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BERLIN — German Chancellor Angela Merkel vowed Monday to "win back trust" of voters angered by her open-door refugee policy after her conservatives suffered a humiliating election loss to an anti-migrant party.

"Everyone now needs to think about how we can win back trust — most of all, of course, myself," Merkel said, speaking on the sidelines of a G-20 summit in China a day after the election drubbing in her home state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.

The right-wing populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) Party clinched almost 21 per cent in its first bid for seats in the regional parliament of the north-eastern ex-Communist state on Sunday, against 19 per cent for Merkel's party.

The AfD's rise mirrors success enjoyed by other anti-immigration parties across Europe, with France's Front National riding high in the polls and a far-right populist eyeing the presidency in Austria in elections on October 2.

Merkel said she was "deeply dissatisfied with the outcome of the election", conceding that it had been dominated by the influx of 1 million asylum seekers to Germany last year and the question of how to integrate them in society.

She said that, as chancellor and party chief, "of course I am also responsible", but insisted that opening the borders to a mass influx of refugees and migrants a year ago was the right decision.

"I consider the fundamental decisions as right, but there is much to be done to win back trust and the topic of integration will play a huge role, as well as the repatriation of those who don't gain residency rights."

AfD co-chief Beatrix von Storch, with her eyes on national elections next year, hailed the shock outcome as "the beginning of the end of the Merkel era", while Bild daily labelled the result as another "slap across the face" for the chancellor.

'Protest storm' 

The state vote was held exactly one year after Merkel opened German borders to a mass influx of mainly Syrian refugees stranded in Hungary.

While her welcoming stance initially won much praise, the mood has since darkened as popular worries have grown about how to integrate the newcomers.

The AfD has capitalised on such fears, especially since a spate of sexual assaults blamed on North African men on New Year's Eve, and a series of bloody attacks this summer, some claimed by the Daesh group.

With its latest win, the AfD, founded just over three years ago, is now represented in nine out of Germany's 16 regional parliaments, and hoping for more gains when the capital Berlin goes to the polls in two weeks.

Although Sunday's election was held in Germany's poorest and least populous state, the outcome was significant in part because it is home to Merkel's constituency, the port city of Stralsund.

"This was more than a small state election, it was a vote on Merkel," said news site Spiegel Online, pointing at the "protest storm" in "Merkel's living room".

While Merkel's conservative Christian Democratic Union garnered its worst ever score in elections to the parliament in state capital Schwerin, the centre-left Social Democrats maintained top place with over 30 per cent.

Merkel's SPD vice chancellor, Sigmar Gabriel, hailed the result as a triumph and, taking a shot at Merkel's refugee crisis mantra, charged that "it's not good enough to just say 'we can do it' and leave the work to others".

'Swept away' 

The AfD was founded in 2013 as a eurosceptic party advocating a return to the Deutschmark, but it has since shifted to become a mainly anti-immigration and Islamophobic party.

It has grown strongly even as its top members have sparked outrage with insulting remarks, including one disparaging star footballer Jerome Boateng, of mixed German and Ghanaian descent.

The AfD has succeeded by stirring resentment against minorities and offering "slogans rather than solutions", said the president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Josef Schuster.

"Apparently many voters don't realise, or tacitly accept, that the AfD ... has failed to clearly distance itself from the far-right," he said.

At national level, the AfD is now polling at 14 per cent, a gain of 10 points in the year since Merkel threw open German borders to a mass influx of asylum seekers.

French far-right leader Marine Le Pen wrote on Twitter: "What was impossible yesterday has become possible: the AfD patriots have swept away Merkel's party!"

VIENNA — Alternative for Germany is not the only populist party enjoying electoral success. Across Europe, these are fertile times for protest movements tapping into unease about immigration to attack a long-cosy political establishment.

The anti-immigration AfD scored a major symbolic victory on Sunday by relegating German Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives into third place in elections in her home state.

The result means that the Islamophobic AfD, whose popularity has soared due to opposition to Merkel's open-door refugee policy, is now represented in nine out of Germany's 16 regional parliaments.

Its success has been replicated around Europe, with other anti-immigration populist parties stealing voters in their droves from the established centrist forces.

