Voters in South America's poorest country went to the polls on Sunday to pick Bolivia's first elected constitutional assembly and also voted in a referendum on whether to give the country's nine provinces greater autonomy from central government.

Morales told reporters Monday he felt "enormous satisfaction" after his Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) won 135 seats in the 255-member assembly.

But as he is far from having the two-thirds majority necessary to control the assembly, he will still have to depend on smaller parties to push his proposals through the assembly, which is set to meet on Aug. 6 to begin a rewrite of the charter.

Morales also faced greater divisions in the country as Bolivia's four wealthiest provinces -- those dominated by European-descended citizens -- voted strongly for autonomy.

Constitutional reform was a key election promise by Morales. He has billed the effort as a way to cement the reforms, like his decision to nationalize the energy industry, and empower the poor, indigenous majority.

Morales took office after winning a December election with 54 percent of the vote and remains hugely popular.

All the suspects except Yadel, who remains in detention, were freed by French authorities in the months following their repatriation from Guantanamo in July 2004 and March 2005.

A seventh Frenchman who was held in Guantanamo and turned over to French authorities has since been cleared of any wrongdoing and faces no charges.

The prosecution alleges that the six on trial were recruited after 1998 by an Algerian, Rachid Boukhalfa, also known as Abu Doha, who is being held in a British prison. Boukhalfa is suspected of having planned Al-Qaeda attacks in the United States.

The six went to Afghanistan between March 2000 and August 2001. Prosecutors allege they underwent guerrilla training in an Al-Qaeda camp near Kandahar.

Defence lawyers say they travelled to Afghanistan to discover the country and were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.

They were captured by US troops after the 2001 invasion and sent to Guantanamo when the notorious US base there was converted in January 2002 to detain fighters deemed "illegal combatants".

One of those on trial, Sassi, said in a newspaper interview published Monday that he feared being "used" by the judiciary to warn French youths of the dangers of radical Islam.

"I'm afraid of being used as a example, for judges to tell large numbers of young people: 'If you are planning to going there (to Afghanistan), here is how we are going to respond'," he told the 20 Minutes daily.

"I am going to be called to account even though I've already served a sentence," said the young man from a suburb of the southeastern city of Lyon, who was held for 30 months in Guantanamo.

He vowed in the interview "never again" to set foot in "any of those countries ending in '-an'," and said he hoped to be acquitted "if the judge examines my case closely."

"The most logical verdict would be a general acquittal to send a strong signal about what is happening in Guantanamo," he argued.

Around 460 inmates have been held in Guantanamo, mostly as "enemy combatants", since early 2002 without formal charge or access to a lawyer. Three recently committed suicide.

Sassi was detained on the Afghan-Pakistani border along with Benchellali, who described his time at Guantanamo as a three-year ordeal in a contribution published by The New York Times newspaper last month.

"I cannot describe in just a few lines the suffering and the torture; but the worst aspect of being at the camp was the despair, the feeling that whatever you say, it will never make a difference," Benchellali said.

Another suspect, Mustapha, told France's Le Journal du Dimanche on Sunday that he was a broken man from the experience, but protested that he had not fought the US-led forces in Afghanistan.

"They want to make me pay for what? The fact of having been kept prisoner in Guantanamo?" he said.

He added that he hoped to be acquitted, so that "one injustice is not piled on another".

One of the injured was the metro driver. Another was a pregnant woman whose injuries were said to be life-threatening.

Regional transport chief Jose Ramon Garcia Anton warned that speculation about the cause of the crash would be premature until the train's black box recording was found.

"We have to be prudent and wait for the enquiry to uncover the causes of the accident," he said.

An interior ministry spokesman said any terrorist link had been "completely ruled out".

"Everything indicates that it was an accident, that the train derailed and was hurled against the walls of a tunnel," the spokesman told AFP.

Officials said the death toll could rise further as emergency services continued to search for bodies in the wreckage of the train. At least two of the injured remained in "very critical" conditions.

All remaining passengers were evacuated after being trapped in a tunnel between stations.

Prime Minister Jose Rodriquez Zapatero cut short a visit to India to travel to Valencia, officials said.

"My thoughts are with the town of Valencia... and I express my condolences with the victims of this tragedy," he said in New Delhi.

A passenger on board alerted emergency services at 1:03 pm (1103 GMT). Access to the area was sealed off and a security cordon installed.

The accident happened as Valencia was filling up with visitors to the Roman Catholic Church's fifth World Family Meeting this week, which is due to be closed by
Pope Benedict XVI at the weekend.

The Vatican said the pope had had been immediately informed and had prayed for the victims of the accident.

"The Holy Father was immediately informed of the tragic accident in Valencia and has followed with pain and compassion the dramatic news coming out of the town. He has prayed for the victims, their families and all those affected by this terrible event," the Vatican said in a statement.

According to the Valencia metro website, the regional government-run company was distributing half-a-million passes to pilgrims and organisers of the event to permit them to travel freely on the system's four lines.

The European Parliament observed a minute's silence following news of the accident, and the
European Commission President Jose Manuel Durao Barroso expressed his "solidarity with the people of Valencia".

