Roh supporters stopcontroversial vote on impeachment

South Korea's parliamentary speaker adjourned an unprecedented session called to try to impeach President Roh Moo-hyun yesterday because Roh supporters had blocked him from presiding over the opposition-inspired vote.

The two opposition parties trying to impeach Roh said earlier they had secured enough support among their own members of parliament to pass the bill if it was put to the vote.

Foreign investors closely watch political stability in South Korea, which already faces a crisis over North Korea's nuclear ambitions, a still-nascent recovery in Asia's fourth-largest economy and an investigation into illicit funds given to political parties by conglomerates known as chaebol.

"I don't think the session can continue in this situation today," speaker Park Kwan-yong told the chamber. "I will do what it takes if the speaker's seat is occupied again tomorrow."

A parliamentary announcer said today's session would start at 10am.

Park the right to call guards to clear the chamber. Technically, he failed even to open yesterday's session because pro-Roh Uri Party members had occupied the speaker's area in the National Assembly, a domed building near the Han River in Seoul.

The opposition has until 6:30 pm today to hold the vote, which would come barely a year into Roh's single five-year term and just weeks before an April 15 election.

"By our count, we have a two-thirds majority," Park Jin of the main opposition Grand National Party told reporters.

Party said that 127 of the 145 Grand National Party parliamentarians were ready to vote for impeachment after Roh failed to apologize at a news conference yesterday over illegal electioneering.

They said 55 of the 62 members of the smaller Millennium Democratic Party would also back the impeachment bid.

Those figures would mean the opposition could tally just over the 181-vote, two-thirds majority needed. There was no way to confirm the figures independently ahead of the vote.