 For Jean-Dominique Giulani, head of the Robert Schuman Foundation think tank, anxiety in a Europe "looking for an identity" in a fast-changing world has been on the rise for a while.

But, Giulani told AFP, this phenomenon has been "inexorably boosted" by the arrival last year of hundreds of thousands of migrants fleeing violence in the Middle East.

"This is a reaction to the absence of credible European responses... to the issues that worry people, starting with the question of immigration," he said.

The next evidence of this backlash could come on October 2 in Austria, if Norbert Hofer of the Freedom Party — formerly of the Nazi-admiring Joerg Haider -- wins a tight presidential election.

Next year could see further electoral upsets, not least with Germany set to hold general elections late in the year.

In France, reeling from a string of deadly extremist attacks, Marine Le Pen of the far-right Front National is on course to make a strong running for the presidency.

And the party of Dutch far-right politician Geert Wilders, which has vowed to close all mosques and Islamic schools and ban the Koran, is leading polls ahead of parliamentary elections due in 2017.

Globalisation backlash 

But it's not just immigration. Globalisation, austerity, stagnating incomes, as well as an increasingly unpopular European Union have boosted populist parties, on the left as well as the right, say experts.

In Italy, where the right-wing Northern League has long been strong, the Five Star Movement (M5S), founded by a comedian, is shaking up national politics, winning local elections in Rome by a landslide in June.

Elsewhere in southern Europe, it is groupings more of the left — Podemos in Spain, Syriza in Greece — that have made hay, tapping into anger about austerity cuts imposed during the eurozone debt crisis.

In Britain, the main opposition Labour Party chose Jeremy Corbyn as leader in 2015, a hard-left campaigner whose beliefs placed him for decades on the fringes of the country's politics. 

Britain then voted to leave the European Union in June in a referendum driven in large part by worries about immigration, economic uncertainty and a perception that an out-of-touch Brussels elite was making the rules.

Since the surprise "Brexit" result, many populist figures — Le Pen, Wilders, Hofer and Beppe Grillo of the M5S in Italy among them — have at least flirted with the idea of their own EU plebiscite.

Anti-establishment parties have also jumped on mooted trade deals between the EU and Canada and the United States as evidence that the established parties are in cahoots with multinational corporations.

The International Monetary Fund's Christine Lagarde conceded Monday at a G-20 meeting of world leaders in China that globalisation "has to benefit all, not a few", but said that the fruits of a connected world were severely undersold.

There was "a determination around the room to better identify the benefits of trade in order to respond to the easy populist backlash against globalisation," she added as leaders at the summit grappled with the problem.

For Paul Schmidt at the Austrian Society for European Politics, the problem for Europe's leaders is that many of the problems can only be solved by supranational action.

"But many voters reject this loss of sovereignty. It scares them," Schmidt told AFP. 

In addition, populist parties have found in social media, where issues can quickly "snowball dangerously", a useful weapon with which to attack governments, he said.

HONG KONG — Several pro-independence candidates won seats in Hong Kong's first major election since pro-democracy protests in 2014, prompting a robust warning from China that any independence would damage the city's security and prosperity.

In comments carried by the official Xinhua news agency, China's Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Office said it "resolutely opposed" any form of independence for Hong Kong, noting this would violate China's constitution.

The election of a new generation of pro-democracy activists in a record turnout in Chinese-controlled Hong Kong on Sunday underscores a deep divide in a city of more than 7 million people where tensions with Beijing are intensifying.

China bristles at open dissent, especially over sensitive matters such as demands for universal suffrage, and many in Hong Kong are increasingly concerned about what they see as Beijing's meddling in the city's affairs.

In the election, the pro-democracy opposition also kept its crucial one-third veto bloc in the 70-seat Legislative Council over major laws and public funding that has helped check China's influence.

The vote, which ushered in a new crop of legislators including a 23-year-old former protest leader who vowed to "fight" the Chinese Communist Party, underscores growing frustration with how Beijing has handled its "special administrative region" and marks a significant turning point.

The former British colony was handed back to China in 1997 under a "one country, two systems" agreement that promised to maintain the global financial hub's freedoms and separate laws for at least 50 years, but gave ultimate control to Beijing.

Beijing officials have repeatedly warned Hong Kong not to stray too far.

