ELECTION politics dominated May Day marches in Moscow yesterday, with the Russian President, Mr Boris Yeltsin, and his communist rival, Mr Gennady Zyuganov, each rallying about 10,000 supporters six weeks before presidential polls.
Mr Yeltsin (65) urged independent trade unionists carrying blue flags to "help citizens to take the right decision" in the June 16th elections.
Less than two kilometres away Mr Zyuganov told his communist supporters, in a sea of red Soviet flags, that any postponement of the polls would provoke civil war.
Mr Yeltsin, accompanied by Moscow's mayor, Mr Yuri Luzhkov, said the elections represented "the definitive choice for Russia's future".
He said May 1st, traditionally a workers' holiday marked by mass parades on Red Square in soviet times, now symbolised "the spring of change which is coming to Russia after many years of deep slumber and stagnation".
Mr Zyuganov, who advocates restoration of the Soviet Union, is still leading Mr Yeltsin in opinion polls amid widespread discontent over the hardship caused by the government's economic austerity drive.
The former Russian vice president, Mr Alexander Rutskoi, also accompanied Mr Zyuganov.
In Paris, a leading French trade unionist, Mr Marc Blondel, urged the nation to remember the massive social unrest which paralysed the country late last year.
"The social movement of November and December was not the end of one era, but the beginning of another, in which workers got back their dignity," the secretary general of Force Ouvriere (FO), one of the country's most powerful unions, said.
Asked about the possibility of further unrest, Mr Blondel said: "At the moment, it's a bit messy."
However, he stressed that Force Ouvriere would never compromise over the union's independence, and would repeat the action of November to December last year, "if necessary".
"More and more, May 1st should revert to its traditional role, as an international day of workers' demands," Mr Blondel added.
A May Day march organised in the French capital by the trade unions CGT, FSU and 30 other organisations between the Gare du Nord railway station and Republique square drew 30,000 people, CGT officials said. Police said the figure was 13,500.
In Istanbul, three Turks were killed in clashes with police in May Day rallies.
Two people were shot in the morning - after police opened fire, according to the Anatolia news agency - and died in hospital of their injuries.
Disturbances had broken out in a train station near the Kadikoy Square where a large demonstration was about to begin, police said.
A third person was killed in the afternoon during violent clashes on the square at the end of the demonstration, which drew at least 50,000 people, many of them Kurdish activists.
Police took off scores of demonstrators for questioning.
In Yangon (formerly Rangoon), Burma's military leader, Mr Than Shwe, urged workers to "exert their utmost efforts" to forge a modern nation, building on what he described as government successes.