BBC 2009-04-05
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BBC news with Jonathan Izard
A summit of NATO leaders has agreed on a new strategy to try to defeat the Taliban and Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. The leaders said they would deploy up to 5000 extra troops, although many will be on a temporary basis, to strengthen security during the forthcoming elections in Afghanistan. They also agreed to provide funds and training for an expanded Afghan army and police force. Robertson reports from Strasbourg.
President Obama came to his first NATO summit seeking European support on Afghanistan. What he got was enthusiastic political backing and the promise of some 5000 extra troops, more civilian assistance and more aid. Beyond Afghanistan, the summit agreed to begin a review of NATO's role in the 21st century. This was in many ways a summit preordained to succeed. Both the US and its European partners were too determined to breathe new life into the trans-Atlantic alliance to allow it to fail."
Outside the summit venue, French police clashed with protesters throwing rocks and petrol bombs. A hotel and a border post were set on fire.
At the same summit, the Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen has been named as the next Secretary General of NATO. Mr. Rasmussen, who has led a center-right coalition in Denmark since 2001, will take over from Jaap de Hoop Scheffer in August this year. His candidacy had been opposed by Turkey which was unhappy with his handling of a row over Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad and the presence of a pro-Kurdish television station on Danish soil.
There's been a suicide bomb attack on a security post in the Pakistani capital Islamabad, killing 8 people. Several others were injured in the blast. The paramilitary camp was set up to protect embassies and international offices in the area. Barbara Plett reports from Islamabad.
"This is the second attack in Islamabad in less than two weeks. It appears to be part of a concerted campaign by militants to target security forces and destabilize the capital. Pakistan increasingly looks and feels like a country at war. The government says this is a revolt against the state. The militants say they are retaliating for US missile strikes against them in the region near the Afghan border."
Dozens of people have died in a shipping container in Pakistan during an apparent attempt to smuggle them through the country. The container found in Baluchistan Province is reported to have held 150 people, most of them Afghans. So far 44 are learned to have died from suffocation. A number of survivors have been treated in hospital in Quetta. Brenda Marshall reports.
Hospital officials say that some of these survivors were found unconscious and are still in the critical condition. The truck carrying the tightly sealed container had been parked on the outskirts of the provincial capital Quetta. And its driver is said to have fled on discovering the horrific state of his human cargo. The truck itself is reported to belong to a company supplying NATO forces in Afghanistan. Police said the container entered Pakistan from the Afghan border town of Spin Boldak and was bound for Iran.
World news from the BBC
Police in Italy have discovered more than 100 immigrants including 24 Afghan children living in the sewer system beneath railway stations in Rome. The children ranging age between 10 and 15 are now being looked after by the city’s social services. They were found when the railway police followed up reports of children living near the city’s stations. The police say they broke into the sewers by removing man-hole covers.
A British teenager who tried to kill himself has been saved by a friend on Facebook. The 16-year-old boy apparently told an American girl on the internet website his intentions. Angus Crawford reports from London.
The boy who hasn’t been named was using the social networking site Facebook late on Wednesday night. It’s thought he sent a private message to a girl in Maryland, saying that he was going to harm himself. She didn’t know exactly where he lived but told her mother who alerted the local police. Calls were then made via a special agent of the White House, the British embassy in Washington and finally to the police control room in Abingdon. Staff narrowed down his location to 8 possible addresses. He’d taken an overdose but was conscious and after a treatment in hospital made a full recovery.
Diplomatic sources say they believe that guerillas from the Uganda’s Lord's Resistance Army who were terrorizing large areas of northern Congo are getting airdrops of supplies to keep their rebellion going. They say suspicion points at flights from Sudan. A spokesman for the rebels denied the allegations, saying they were designed to frustrate attempts to resume a peace process.
Polls have closed after the second and decisive round of the presidential election in Slovakia. The first results suggest the incumbent IvanGašparovič has won a convincing victory with more than 55% of the vote. His center-right challenger Iveta Radičova is more than 10% behind. Mr. Gašparovič is backed by the 2 main parties in the governing coalition, the Social Democrats and the Nationalists. The position of president is largely ceremonial in Slovakia.(www.hXen.com)
BBC News.
on a temporary basis :something that's not going to last long.
manhole: a hole (usually with a flush cover) through which a person can gain access to an underground structure
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