BBC news 2007-09-16 加文本

BBC 2007-09-16


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BBC World News with Poorneg Ducy.

The British Prime Minister Gordon Brown says a combination of opportunities could create a real chance of a settlement in the Darfur region of Sudan. In a BBC interview, he described the Darfur conflict which has killed about 200,000 people as one of the great tragedies of our time. But he said he was encouraged by three factors: peace talks due next month, the offer of a cease-fire by Sudan and a planned deployment of a hybrid African Union-United Nations peacekeeping force. Mr. Brown says Sudan now must honor its promises. "Promises have been made by the regime. Resolutions have been passed. The follow-up requries that the troops be there on the ground, and that's why 20,000 African Union and UN troops have got to move in pretty quickly."

Political pressure has increased on the Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki after the party that helped him into power said that it was withdrawing a support from the governing coalition. The party which supports the radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr had already pulled its ministers from the government in April. The head of a political committee of Sadr's movement, Liwa Sumaysim, said the administration hadn't met any of its demands.

"Because no positive signs and moves have appeared from the United Iraqi alliance side towards the demands made by the Sadr's movement, the political committee of the Moqtada al-Sadr's office annouced the withdrawl of the Sadr's bloc in parliament from the United Iraqi alliance."

Police in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, say at least ten people were killed when a suicide bomber attacked a market place in the southwest of the city. At least 15 other were wounded in the attack in the Armol district. Officials said it came as people went out to shop for the evening meal which breaks the daily fast during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

The United Nations has warned of more rains and outbreaks of waterborne disease across Africa where flash floods have already devastated farmlands and homes. More than one million people have been affected in the vast area, encompassing at least 14 countries in the west, east and central Africa. Dozens have died and hundreds of thousands have lost their homes. A UN spokesman told the BBC that the floods could lead to outbreaks of cholera and dysentery.

There's been a stronger and widespread condemnation of comments by one of Germany's top Roman Catholic clergymen in which he use Nazi terminology to condemn modern art. The archbishop of Cologne described some art as "degenerate", the word that Nazi used to justify prosecuting scores of artists and burning thousands of works of art. Regional leaders have described the use of the word as shocking while Germany's main Jewish organization likened the cardinal to an arsonist and said it was knowingly exceeding the limits of what was acceptable. The archbishop said he regretted that his comments had been taken out of context and misinterpreted.

World News from the BBC.

The governing party in Sierra Leone has filed a court injunction against the electral commission as results from last weekend's presidential race are being published. The party had earlier expressed concern about the commission and investigating roports of excessively higher voter turnout, mostly in government strongholds. Here is our west Africa correspondent Will Rose.

This appears to be an attempt to prevent the electoral commission from annoucing further results, at a time when the Vice President Solomon Berewa is trailing the opposition's Ernest Bai Koroma by a 20% margin, with just a quarter of the results to come. Barring an unexpected and surprising last set of results, the opposition candidate looks on course to win this election.

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In Greece, polls will open in a few hours time for a general election has been dominated by the forest fires which killed 65 people last month. The central right Prime Minister Kostas Karamanlis has been accused of reacting too slowly to the fires. Despite the criticism, opinion polls suggested Mr. Karamnlis's new democracy party hold the narrow lead over the main socialist opposition.

And the United Nations has said that one of the heavily mined areas in the Afghan capital Kabul has now been completely cleared of landmines. The UN's mine action programme said it had cleared a quarter of a million square meters of the Karte Sakhi area in western Kabul.

BBC World News.


Iraq's Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki speaks to reporters during a visit to Najaf, 160 km (99 miles) south of Baghdad September 5, 2007. Bush criticized Iraq's government, saying it had made limited political progress despite the breathing space offered by this year's 'surge' of U.S. troops and the improved security. The political movement loyal to anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr quit Iraq's ruling Shi'ite Alliance on Saturday, leaving Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's coalition in a precarious position in parliament.
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