1.   Also absent from the congress were Deng Xiaoping and former party secretary Zhao Ziyang, who had reportedly asked for leave.

2.   The committee also appointed the Foreign Affairs Minister Benjamin Mkapa as party secretary for international relations, a post formerly held by Salim.

3.   The report also claimed that the plenum reviewed the case of the former party general secretary, Zhao Ziyang.

4.   The Uzbek government continued its rehabilitation of former Uzbek Communist Party first secretary, Sharaf Rashidov, including renaming a Tashkent street after him.

5.   The new members of the politburo were generally middle-aged officials and included a number of party secretaries from the coastal provinces which had led the Dengist economic reform drive.

6.   These included Xie Fei, Wu Bangguo and Jiang Chunyun, party secretaries of Guangdong, Shanghai and Shandong, respectively.

7.   Although Kim now seems certain to become party general secretary, there has been speculation that he would give the post of president to someone else.

8.   And, indeed, in many places the village elections have led to fierce power struggles between the unelected party secretaries and the village chiefs returned in secret ballots.

9.   A similarly unattributed Focus report on party intrigues triggered the departure of Guenther Verheugen as party secretary last month.

10.   But soon after, the county party secretary visited and called this a worthy experiment.