Despite the disqualification of six pro-democracy election candidates from the election in July on the grounds that they backed independence, at least five "localists" and younger democratic newcomers won seats, including Nathan Law, one of the leaders of mass democracy protests in 2014.

Those protests posed one of the greatest challenges to Beijing's rule in decades and were deemed illegal by the local government in Hong Kong and the central government in Beijing.

Localists put the interests of Hong Kong before those of Beijing.

"I'm quite shocked," said Law. "We inherit some spirit from the movement and I hope that can continue in the future... We still have to unite in order to have stronger power to fight the Chinese Communist Party."

‘People want change’

Sunday's vote was the first major election since the 2014 student-led "Umbrella Revolution" protests that blocked roads for 79 days.

Since then, many disaffected youngsters have decried what they see as increasing Beijing interference stifling dissent and civil liberties, leading to a radicalisation of the political scene and occasional violent protests.

Several veteran democrats lost their seats, as voters backed a new batch of younger candidates espousing self-determination and a more confrontational stance with China.

"It's a new era," said Lee Cheuk-yan, a democratic lawmaker who lost his seat after more than two decades in public office.

"People want change, change meaning that they want new faces... but the price is a further fragmentation [of the democracy camp]. Ideologically they're talking about independence and they want to assert themselves."

Hong Kong Secretary for Constitutional Affairs Raymond Tam said the government would do its best to "bring them around to a more centrist position".

"But it's too early to say if this will be an issue," he said.

Pro-establishment lawmakers like Elizabeth Quat said she hoped the issue of splitting from China wouldn't enter the legislature or it could damage Hong Kong's economic interests.

"Independence is not realistic at all," she said. "Hopefully this will not be their main objective."

Voters flocked to cast ballots in record numbers with some having to wait several hours after polls closed, leading to some delays in vote counting on Monday.

"Hong Kong is really chaotic now. I want to do something to help," said 28-year-old Maicy Leung, who was in a snaking queue of several hundred. "It's to help the next generation and to help myself."

The Electoral Affairs Commission said 58 per cent of an eligible 3.8 million voters had cast their ballot, up from 53 per cent in 2012 and the highest legislative election turnout since 1997.

SCHWERIN, Germany — Germany's anti-migrant populists made a strong showing at Sunday's state polls, scoring ahead of Chancellor Angela Merkel's party as voters punish the German leader over her liberal refugee policy.

The xenophobic Alternative for Germany (AfD) obtained around 22 per cent in its first bid for seats in the regional parliament of Mecklenburg-Western Vorpommern, partial results show.

Merkel's Christian Democratic Union (CDU) garnered just under 20 per cent in its worst ever score in the north-eastern state, while the Social Democrats maintained top place with around 30 per cent.

AfD's lead candidate Leif-Erik Holm called it a "proud result for a young party" as the populists secured seats on the opposition benches of the ninth out of 16 regional parliaments with Sunday's showing.

"The icing on the cake is that we have left Merkel's CDU behind us... maybe that is the beginning of the end of Merkel's time as chancellor," he said.

Although the former Communist state is Germany's poorest and least populous, it carries a symbolic meaning as it is home to Merkel's constituency Stralsund.

Together with Berlin's elections in two weeks, Sunday's polls are also a key test ahead of general elections next year, when Merkel's decision exactly a year ago to let in tens of thousands of Syrian and other migrants is expected to be a key point of contention.

Although she won praise at first, the optimism has given way to fears over how Europe's biggest economy will manage to integrate the million people who arrived last year alone.

Merkel's decision has left her increasingly isolated in Europe, and exposed her to heavy criticism at home, including from her own conservative allies.

The CDU's general secretary Peter Tauber said Sunday's results were "bitter", acknowledging that voters "wanted to send a signal of protest, as we had noticed in discussions about refugees".

'No money for us' 

In the sprawling farming and coastal state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, where economic regeneration and jobs used to top residents' concerns, the issue of refugees and integration has become the deciding factor for one in two voters.

"There was only one issue, that is, and was, refugee policy," said the CDU's main candidate Lorenz Caffier.

A pensioner and former teacher who declined to be named said he picked AfD because of the "question over asylum-seekers".

"A million refugees have come here. There is money for them, but no money to bring pensions in the east to the same levels as those of the west," he said, referring to the lower retirement payments that residents of former Communist states receive compared to those in the west.

