a liberal newspaper columnist, told Kuwait TV that the country had proved its maturity.

"We've done what has never happened in the Middle East. If half of this crisis had taken place [somewhere else] in the Middle East, tanks would have rolled in the streets and armed forces would have been asked to be on alert. We didn't witness any extra security scene or measure."

Members of the ruling family have held several meetings over the past few days to discuss the succession tangle. Removing the ailing emir breaks a long-standing tradition in which the post alternates between two branches of the family.

According to the pan-Arab daily, al-Quds al-Arabi, the ousted emir was unable to concentrate or identify people and may have Alzheimer's disease. Jassem al-Kharafi, the parliament speaker, said all 65 MPs and cabinet members who attended the session voted to remove Sheikh Saad. "The house listened to the emir's medical report and it became evident to the house, beyond any doubt, to transfer the emir's responsibilities permanently," he told a press conference.

"The emir remains in the hearts of all Kuwaiti people. We all love, appreciate and respect him, but this is God's will. We can only wish him a quick recovery."

Since he succeeded, Sheikh Saad had appeared only in a wheelchair and had not spoken in public. His health started to deteriorate after he was treated for a bleeding colon in 1997.

Sheikh Sabah has a pacemaker but otherwise is said to be in good health.

After meeting Shannon a day earlier, Morales told reporters: "Relations between Bolivia and the United States are going to continue."

Chile's presence

The presence of Ricardo Lagos, Chile's president, also held symbolic weight.

"From 500 years of resistance we pass to another 500 years in power"

Bolivia and Chile broke off diplomatic relations in 1978 amid strained ties dating from a 19th-century war in which Chile won mineral-rich Pacific coastal territory from Bolivia, leaving the country landlocked.

Lagos met Morales hours before his swearing in at Morales's apartment. Together they raised their hands on the balcony to the crowd outside and referred to each other as "brothers" and "friends".

"Today, a leader with extraordinary legitimacy takes office and we hope to have the best of relations," said Lagos, the first Chilean leader to attend the inauguration of a Bolivian president. "We have excluded nothing from our talks."

New chapter

Michelle Bachelet, the Chilean president-elect, declined an invitation to attend the inauguration but told journalists last week she hoped that Chile and Bolivia could re-establish full diplomatic relations.

In his inaugural speech, Morales declared that "the 500 years of Indian resistance have not been in vain".

"From 500 years of resistance we pass to another 500 years in power," he said. "We're going to put an end to injustice, to inequality."

Morales blamed neo-liberal economic policies of the past and the "looting of our natural resources" for the widespread poverty in the country.

Domestic popularity

Miners and Indians packed the colonial government square chanting "Evo, Evo" and waving the indigenous rainbow-hued flag, the Wiphala.

Bolivia's people hope that the election of an indigenous Indian to the highest political office will bring stability after street protests toppled two previous presidents and dozens died in clashes with security forces.

Teofira Marca Sajamaan, an Indian woman from Morales's home province of Oruro, said: "We have a lot of faith that he can help us because he is a poor man like us."

Rescuers broke through the floor of a train carriage perched on a cliff below the railway line to retrieve the corpse, an AFP photographer at the site saw.

Shards of metal and glass were scattered around the site of what was believed to be the worst railway crash in the former Yugoslav republic's history.

Clothes and shoes -- some clearly children's -- lay in piles on the hillside.

Montenegrin Interior Minister Jusuf Kalamperovic said brake failure was the suspected cause of the accident and announced a "thorough investigation" into the incident.

The driver, who was also injured, was detained for questioning by an investigating magistrate, an official source told AFP.

Before the latest body was pulled from the train, the death toll had been put at 44 by Podgorica hospital director Miodrag Djurovic.

The dead included at least five children, while the number of people on the packed passenger train who suffered injuries jumped to 198, he told journalists.

"Fifty people are in a very serious state. During the night we carried out 18 difficult operations," he said.

The train fell into a canyon of the River Moraca, in a densely forested area some 15 kilometres (nine miles) north of Podogorica, where it was headed from the northern town Bijelo Polje, at about 5:00 pm (1500 GMT) on Monday.

Train carriages were left hanging below the railway line on a cliff high above a road.

Witnesses said about 300 people were on the train at the time, among them many children returning from a ski trip in northern Montenegro.

Montenegro Transport Minister Andrija Lompar offered to resign on Monday night after an emergency government session at which three days of official mourning were declared in honour of the crash victims.

The "biggest accident ever is such an enormous strain on my career ... This is my personal decision," Lompar said when announcing his decision to step down.

The railway system in the tiny Balkan republic, whose authorities have always had problems upgrading the transport network due to its rugged mountains, has suffered from years of under-funding.

Offers of aid and condolences flooded in from the region on Tuesday, with donations of financial help and blood coming from ordinary citizens, including 50,000 euros (60,000 dollars) from a local union of mine workers.

Many hospitals in former Yugoslav republics, including Macedonia and Slovenia, had offered assistance during the night, but it was decided no extra help was required, said the Podgorica hospital director.

The state-run RTCG television network interrupted normal programming to play classical music between news broadcasts providing updates on the situation from the crash site and hospitals.

Montenegro, which has a population of about 650,000, formed a loose union with Serbia in 2003, replacing former Yugoslavia in a bid to shake off the legacy of former Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic.

Trains are a popular form of transport in the former Yugoslav republic because of low ticket prices and dangerous roads.

The railway track on which Monday's accident occurred, linking the Serbian capital Belgrade to the coastal Montenegrin port of Bar, was built in 1976.