calls for peace amid New Year fireworks

LONDON, Sunday (AFP)

Revellers around the world rang in the New Year with the usual fireworks and fanfare, as the US and Iraqi presidents called for peace in 2006.

Security was tight for the festivities in major cities worldwide, with 25,000 police and paramilitary gendarmes on duty in France amid fears of a repeat of the urban violence seen in towns and cities nationwide last month.

However, despite the torching of some 250 cars nationwide, police reported no serious outbreaks of unrest, and tens of thousands of revellers welcomed the arrival of 2006 in Paris’s most famous avenue, the Champs-Elysees.

Street parties and glittering displays marked the festivities from Sydney to London, with crowds packing the banks of the River Thames to see the 10-minute blaze of fireworks focused on the London Eye.The city’s landmark ferris wheel was lit up in the colours of the five Olympic rings to celebrate London being awarded the 2012 Games..

Britons rang in the New Year as massive firework displays filled the wintry night skies above London and Edinburgh with smoke, light and colour.

Crowds in London packed the banks of the River Thames to see the 10-minute blaze of fireworks focused on the London Eye — the landmark ferris wheel on the south bank — which sent booms across the still city air. The dramatic sequence lit up the Eye in the colours of the five Olympic rings to celebrate London being awarded the 2012 Games.

Trafalgar Square, as on July 6, was packed with cheering crowds, as revellers gazed down Whitehall to the Houses of Parliament.

All eyes were on the famous clock tower, counting down the seconds as the Big Ben bell chimed out midnight, triggering the first salvo of pyrotechnics.

The New Year festivities also gave Londoners a chance to put the deadly July 7 terror attacks on the capital’s transport network in the past.

“We will not let our resolve slip to tackle the dangers we face, both at home, as so tragically illustrated on July 7, and abroad,” Prime Minister Tony Blair said in his New Year message.

However, as the clock struck 12, a strike on the London Underground trains threatened to make the journey home grim for some once the fireworks fizzled out early Sunday. Hundreds of thousands of people celebrated in sub-zero temperatures around Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate, while thousands braved the cold and the numerous police controls to see in the New Year in Moscow’s Red Square.

US President George W. Bush announced his resolutions for the year ahead of the celebrations there: to work for peace and prosperity and, in the short term, to watch a bit of American college football.

“The president’s New Year resolutions: to work tirelessly for peace abroad and prosperity at home,” said deputy White House spokesman Trent Duffy.

In Baghdad, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani said he hoped a new government of national unity would help improve public services and defeat the insurgency in 2006.

“Problems of lack of security, electricity and water persist and I hope they will be areas of priority for the new government, which we hope will be one of national unity,” Talabani said on Iraqi television.

In Israel, young people were determined to celebrate the New Year despite the disapproval of religious authorities who regard it as a Christian festival and a nationwide alert after a truce by Palestinian militant groups expired.

Israeli television and public radio reported 50 security alerts, about 10 of them concrete, about attacks being plotted by Palestinian armed groups to mark the holidays.

Two Palestinians were killed in the evening by Israeli fire in the northern Gaza Strip.

However, flamboyant celebrating was not on the agenda in Lebanon, still living in the shadow of the latest assassination of an anti-Syrian political figure, the newspaper director Gibran Tueni.

Earlier in Sydney, 1,700 police patrolled the streets and beaches to prevent a possible repeat of suburban race riots there earlier this month.

Sydney’s landmark opera house was illuminated at midnight by the most spectacular pyrotechnical display ever seen in Australia’s largest city.

Australia has 900 troops in Iraq and the government has warned repeatedly of militant attacks on home soil, but about one million people turned out in one of the first cities to leave 2005 and its violence behind.

In Beijing, bells and drums were sounded 108 times at midnight (1600 GMT) to mark an auspicious start to the year, signifying the elimination of worldly troubles in accordance with Buddhist tradition.

Authorities in Indonesia — already on high alert for possible attacks by Islamic extremists during the New Year period — fanned out in restive Central Sulawesi province after a bombing in a crowded market Saturday left eight dead.

And in Africa, thousands of Kenyan prisoners decided to skip a meal on New Year’s day to save money to help millions facing severe food shortages.