Compared to other parts of Germany, the northeastern state hosts just a small proportion of migrants under a quota system based on states' income and population — having taken in 25,000 asylum seekers last year.

Most of them have already decided to abandon the state, preferring to head "where there are jobs, people and shops", said Frieder Weinhold, CDU candidate.

But the "migration policy has sparked a feeling of insecurity among the people", he said.

After a series of attacks by asylum-seekers in July — including two claimed by the Daesh organisation — the mood has also darkened.

'More security' 

The AfD, which was founded in 2013, has continued its sterling rise even though leading members of the party have sparked outrage over insulting remarks, including one disparaging footballer Jerome Boateng, of mixed German and Ghanaian descent, as the neighbour no German wants.

Social Democrat leader Sigmar Gabriel said Germany's main "political parties must ask how we can stop people from choosing the AfD". 

"The key is that we must bring about more security, not just domestic security or protection from crime and terrorism, but also social security," he said, after the results.

Ahead of Sunday's vote, Merkel had urged the population to reject the populists.

"The more the people who go to vote, the less the per centage won by some parties that, in my view, have no solution for problems and which are built mainly around a protest — often with hate," she said.

The chancellor, who is attending the G-20 summit in the Chinese city of Hangzhou, did not vote in the polls as her main residence is in Berlin. 

BERLIN — Populist party "Alternative for Germany" (AfD) began life at the height of Europe's sovereign debt crisis in 2013 on an anti-euro platform, but it has now firmly repositioned itself as a xenophobic group.

After fears over a potential euro collapse waned, the party turned its anger against a million asylum-seekers who arrived in Germany last year.

It has steadily gained popularity even though leading AfD members regularly sparked outrage over racist remarks — including one suggesting that a German team with fewer non-white players could have beaten France in the Euro 2016 semifinal.

Exit polls in Sunday's regional elections in the northeastern state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania show support reaching around 21 per cent for the party, unseating Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union (CDU) from second place.

Merkel had urged voters to shun AfD, which she described as a party that offers no solutions to problems, and which is simply a protest platform espousing hate.

Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel has compared the AfD to the Nazis.

Founded by economics professor Bernd Luecke, the party quickly struck a chord with voters disillusioned with the politics of Germany's main parties, particularly Merkel's CDU, and drew those who were horrified at having to bail out southern countries.

Although AfD fell short of getting a foothold in the national parliament in 2013 elections, garnering 4.7 per cent rather than the 5 per cent threshold necessary to capture seats, it quickly showed that it was here to stay.

In May 2014, it sent seven deputies to the European Parliament with 6.5 per cent of the vote.

It continued to broaden its reach, capturing seats in the regional parliaments of Saxony, Brandenburg, Thuringia, Hamburg and Bremen.

'Shoot the migrants' 

But the AfD was soon riven by an internal rift between the moderate Luecke and the hardline Frauke Petry, which was tugging the party further right.

As Petry prevailed and took over as party chief in July 2015, the tone of the AfD lurched right, although it has also been careful to distance itself from neo-Nazi party NPD. 

Petry's ascent to power came just as Germany suddenly woke up to tens of thousands of asylum-seekers streaming into the country on a weekly basis.

Petry did not mince her words on her feelings towards migrants, unleashing a storm when she suggested that police should be allowed to shoot at migrants to stop them entering Germany.

"No policeman wants to fire on a refugee and I don't want that either. But as a last resort there should be recourse to firearms," said Petry, who has admitted employing provocation to make an impression.

Other members of the party have also drawn condemnation for making racist slurs, including against footballer Jerome Boateng, who was born in Berlin to a German mother and Ghanaian father.

AfD deputy leader Alexander Gauland had said in May that "people find him good as a footballer, but they don't want to have a Boateng as a neighbour".

Another deputy leader Beatrix von Storch also made a jibe at players with immigrant roots after Germany's 2-0 defeat to France, writing on Twi tter that "maybe next time the German NATIONAL TEAM should play again".

KUALA LUMPUR — Malaysia is bracing for more Zika cases, officials said on Sunday, after detecting the first locally infected patient, which could further stretch a health system struggling with dengue, another mosquito-borne virus that can be fatal.

