SYDNEY (Reuters) – Australia’s ruling Labor party was just ahead on seats in the country’s closest vote in decades but one respected election analyst said it looked unlikely either of the main parties would be able to form a majority government.

ABC Television’s Anthony Green, one of the nation’s leading election analysts, projected Labor to win 73 seats.

That would be three short of the number Prime Minister Julia Gillard would need to keep control the 150-seat lower house and mean a hung parliament.

ABC’s Green projected the opposition with 72 seats, with four independents and one Green MP. At the time, just over half of the votes had been counted.

Official data after 62.2 percent of the vote was counted gave Labor 59 seats against 50 for the conservative Liberal-National coalition led by Tony Abbott. To form a government, 76 seats are needed. The opposition was ahead in the national vote.

The close vote has raised concerns in markets over the possibility of a minority government unpopular with investors.

Australia’s opposition treasury spokesman Joe Hockey said the ruling Labor party could win.

SYDNEY (Reuters) – Australia’s ruling Labor party is leading the opposition on seats in vote counting on Saturday but it is too soon to say whether their Prime Minister Julia Gillard will be re-elected in the tightest vote in decades.

Official data after 49.5 percent of the vote was counted gave Labor 57 seats against 47 for the conservative Liberal-National coalition led by Tony Abbott. To form a government, 76 seats are needed. The opposition was ahead in the national vote.

The tight vote has raised concerns in markets over the possibility of a minority government unpopular with investors.

At stake was not only the political future of Prime Minister Gillard and the opposition’s Abbott, both new and untested leaders, but also Labor’s plans for a 30 percent resource tax and a $38 billion broadband network.

A uniform swing of only 1.7 percent would unseat Labor, but analysts warned against jumping to an any early conclusions.

“At this stage I would not be making any call yet,” Graham Richardson, a former Labor minister and now a strategist, said.

The counting was based on numbers in the populous states in eastern Australia but before voting ends at 1000 GMT in Western Australia, which could be crucial to the outcome.

SYDNEY (Reuters) – Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard is on course for a narrow win in an August 21 election, an opinion poll showed on Sunday, as the economy, border protection and population swiftly emerged as key campaign issues.

Support for the ruling Labor party has rebounded since Gillard, Australia’s first female prime minister, was appointed three weeks ago. Seeking to take advantage of her lead and a robust economy creating jobs, she called an election on Saturday.

But the poll is set to be tight with conservative opposition leader Tony Abbott only needing nine more seats to form a government with four independents, or 13 to take office outright.

“I genuinely believe this election is on a knife-edge,” Gillard told reporters in Brisbane, adding jobs, the economy and a return to budget surplus could be deciding factors.

A new opinion poll released on Sunday showed the Labor government maintaining a slim lead over the opposition. The Galaxy poll put Labor on 52 percent compared to 48 percent for the conservative opposition.

But the survey showed that the government will have to rely on support from Greens’ voters to ensure victory.

The opinion poll gave Gillard a strong 55 percent to 32 percent lead over Abbott as preferred prime minister.

SYDNEY, July 18 (Reuters) – Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard is on course for a narrow win in an Aug. 21 election, an opinion poll showed on Sunday, as the economy, border protection and population swiftly emerged as key campaign issues.

Support for the ruling Labor party has rebounded since Gillard, Australia’s first female prime minister, was appointed three weeks ago. Seeking to take advantage of her lead and a robust economy creating jobs, she called an election on Saturday.

But the poll is set to be tight with conservative opposition leader Tony Abbott only needing nine more seats to form a government with four independents, or 13 to take office outright.

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“I genuinely believe this election is on a knife-edge,” Gillard told reporters in Brisbane, adding jobs, the economy and a return to budget surplus could be deciding factors.

SYDNEY (Reuters) – Sovereign risks have risen due to the turmoil in the euro zone, but the woes Greece faces are not the same as in other European nations and the situation can be resolved, the chair of a meeting of sovereign wealth funds said.

The group of 22 sovereign wealth funds holding talks in Australia on Saturday called on governments worldwide to take coordinated and urgent action to introduce finance-sector reforms, and shore up confidence in global investment markets.

“One important conclusion that we reached though is that the situation is resolvable, and in particular, the circumstances of Greece are not the circumstances of some of the other countries,” said David Murray, who heads Australia’s Future Fund and chaired the meeting of the International Forum of Sovereign Wealth Funds.

Sovereign wealth funds are heavyweights in the financial world, controlling $3.8 trillion between them in 2009, according to London-based think tank International Financial Services London.

“In Greece, the level of indebtedness is higher. There was a serious surprise factor on the budgetary and fiscal conditions in that country,” added Murray.

“That is not in the case in the other countries that have been talked about. In their case, their fiscal position was known and accurately reported,” he told a news conference.

