BBC news 2009-09-30 加文本

BBC 2009-09-30


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BBC News with Mary Small.

A powerful underwater earthquake has struck in the South Pacific between Samoa and American Samoa. A tsunami is reported to have hit a village and there is said to have been deaths, though details are still coming in. Phil Mercer reports from Sydney.

The US Geological Survey said the quake struck 35 kilometres below the ocean floor between American Samoa and Samoa. A tsunami alert has been issued for parts of the South Pacific including Fiji, Tonga and New Zealand, where authorities have warned people to stay off beaches. Waves in excess of 1.5 metres struck American Samoa, where residents were forced to flee to higher grounds. At least one village has been destroyed and there are reports of fatalities. Islanders said they felt a huge jolt and tremors that lasted for up to three minutes.

Relief workers trying to help hundreds of thousands of people affected by devastating floods in the Philippines say they are overwhelmed by the scale of what’s required. The Philippine government says about 250 people are known to have been killed.

In his first meeting with President Obama, the new NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen has promised that the North Atlantic Alliance will remain in Afghanistan as long as it takes to finish its task there. He said responsibility for the war there was shared, and he supported Mr. Obama’s decision to reassess his strategy before committing more troops.

"Our operation in Afghanistan is not America’s responsibility or burden alone. It is and it will remain a team effort. I agree with President Obama in his approach: strategy first, then resources. The first thing is not numbers, it is to find and fine-tune the right approach to implement the strategy."

Mr. Rasmussen’s comments come as President Obama begins a major review of his strategy in Afghanistan. 

A leading Guinean opposition figure Alpha Conde has told the BBC that there will be no retreat from the opposition’s demands that the military government step down. Speaking from New York, Mr. Conde, who heads the Rally of the People of Guinea party, said he would return to Guinea. On Monday, security forces opened fire on civilians during an opposition rally in the capital Conakry. Human rights activists say 157 people were killed. Our West Africa correspondent Caspar Leighton reports.

The full scale of the violence meted out on the people of Conakry has emerged as politicians and NGOs have counted the dead. But with reports that soldiers were taking some of the dead to army camps, the final figure may never be known. Over a thousand are reported wounded. Witnesses talk of people being rounded up, beaten and bayoneted. The population in Conakry for now remains in doors, too frightened to go out and face the security forces.

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Two days before multi-party talks in Geneva, Iran has said it won’t discuss what it calls its nuclear “rights” or uranium enrichment at a newly revealed plant in Qom. The head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization said uranium enrichment wouldn’t be suspended, a condition set by the United Nations Security Council, but he said that Iran would soon give the United Nations nuclear agency, the IAEA, a timetable to inspect the new plant.

Swiss diplomats have for the first time been allowed to visit three Americans detained in Iran. The two men and one woman have been held since the end of July, when they apparently strayed across the border while hiking in northern Iraq. Switzerland represents US interests in Iran as the US has no formal diplomatic relations with Iran.

The British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has given his last major speech to his Labour Party members ahead of a general election due next year. Opinion polls suggest Labour could be heading for a severe defeat and Mr. Brown tried to rally activists, telling them they could, as he put it, "change the world again".

"Our country faces the biggest choice for a generation, so we need to fight, not bow out, not walk away, not give in, not give up, but fight, fight to win for Britain."

Mr. Brown promised to abandon unpopular legislation introducing compulsory identity cards and he pledged a referendum on changing the British voting system. He strongly criticized the opposition conservatives, saying they’d embraced pessimism and austerity.

The Kenyan Foreign Minister Moses Wetangula has said that western diplomats should change the way they deal with his country. Mr. Wetangula told the BBC that diplomatic relations could not be meaningful if they were based on what he called a master-servant attitude. He was speaking after summoning the American ambassador in Nairobi, Michael Ranneberger, to express his displeasure about letters the US sent to Kenyan officials threatening them with sanctions if they continued to block reforms.

BBC News.