Both Zika, which is of particular risk to pregnant women, and the dengue virus are spread by the Aedes aegypti mosquito, which is common in tropical Malaysia, Southeast Asia's third largest economy, and across the region.

Neighbouring Singapore has reported more than 200 cases of Zika.

Three days ago, Malaysia reported its first Zika infection — a woman living near Kuala Lumpur who contracted the virus during a visit to Singapore.

On Saturday, Malaysian authorities said they had detected the first local infection: a 61-year-old man in the city of Kota Kinabalu, in the Malaysian part of Borneo Island.

"The confirmation of the second case of Zika in Kota Kinabalu suggests that the virus is already present within our communities," Health Minister Subramaniam Sathasivam said.

"Zika is present in our country. New cases will continue to emerge," he posted on his Facebook page.

Zika infections in pregnant women have been shown to cause microcephaly — a severe birth defect in which the head and brain are undersized — as well as other brain abnormalities.

The connection between Zika and microcephaly first came to light last fall in Brazil, which has since confirmed more than 1,800 cases of microcephaly.

In adults, Zika infections have also been linked to a rare neurological syndrome known as Guillain-Barre, as well as other neurological disorders.

Dengue fight

Since reporting its first Zika infection, Malaysia has increased insecticide spraying to kill mosquitoes. It has also stepped up health checks at its main border with Singapore, through which 200,000 people pass daily.

Malaysia, with a population of almost 30 million and a size 46 times bigger than Singapore, faces a much more challenging fight against Zika, doctors say.

"Zika will spread even faster in Malaysia than Singapore because our Aedes volume is so much higher and the breeding grounds are enormous," said Amar Singh, head of the paediatric department at Hospital Raja Permaisuri Bainun in the Malaysian town of Ipoh.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) ranks Malaysia's healthcare system as the world's 49th most developed. Singapore figures in the top 10.

There is no vaccine or treatment for Zika, which is a close cousin of dengue and chikungunya and causes mild fever, rash and red eyes. An estimated 80 per cent of people infected have no symptoms, making it difficult for pregnant women to know whether they have been infected.

The WHO has declared the Zika outbreak an international health emergency, and if Malaysia's fight against dengue is any indication, it will struggle with Zika.

Malaysia recorded a total of 120,836 dengue cases last year, including 336 fatalities — the most since 1995, according to government data. This year, there have been 75,000 dengue cases and 166 fatalities.

Malaysian authorities say dengue is a bigger problem than Zika.

But regional health experts believe Zika is significantly under-reported in Southeast Asia as authorities fail to conduct adequate screening and also because of its usually mild symptoms.

The WHO lists Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines and Vietnam as countries with "possible endemic transmission or evidence of local mosquito-borne Zika infections in 2016".

The virus was first identified in Uganda in 1947 and was unknown in the Americas until 2014.

BRATISLAVA — The European Union and Turkey tested the waters for a political rapprochement on Saturday with a first meeting between the bloc's 28 foreign ministers and a senior Ankara official after a failed coup in Turkey in July strained their uneasy ties.

The EU, which depends on Ankara to keep a lid on the movement of migrants to the bloc, is now seeking to ease tensions with Turkey after voicing loud criticism of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's post-coup crackdown.

"On the political level we need a rapprochement, we need to normalise the situation," Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn told Reuters after the EU ministers' meeting with Turkey's EU Affairs Minister Omer Celik.

"It's the first time since the coup that we spoke to each other, not about one another. But we cannot forget the rule of law. Everyone around the table said that if they want to stabilise the situation, they must come back to the rule of law as quickly as possible."

Celik, speaking to reporters via a translator, expressed Turkey's strong disappointment with the EU's initial reaction to the attempted military coup.

But he also said: "As a result of the meeting, there is very strong consensus about focusing on a positive agenda and further enhancing cooperation between Turkey and the EU."

The EU, often critical of Turkey's track record on human rights and rule of law, was taken further aback when Ankara dismissed 80,000 people from public duty and arrested many of them over alleged sympathies with the plotters.

Turkey was enraged by what it saw as the EU's half-hearted condemnation of the coup. It accused Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen of masterminding it, which he denied.

With the talks in Bratislava, the bloc is now sending a more conciliatory message, while upholding demands that Turkey makes a greater effort towards upholding democratic principles.

