BANGKOK, Thailand -- Thai police used tear gas to disperse a crowd of several thousand anti-government protesters who were besieging city police headquarters. The prime minister said he might declare a state of emergency if the rioting worsens.

Tensions rose Friday, three days after members of the People's Alliance for Democracy occupied Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej's office compound to demand his ouster.

THE HAGUE, Netherlands -- Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic made a defiant stand before a U.N. court preparing to try him on genocide charges, refusing to enter pleas Friday and branding the tribunal a NATO proxy out to "liquidate" him.

Judge Iain Bonomy entered not guilty pleas on Karadzic's behalf on 11 counts, which also include charges of crimes against humanity, allowing pretrial proceedings to proceed even though he rejects the court's legitimacy.

Karadzic is charged with genocide for allegedly masterminding atrocities, including the slaughter of more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica in July 1995 and the deadly siege of Sarajevo, when he was president of the breakaway Bosnian Serb republic.

REDZIKOWO, Poland -- Poland's prime minister sought to reassure worried residents near the site of a planned U.S. missile defense base on Friday, pledging that they and the country would be more secure, despite threats from an angry Russia.

Before facing residents at a town hall meeting in the city of Slupsk, Prime Minister Donald Tusk visited the former Polish air base in Redzikowo -- just 115 miles from Russia's westernmost edge -- that is to host the facility.

"In case of war, Redzikowo and Slupsk will be more secure than other places, and not less secure," Tusk told reporters.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- Predictions that Pervez Musharraf will have to flee Pakistan to escape treason charges have died along with the coalition that drove him from the presidency.

The ex-general can now eye comfortable -- though high-security -- retirement in the luxury villa, complete with a swimming pool and strawberry patch, that he is building in an elite suburb of the capital.

Since resigning Aug. 18 to avoid impeachment, the former military ruler has stayed below the radar as the country he ran for nine years plunged into fresh political turmoil.

BEIRUT, Lebanon -- For the rest of the world, the disappearance of the imam Moussa al-Sadr is probably at most a footnote in the checkered history of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi. In 1978, the Lebanese Shiite Muslim religious leader flew to Tripoli for a week of talks with Libyan officials. He was never seen or heard from again.

But in Lebanon, the mystery of the missing imam remains a burning issue for Shiites, including leaders of the powerful Hezbollah movement -- an indication of al-Sadr's potency as a symbol for a community that in 40 years has gone from a downtrodden, impoverished sect to a major political player.

Al-Sadr is one of the pioneers of Shiite empowerment that has become a force across the Middle East, spurred by the 1979 Islamic revolution in Shiite Iran and more recently by the rise to leadership of Iraq's majority Shiites after U.S. forces ousted Saddam Hussein and his Sunni Muslim-dominated regime.

Framed photos of al-Sadr adorn the shops and homes of Lebanese Shiites, and the day he was last seen, on Aug. 31, 1978, is marked annually in Lebanon, with this year's major ceremony planned in the southern town of Nabatiyeh.

On Wednesday, Lebanese judicial officials said prosecutors had just charged Gadhafi and six other Libyan officials with "incitement to kidnap and withhold the freedom" of al-Sadr. The charge could carry the death penalty, but the officials, insisting on anonymity since they were not authorized to speak to the media, conceded it was unlikely Gadhafi would ever be tried.