FROM Alexandra Palace in North London, about two billion television viewers from 142 countries will today watch this year's Miss World Contest, featuring 92 beauty queens.

Although there were calls for the cancellation of the contest in the wake of the violent protest in Kaduna, Nigeria-- where hundreds of people were killed-- largely directed indirectly against the pageant holding in Nigeria, the organizers of the event said it would hold today as scheduled.

Today's event was initially billed to hold in Abuja but was moved to London because of the protest that spread to Abuja,the seat of power.

Oscar-winning actress turned UK parliamentarian, Glenda Jackson has called for the contest to be halted out of respect for those killed in Nigeria.

But Miss World organiser Julia Morley insisted that the beauty pageant was not responsible for riots in Nigeria just as the Director-General of the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) Ben Murray-Bruce accused the western press of racist reporting of Africa and the black man.

Morley also rejected criticism that the contest, now in its 52nd edition is outdated and sexist: "You see women in fashion shows all the time and they are not accused of being sexist. This is just a family show.

"These are girls who are having fun, they're all very well educated and they are hoping to make some money out of this."

Murray-Bruce in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in London on Thursday said the foreign media succeeded in scaring parents of the Miss World contestants who consequently pulled their children out of the pageant.

"The racist and 'stereo-type' press felt Nigeria was wrong and not ready to host the pageant," he said, lamenting that racist journalism had always been bad for Africa.

"They think black people are barbarians and vicious," Murray-Bruce added, emphasising that their reporting of the riots in Kaduna and the ensuing fiasco about the pageant "confirms our worst fears on what they think about us."

He cited the case of reporters from a newspaper in London, who were flown from Nigeria back to London by Julia Morley, "but claimed in a screaming headline that they were in Nigeria to rescue the girls."

Murray-Bruce described Nigerian Moslems as a tolerant group, who had nothing to do with the riot. He, however, blamed the riots in Abuja on thugs who were hired "to give a dog a bad name."

" Moving the pageant from Nigeria was a terrible blow to us," he said, expressing the optimism that the damage would be overcome with good governance and peaceful co-existence among Nigerians.

Similarly, the first Miss Nigerian Grace Atinuke Oyelude, has described as "unfortunate" the cancellation of the pageant in Nigeria. Oyelude who turned 70 recently was crowned in 1957 as first Miss Nigeria.