"I really expect an improvement of relationship now," Slovak Foreign Minister Miroslav Lajcak said.

The Netherlands was more cautious, as it also raised with fellow EU states the issue of dealing with Gulen supporters in their own countries.

Austria has gone as far as to propose dropping EU accession talks with Turkey over democratic deficiencies but, despite widespread reservations among EU capitals on whether Ankara should or would ever join, Vienna seemed to be getting little support on this particular point.

Celik criticised Austria, saying such comments "lack vision" and "put in jeopardy the future of Europe".

He said Ankara would stick to the migration accord but that it was "not rational" to expect the Turkish government to relax its counter-terrorism laws now as it fights Daesh in neighbouring Syria and Kurdish militants on its own soil.

He did not rule out, however, that this could happen in the future once there is "no terrorism threat" in Turkey, saying Ankara was ready for talks on that with the Council of Europe (CoE), a European rights body of which Turkey is a member.

The EU worries Turkey applies its anti-terror laws too broadly to go after Erdogan critics and has made easing them a precondition for granting Turks visa-free movement.

Ankara previously threatened to walk away from cooperation on migration should it not get more relaxed travel rules in October, a prospect Celik downplayed on Saturday.

But he did say Turkey would not seal any new deals to control migration to the EU before it gets visa liberalisation.

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said his Turkish counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu would travel to Strasbourg next week to discuss the role the CoE could play in post-coup prosecutions in Turkey.

"We need to underscore that we stand by the side of Turkey, and have enormous respect for the Turkish people who rose up and fought the military coup," he said.

"Perhaps we must admit self-critically that the empathy and emotionality of our statements of solidarity were not heard and received in Turkey with the needed intensity," Steinmeier said of the EU's initial reaction to the botched coup.

EU-Turkey talks will continue when Erdogan will meet Jean-Claude Juncker, the head of the EU's executive arm, on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in China on Sunday and Monday.

Russian President Vladimir Putin met Erdogan in Hangzhou on the eve of the summit and told him he was glad that political life was being stabilised in Turkey.

"We see that the Turkey is living through difficult time, is fighting against terrorism and facing serious terrorist crimes."

"You and me have several time expressed our position on the fight against terrorism. I am sure that you have already succeeded in fully normalising the situation," Putin said.

ALMATY — Islam Karimov, president of Uzbekistan for the past quarter of a century, was buried in his home city of Samarkand on Saturday, leaving behind a power vacuum in a nation that serves as a bulwark against militancy in Central Asia.

Karimov, who was 78, died from a stroke. After a funeral rite in Samarkand's ancient Registan Square attended by hundreds of men — some of whom were in tears — his body was buried at the city's Shah-i-Zinda cemetery, two attendees told Reuters.

Karimov was derided by Western governments as a dictator who violated human rights, but for many people in Uzbekistan, a mainly Muslim ex-Soviet state which borders Afghanistan, he is the only head of state they have ever known.

With no obvious successor, Karimov's death has triggered an outpouring of grief, mixed with uncertainty about the future.

"I still can't believe it happened," said a 39-year-old resident of the capital, Tashkent, who was among thousands who lined the main thoroughfare early on Saturday to watch the funeral cortege pass by en route to Samarkand.

"I don't know what happens now, I am lost," said the man, who declined to be identified.

How the power vacuum is filled in Uzbekistan is of urgent concern to Russia, the United States and China, all powers with interests in the volatile Central Asia region, where Uzbekistan is the most populous state.

Central Asia analysts say a small circle of senior officials and Karimov family members will have been meeting behind closed doors to try to agree on anointing a new president.

The funeral rites offered clues as to who might be in the running. At the Samarkand ceremony, Prime Minister Shavkat Mirziyoyev, 59, and Finance Minister Rustam Azimov, 57, were allocated spots in the front row, nearest to Karimov's coffin.

If the elite fail to agree among themselves on a transition, the resulting instability could be exploited by militants who in the past have staged violent attacks in Uzbek cities and want to make Uzbekistan part of a “caliphate”.

Karimov jailed, killed or exiled most of the militants inside Uzbekistan. Many have since joined the Taliban in Afghanistan and Daesh in Iraq and Syria, where they have become battle-hardened.