Markets plunged this week on mounting fears that Greece’s debt crisis may spread across the euro zone and take down other countries with weak balance sheets such as Spain, Portugal and Italy.

JAKARTA (Reuters) – Indonesia has won praise for cracking down on Islamist militants behind a string of deadly attacks and at the core of the fight have been the heavily armed black-clad officers of its anti-terrorism unit — Detachment 88.

A symbol of improved security cooperation with Western nations, the unit has gained somewhat of a cult status among many Indonesians, particularly after live television images of dramatic sieges ending in a hail of gunfire.

“They’ve been pretty good on the investigative side and intelligence side and being able to crack down on these rings,” said Ken Conboy, a Jakarta-based security analyst and author.

Police have succeeded in killing or capturing hundreds of suspected militants in recent years. Last week, Detachment 88 officers shot dead Dulmatin, a wanted militant with a $10 million bounty on his head who was tracked to a Jakarta Internet cafe.

The unit has been monitoring Islamist networks for potential threats ahead of a visit by U.S. President Barack Obama next week. It has also joined security training exercises at key strategic sites such as five-star hotels and airports.

Detachment 88 was established after the 2002 Bali bombings carried out by militant network Jemaah Islamiah, which firmly placed Indonesia as a frontline state in the U.S.-led “war on terror.”

But the Western funding of an anti-terrorism unit in the world’s most populous Muslim nation can be sensitive. There have been reports of U.S. intelligence officers in Jakarta helping tap cell phones and reading SMS text messages of Indonesian civilians.

JAKARTA, March 2 (Reuters) – U.S. President Barack Obama’s trip to Indonesia should boost investment in Southeast Asia’s biggest economy and curb negative perceptions on doing business in the nation, Indonesia’s investment agency said on Tuesday.

Obama, who spent four years in Indonesia as a child, will make his first visit to the country as president on March 20-22.

Gita Wirjawan, head of the investment coordinating board, said Obama’s visit to the world’s fourth most-populous nation would get Indonesia on the radar screens of more investors.

“There’s not enough people in (Washington) DC who know about Indonesia, who are familiar with Indonesia,” Wirjawan, a former investment banker with JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs, told foreign correspondents.

“This, I think, will elevate Indonesia to a new awareness level, which I think we have got to take advantage of,” he added, noting Indonesia was too often known for natural disasters and terrorist attacks rather than as a potential investment hot spot.

Wirjawan, who was appointed last year by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono with a mandate to boost investment, said the Obama trip would help companies look seriously at Indonesia.

Indonesia has faced stiff competition from regional rivals such as Vietnam and China attracting foreign direct investment, and investors often complain about obstacles such as tortuous red tape, widespread corruption and a shaky legal system.

JAKARTA (Reuters) – The Indonesian resort island of Bali faces a risk of attack on New Year’s Eve, a statement issued by the U.S. Embassy quoted the island’s governor as saying, but the governor’s office denied making any such comment.

Bombs detonated by Islamic militants targeting bars popular with Westerners on Bali killed 202 people, including 88 Australians, in 2002. Three years later, suicide bombers killed 20 people on the island.

“There is an indication of an attack to Bali tonight,” the U.S. statement quoted Bali Governor I Made Mangku Pastika as saying in a message distributed by the Bali Tourism Board.

The statement attributed to the tourism board added: “But please don’t panic, but put your security system to full alert.”

The U.S. statement also issued a warning from its Consular Information Sheet.

“While Indonesia’s counterterrorism efforts have been ongoing and partly successful, violent elements have demonstrated a willingness and ability to carry out deadly attacks with little or no warning.”

Putu Suardika, head of public relations at the office of the Bali governor, denied that the governor had issued a warning.

JAKARTA (Reuters) – Former Indonesian leader Abdurrahman Wahid, a Muslim cleric who served as the country’s fourth president after years in opposition to strongman President Suharto, died in hospital on Wednesday at the age of 69.

Wahid, usually known as Gus Dur, was president between 1999 and 2001 after taking office on a wave of optimism in the turmoil following Suharto’s fall from power.

“He passed away this afternoon,” said his aide Sulaiman, who added that his family was at his bedside at the time and current President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono was also there.

The head of the Cipto Mangunkusumo hospital in central Jakarta said that his condition had been improving until Tuesday, but he was later transferred to intensive care after problems with his respiratory system and blood vessels.

Yudhoyono later said that Wahid would be given a state funeral in Jombang, East Java, on Thursday.

“I ask all Indonesian people to fly flags at half mast for a week as an expression of our deepest condolence,” Yudhoyono said in a televised address.

The jocular cleric became the first Indonesian to win a contested presidential vote in October 1999, edging out Megawati Sukarnoputri, the daughter of founding President Sukarno.