Half a world away from the unsettled struggle for the White House, US President Bill Clinton told Russian President Vladimir Putin and other foreign leaders yesterday that "there's nothing to worry about" in the overtime contest to choose his successor.
He said there is plenty of time for the American system to work to determine whether Vice President Al Gore, his chosen successor, or Republican Governor George W. Bush was elected president in the disputed election Nov. 7.
"I think other leaders should have the same reaction the American people have," Clinton told reporters in the lobby of a lavish Brunei guest house with Putin at his side. "I think they're pretty relaxed about it and we'll let the process play out."
At a conference of the APEC forum, which brought Clinton and 20 other leaders to this sultanate on the coast of Borneo, the president said either Gore or Bush would continue US policy"of strong leadership for a more integrated global economy and expanded trade."
Clinton said there was little disagreement between the two candidates on that issue. "On the question of leadership for trade, I think the world can rest easy," the president told Asian and Pacific business executives in the ballroom of the ornate Empire Hotel and Country Club, overlooking the South China Sea.
Back in the US, meanwhile, Florida's top election official petitioned the state's Supreme Court yesteday to halt all hand recounts of ballots and take control of all legal challenges in the state's hotly contested presidential voting.
The emergency petition by Secretary of State Katherine Harris, an elected Republican, was the latest manoeuvre in the high-stakes battle between Bush and Gore to claim Florida's 25 electoral votes and with them the White House.
Leaving the various petitions in state and local courts "will produce an unpredictable variety of results, theories, legal rulings and procedures applying throughout the state," Harris wrote in her petition.
Currently, Bush leads Gore in Florida by a mere 300 votes out of nearly 6 million cast. That was according to official figures released by Harris late Tuesday after Florida's 67 counties reported certified tallies of the Nov. 7 vote.
Harris gave counties until 2pm local time yesterday to submit to her written explanations for any continuing recounts.
Only one jurisdiction, the hotly contested Palm Beach County, was still counting ballots by hand and the Gore campaign was hoping the recount would tip the statewide balance.
But early yesterday, the Palm Beach County elections commission suspended the hand count to wait for a court to rule on what would constitute a valid vote.
Palm Beach ballots are punch cards, with voters using a pin to punch a hole next to their preferred candidate's name. The machines that count the votes, however, may not have counted ballots where the hole was not cleanly punched -- meaning the small piece of paper, dubbed a"chad," was still clinging to the ballot by a corner or a side.
Democrats now want the commission to count so-called "dimpled," or "pregnant" chads, ballots where a voter may have made an indentation but failed to punch through the ballot. That question now is before a state judge and could conceivably determine whether Bush or Gore becomes the nation's 43rd president.
In any event, Florida's final vote tally will not be official until at least Saturday, after an estimated 4,000 absentee ballots sent from overseas are counted and included in the total.
The Bush campaign expresses confidence that their candidate will carry the majority of overseas ballots, many of which will be from military personnel on duty. Republican Bob Dole carried 54 percent of Florida's overseas ballots in 1996, while polling only 45 percent of the vote statewide.
But Gore's camp is hopeful that Jewish Floridians in Israel will tip the scales in favour of the vice president and his Jewish running mate, Joseph Lieberman.
"It's like the seventh day of being held hostage," stammered Jeb Bush, governor of Florida and the harried brother of the Republican presidential hopeful.
He said things were getting "nerve-racking" throughout his state. "I can't even walk around outside now," he said at a town hall meeting100km northwest of Tallahassee.
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