An upsurge in militant violence in Uzbekistan would pose a threat to the United States, which is trying to contain the insurgency in Afghanistan, to Russia — home to millions of Uzbek migrant workers — and to China, which worries about Central Asian Islamists making common cause with separatists from its mainly Muslim Uighur ethnic minority.

Many people had anticipated that Karimov would be succeeded by his older daughter Gulnara, a businesswoman and pop star, but she fell from favour two years ago and there was no sign of her on Saturday among the family members in the funeral cortège.

At Tashkent airport, as the coffin was being loaded onto a plane bound for Samarkand, Karimov's wife, Tatiana, and his younger daughter, Lola Karimova-Tillyaeva, stood at the foot of the aircraft steps. His daughter, dressed all in black, was dabbing her eyes with a white handkerchief.

Karimov's death could unleash a new round of jockeying between Russia, the United States and China, which are all trying to bring Central Asia, with its oil and gas reserves and metal ore, into their sphere of influence.

In a statement offering his condolences, US President Barack Obama said his country stood with Uzbekistan as it "begins a new chapter in its history".

Alexei Pushkov, the pro-Kremlin head of the foreign affairs committee in Russia's parliament, responded on Twitter that Obama was "mistaken if he thinks the new chapter is going to be written in Washington".

The most prominent foreign dignitaries at the funeral were Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, Tajikistan's President Imomali Rakhmon and Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev.

Karimov was the head of the local Communist Party in Uzbekistan when it was still a Soviet republic, and he remained at the helm after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.

While other newly independent Soviet republics were convulsed by wars, economic upheaval and political turmoil, life for people in Uzbekistan stayed largely stable, safe and predictable — a state of affairs that Karimov's supporters touted as his great achievement.

"The people of Uzbekistan associate the huge achievements of the country since independence with President Karimov's name," a state television anchor, in a black suit and tie, said on Saturday in an elegy that was preceded by sombre music.

But the stability came at a cost.

Elections were held but were not democratic, according to international observers. To ensure Uzbekistan could earn foreign currency from exporting cotton, people — including children — were press-ganged into going into the fields to help with the harvest, witnesses have told Reuters.

Citing a militant threat, Karimov cracked down ruthlessly on anyone deemed to be a religious extremist. Growing a beard or renouncing alcohol was sometimes enough to earn arrest. Rights groups say detainees were tortured.

In the Uzbek city of Andizhan in May 2005, security forces killed around 500 mostly unarmed people who had been protesting against local officials, witnesses and rights groups said. Karimov put the death toll at 169 and said his forces had put down an armed uprising.

Karimov's own family were not immune from the harsh treatment. In a letter smuggled to a BBC journalist in 2014, Gulnara, the older daughter, alleged she was being held under house arrest by her father's security officials after her family ostracised her.

WASHINGTON — Donald Trump tried to solidify his statesman bona fides by meeting with Mexico's president, but the angry rhetoric he offered on illegal immigration at a later campaign rally contradicted his seeming willingness to adapt his message.

Was it a crafty political strategy to earn the Republican presidential nominee some diplomatic credibility while ensuring the loyalty of core conservatives? Or did Trump flinch under pressure from the hard right and abandon a bid to moderate his immigration position?

His speech Wednesday night in Phoenix focused in large part on proposals to crack down on illegal immigration, as well as how to handle 11 million undocumented people already in the United States, many of whom he accused of committing heinous crimes or stealing jobs from citizens.

Perhaps cognizant of the logistical and financial challenges, Trump did not commit to forcibly deporting all of America's undocumented migrants, although he starkly warned that "anyone who has entered the United States illegally is subject to deportation".

The priority will focus on removing immigrants with criminal records, people who overstay visas, and those abusing America's benefits system, he said, promising additional resources to police and border units.

But he fervently ruled out any legal status for the undocumented, even after he briefly floated such an option in recent weeks.

In practice this would mean an extension of a precarious limbo status for millions of migrants, mainly of Mexican origin, who have been waiting for years or even decades to come out of the shadows.

Most Americans favor immigration reform. 

Republican leaders, following their 2012 election defeat, sought to lead their party to a more conciliatory position as a way to broaden their appeal among Hispanic voters. But the effort failed, opposed by the ultra-conservative Tea Party movement.

