S Korea Roh 'faces impeachment'

President Roh is fighting for his political life

South Korea's main opposition parties have threatened to try and impeach President Roh Moo-hyun.

The move follows a finding last week by the National Election Committee that Mr Roh breached election rules by backing a party ahead of next month's polls.

Mr Roh's advisers said the breach was minor and have refused to apologise.

Mr Roh, who has been left with little support in the National Assembly, has also been struggling to shake off corruption claims against his aides.

The impeachment move follows a comment by Mr Roh last month calling for "overwhelming support" for the tiny Uri Party, which backs the president.

The National Election Committee ruled that Mr Roh could unfairly prejudice assembly elections next month, but the president's aides have argued that the infraction was not serious enough to justify impeachment.

The opposition Grand National Party and Millennium Democratic Party need to muster a simple majority in the National Assembly to introduce the impeachment bill, and a two-thirds majority to pass it. The parties together hold more than three-quarters of the seats in the assembly.

The move comes amid wide-ranging corruption investigations which have spread to Mr Roh and his camp.

Prosecutors said on Monday that one of Mr Roh's aides is suspected of taking 3bn won (US$2.6m) in illegal funds from the Samsung business group ahead of the campaign for the 2002 general elections.

Mr Roh said earlier this year that he would resign if his camp was found to have taken more than a 10th of the illegal funds raised by the opposition.

According to the BBC's Seoul correspondent, the figure released on Monday amounts to about 14% of the opposition's slush funds.

If the impeachment motion is approved, the matter is passed to the Constitutional Court, where six out of nine judges must rule in favour of the motion to unseat Mr Roh.

If he is ejected from office, Prime Minister Koh Gun would serve as interim president.