Armenian police fire in air to halt rally

YEREVAN (Reuters) - Riot police fired in the air to disperse an opposition rally on Saturday in the Armenian capital of Yerevan, scene of 10 days of street protests over a presidential election which the opposition says was rigged.

Reuters correspondent Hasmik Mkrtchyan heard sporadic shooting from an area near the mayor's office where a crowd had been gathering and she saw yellow tracer rounds in the sky.

A protester in the crowd told Mkrtchyan by mobile telephone: "They (the police) shot in the air to scare us. They have fired tear gas. But people are standing firm. There are thousands of people standing here with us."

Hundreds of policemen in full riot gear cut off the area where several embassies are located.

Earlier Foreign Minister Vardan Oskanyan told a news conference that President Robert Kocharyan was ready to declare a state of emergency unless the opposition ended its protest.

The opposition, led by former president Levon Ter-Petrosyan, says a February 19 vote that elected Prime Minister Serzh Sarksyan as president was fraudulent. Sarksyan is an ally of Kocharyan.

Earlier, Mkrtchyan had seen protesters near the mayor's office holding crowbars and metal rods. Some protesters were decanting fuel from the buses into bottles.

Disputed presidential elections sparked mass unrest in two other former Soviet republics, Georgia and Ukraine, that ultimately toppled two long-serving leaders.

(Writing by Richard Balmforth)