BBC news 2010-10-31 加文本

BBC news 2010-10-31

BBC News with Jonathan Wheatley

The authorities in Yemen say they've arrested a woman in the capital Sanaa in connection with two parcel bombs discovered in air freight consignments in Dubai and Britain on Friday. The arrest follows the seizure in Yemen of more than 20 suspected packages. Here is our Middle East correspondent Jon Leyne.

The Yemeni authorities moved quickly to mount a major security operation. Large numbers of police and soldiers were on the streets of the capital Sanaa. A further 26 suspicious packages came under investigation. Then later in the day it was announced that they'd surrounded the house of a woman suspected of sending the two parcel bombs. She was soon arrested along with her mother. It's most unlikely this was the work of one person working alone. Further investigations in Yemen are likely to focus on the group al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. US officials are said to be pleasantly surprised at the speed and seriousness of the Yemeni response.

King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia has invited all Iraq's political leaders for talks in Riyadh to try to resolve their seven-month deadlock in forming a new government. The Saudi news agency said the king will host the talks after the end of the Hajj pilgrimage in two weeks. Magdi Abdelhadi now reports.

In a letter addressed to Iraqi politicians, King Abdullah said everyone knew that Iraq was at a crossroads and that political leaders must make all possible efforts to surmount their differences and extinguish the flames of sectarianism. The Saudi initiative reflects renewed Arab fears over the growing influence of Iran inside Iraq. But the Saudis are likely to face huge obstacles. Despite the conciliatory language used by King Abdullah, Iraq's Shia majority will be wary of the Saudis, who are known for the historic hostility towards the Shias.

The Afghan President Hamid Karzai has sharply criticised the presence of Russian agents on a high-profile drugs raid on Thursday organised by Afghan and Nato forces. American and Russian officials said four drug processing labouratories in Nangarhar province were destroyed in their first coordinated operation in Afghanistan, but Mr Karzai said he hadn't been informed of the Russian participation, a very sensitive issue in Afghanistan ever since the Soviet intervention there 30 years ago. Quentin Sommerville reports from Kabul.

The operation in eastern Afghanistan involved around 70 troops and armed drug enforcement agents. Afghanistan's elite counter-narcotics force, which relies heavily on foreign training, did participate in the operation, but it appears that the president's office wasn't informed of the details of who would be involved in the raid. The country's interior ministry said it thought only Russian observers rather than armed Russian anti-drug agents were taking part.

The Prime Minister of Ivory Coast Guillaume Soro has said everything is in place for a safe and fair presidential election on Sunday. Mr Soro said all candidates must accept the result of the poll, the first in 10 years.

World News from the BBC

The shipping company responsible for 13 containers found inside Lagos port in Nigeria to contain illegal arms say they have originated in Iran. The French company said the containers had been supplied to it already loaded and sealed with documents describing the contents as building materials. There is no indication who owns the arms, nor which group or country was intended as their final destination.

The American Secretary of State Hillary Clinton says that the Chinese foreign minister told her Beijing had no intention of withholding rare earth metals from the world market, but she said it was still important to find new sources of these minerals.

"The United States are going to be looking for more resources and looking for more sources of these rare earth minerals. So although we are pleased by the clarification we received from the Chinese government, we still think that the world as a whole needs to find alternatives and to find new sources, which we will be pursuing."

China is the main exporter of the valuable minerals which are needed to make a range of high-tech products from mobile phones to guided missiles.

Many people are feared dead after a boat capsized off the coast of India. The fishing boat was ferrying about 200 passengers in waters close to West Bengal. Local officials said about 40 people had to be rescued.

Immigration officials in southern Thailand have detained more than 60 Tamils from Sri Lanka, who are suspected of being illegal migrants heading for the West, possibly to Canada. The Canadian authorities have been working actively with transit countries to pre-empt people smugglers.

And Turkey has lifted a ban on the video-sharing website YouTube that was imposed more than two years ago after videos deemed insulting to the country's founder, Kemal Ataturk, were posted on that site. Turkish officials said the offending videos were no longer there.

BBC News