Today, roughly 77 per cent of voters support some form of legalisation for the undocumented, according to a Fox News poll released Thursday. In July 2015, that figure stood at 64 per cent. In 2010, just 49 per cent favored legalisation.

Who pays for wall? 

Trump, who for months has trailed Democratic White House rival Hillary Clinton in most polls, is walking a tightrope on the issue, eager to expand his support but reluctant to antagonise his base. 

"There's really quite a bit of softening" on Trump's immigration stance, the candidate told radio's Laura Ingraham Show early Thursday. "We do it in a very humane way."

He stressed that a decision would be made later on how or whether to conduct mass deportations, "once everything is stabilised".

Supporters of immigration reform interpreted Trump's speech differently.

"We were hopeful that Mr Trump would lay out a practical plan to stop future illegal immigration and provide a realistic solution for those currently living here without status," said Todd Schulte, president of FWD.us, a group founded by Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg and others in Silicon Valley.

"Unfortunately, Mr Trump failed on both accounts."

The harsh speech cost Trump a defection: Jacob Monty, a member of Trump's National Hispanic Advisory Council, according to Politico. Another Latino conservative backer, Alfonso Aguilar, wrote that he felt "disappointed" and "misled" by Trump.

Democrats meanwhile said Trump's immigration rhetoric showed he is incapable of modulating his position.

"This same speech has been given throughout our history against the Irish, against Italian-American immigrants, against Jews coming from Eastern Europe. It is a deportation nation and they're all criminals and they're doing horrible things," Senator Tim Kaine, Clinton's vice presidential running mate, told MSNBC.

On Thursday during a speech to the American Legion, a large veterans organization, Trump assumed the tone of a future commander in chief, thanking Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto for hosting him a day earlier. 

"We can work together to accomplish great things for both of our countries," he said, while repeating their mutual goal of preserving jobs and industry "in our hemisphere". 

One hiccup on his Mexico jaunt concerned whether Trump told Pena Nieto that he wanted Mexico to pay for the wall that he has insisted will be built on their shared border.

With Pena Nieto at his side, he told reporters they had not discussed the payment issue in their closed-door talks. Later on Wednesday, he insisted Mexico would pay.

Hours later, the Mexican leader insisted that he had actually told Trump that his country would not pay. 

MIAMI — An unmanned SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket exploded on Thursday on the launch pad at Cape Canaveral in Florida during a test, destroying it along with its payload, but causing no injuries, the private space firm said.

The blast marks a major setback for California-based SpaceX and its founder, internet entrepreneur Elon Musk, who wants to revolutionise the launch industry by making rocket components reusable.

A dense plume of black smoke filled the air following the blast, which destroyed the Israeli communications satellite that Falcon had been due to deliver into orbit on Saturday.

Facebook was due to use the Amos-6 satellite to provide broadband internet coverage for swathes of sub-Saharan Africa as part of the social media giant's Internet.org initiative.

The US space agency NASA said the incident took place shortly after 9:00am (1300 GMT).

"SpaceX can confirm that in preparation for today's static fire, there was an anomaly on the pad resulting in the loss of the vehicle and its payload," the company said. "Per standard procedure, the pad was clear and there were no injuries." 

Brevard County Emergency Management said there was no threat to the public from the incident.

Amos-6 was the heaviest payload to date for a SpaceX rocket, with an estimated value of between $200 and $300 million, according to John Logsdon, former director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University.

The accident — the second of its kind in the firm's history — is expected to significantly disrupt SpaceX plans for six more launches between now and January 2017.

"It's clearly a setback, but how great the setback is and how long the delay, it's impossible to know until there is more information available," said Logsdon.

A NASA spokeswoman told AFP that emergency services at the nearby Kennedy Space Centre were monitoring the situation and conducting air quality tests to ensure there is no threat to the health of staff.

Officials at the center advised all staff to remain inside until further notice.

SpaceX had successfully launched a Falcon 9 last month, sending a Japanese communications satellite into orbit and then landing the rocket on a floating drone ship.

The explosion comes just over a year after a Falcon 9 rocket failed just after liftoff, on June 28, 2015, destroying a Dragon cargo capsule bound for the International Space Station.

The firm has also lost several rockets as it attempted to land them upright on an ocean platform at the end of a flight.