alright, so I jumped the gun and posted. sorry..
The solution I ended up using was first adding javascript:void(0) to my <a href""> tag, however that broke Internet explorer.
so instead I have
print "<a href='#' onclick='listcountry(\"" . chr($letter) . "\");return false;'>" . chr($letter) . "</a> ";
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now if anybody can point me to a nice tutorial of how to use ajax with zen cart that would be amazing because it's just not work