The worst metro accident in recent history was in 1995 in Azerbaijan, when 290 people were killed and more than 270 injured after a fire on board a train between two stations in the capital Baku.

"Results from tests on a five-year-old boy from Tulungagung, East Java, have been confirmed by the WHO-affiliated laboratory in Hong Kong," senior health ministry official Hariyadi Wibisono told AFP.

The boy died after being treated for eight days at a local hospital in East Java, Wibisono said.

"Reports suggest that he had been in contact with dead chickens," he told AFP.

The death means Indonesia, the world's fourth most populous nation, is on track to record the highest number of deaths from the H5N1 virus since 2003. Vietnam has reported 42 deaths, but none of them have occurred this year.

The archipelago nation, which has been accused of acting too slowly to curb the virus, has also reported the world's first lab-confirmed cluster of human-to-human transmission of bird flu.

The viral strain that caused the cluster of seven deaths in May however was a genetic "dead end" that could not have caused a pandemic, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has said.

The mosque in Yakhroma was raised five years ago and belongs to the spiritual Muslim council for western Russia, led by the country's top cleric Ravil Gainutdin. The building is formally a prayer house, as the local government rejected the council's application to register it as a mosque, Gazeta.Ru reported.

Ironically, the attack occurred on the day religious leaders from around the globe convened in the Russian capital for a world religious summit to address global challenges ahead of the G8 summit in St. Petersburg

Yuri Baluyevsky said he had agreed with his Chinese counterpart Liang Guanglie that the next round of maneuvers would be held in Russia, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported.

Baluyevsky declined to disclose the date of the exercises.

According to Associated Press, in August last year, some 10,000 troops, mostly Chinese and about 1,800 Russians, took part in major drills in the Shandong peninsula in the Yellow Sea.

China and Russia sought to reassure the region that the exercises weren't directed against any country but the two giant neighbors have strengthened ties over shared concerns about U.S. dominance of world affairs.

The war games sparked debate in Russia over how closely the nation should cooperate with China, which many Russians see as a potential threat because of its size, economic might and proximity to sparsely populated, resource-rich Siberia.

Baluyevsky made the announcement during Russian military exercises in Siberia, close to the Chinese border.

"Joint maneuvers held by the armies of Russia and China are just another proof that the military activities of Russia and China are undoubtedly not targeted against each other," ITAR-Tass quoted him as saying.

Electoral authorities stressed the results were not valid until the ballot count had been verified. IFE has until Sunday to complete the process, but the final outcome may not be known for months if the result is formally challenged.

The Federal Electoral Tribunal (Trife,) the final arbiter in electoral disputes, has until September 6 to give its final seal of approval.

Calderon, 43, of the ruling National Action Party (PAN) insisted there was no question he had an "irreversible" lead over Lopez Obrador.

Lopez Obrador, 52, who had initially also claimed victory after Sunday's election, called for a recount, "polling station by polling station."

"There are many inconsistencies," said Lopez Obrador, a former Mexico City mayor and the standard bearer of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD.)

He said he would use legal means to challenge the current count, while his party announced the formation of a special committee to defend his "triumph."

The statements raised fears of bitter and lengthy legal disputes reminiscent of the electoral debacle in Florida that delayed the outcome of the 2000 US presidential election by five weeks.

The political cliffhanger was being closely followed by Washington, which had hoped to see a reversal of the trend that brought several leftist leaders to power across Latin America in recent years.

But the US administration insisted on Monday it would work with whoever wins the election. Mexico "is an ally and neighbor, and obviously, we've got a great number of shared interests," said White House spokesman Tony Snow.

The Washington Post Tuesday urged both candidates to show restraint and accept the findings of the election institute. To Obrador, in particular, it implored that he "not seek to challenge the result through street demonstrations or other disruptions."

Authorities urged Mexicans to patiently await the official outcome, after both frontrunners claimed victory and thousands took to the streets in rival victory celebrations shortly after Sunday's vote.

Calderon called for an end to the bitter political rivalries that marked the electoral campaign. "Now is the time for conciliation," said Calderon, whose campaign had likened his rival to Venezuela's virulently anti-US leader Hugo Chavez, a comparison generally rejected by analysts.

A lifelong politician, Calderon has served as a lawmaker, PAN party president, and as energy minister in the cabinet of President
Vicente Fox, whose 2000 victory ended 71 years of authoritarian rule by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI.)

Fox is constitutionally banned from seeking reelection.

Calderon says he wants to encourage foreign investment and slash corporate taxes in order to boost economic growth and create badly-needed jobs.

But his rival claims the wealth is not trickling down to the millions who live on less than two dollars a day and, in many cases, risk their lives by crossing the northern border illegally in search of the American dream.

Mexico's next president, who will take office on December 1, will face formidable challenges in trying to fulfill campaign pledges of battling poverty, corruption, common crime and drug-fueled violence.

He will also be hampered by the lack of congressional majority.

The ruling PAN won about 34 percent of the congressional mandates, the PRD 29 percent, and the PRI 27 percent.

PRI candidate Roberto Madrazo lagged far behind in the presidential election.

The PAN kept the three gubernatorial posts that were up for grabs.