BBC news 2010-11-15 加文本

BBC news 2010-11-15

BBC News, this is Mike Cooper.

Burma's pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi has urged her supporters not to give up hope. She told them she would need help in bringing genuine democracy to Burma, something that one person could not do alone.

"This is what I've told them. I'm not going to be able to do this. You've got to do it with me. One person alone can't do anything as important as bringing genuine democracy."

Speaking at her party headquarters in Rangoon a day after her release from house arrest, she said freedom of speech was the basis of democracy. The BBC's World Affairs Editor John Simpson, who attended the news conference, said Aung San Suu Kyi sent a very clear message.

The press conference was one of the more chaotic, imaginable, people falling over, fighting each other, all through this, cut this calm, clear voice and the importance, as she sees it, of negotiation of keeping together of talking for the opposition to talk the same sort of language, and indeed, to talk to the government itself. Somebody said to her "What would be your message to the government?" And she said "I'd like to talk face to face."

The Israeli cabinet is considering whether to accept a new US incentive plan aimed at encouraging Israel to renew its settlement freeze in the West Bank. The US is proposing a construction freeze for 90 days which will exclude East Jerusalem. Wyre Davies has the details.

Some members of Benjamin Netanyahu's own Likud party and groups representing thousands of Jewish settlers have already rejected this plan to resume a building moratorium in settlements on the occupied West Bank. But the Israeli prime minister thinks he can muster enough support for the American proposals in his right-wing cabinet, because they include several attractive defence and security guarantees for Israel.

The Afghan President Hamid Karzai has said the time has come for the US to reduce military operations that disrupt daily life in the country. His comments put him at odds with the US commander General David Petraeus, as Quentin Sommerville reports from Kabul.

President Karzai wants American troops off the streets of Afghanistan and out of Afghan homes. In an interview with the Washington Post, he said that the time had come to reduce military operations and their intrusiveness into Afghan life. But the president acknowledged that an abrupt withdrawal would be dangerous, although he said the United States should start drawing down troop numbers next year. A surge of 30,000 troops has meant a dramatic increase in military operations in Afghanistan, and there's been a rise in the number of special forces missions in the country directed at removing mid- and senior-level commanders of the insurgency.

Meanwhile, insurgents in eastern Afghanistan have attacked a convoy of tankers carrying fuel for the Nato forces there. At least 12 were destroyed near the city of Jalalabad.

World News from the BBC

The head of the British armed forces, General Sir David Richards, has said al-Qaeda cannot be defeated. He told the BBC the real long-term weapons against al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan were education and democracy.

"The military are just about, you know, there. But the biggest problem has been ensuring that the governance and all the development side can keep up within a time frame, and these things take generations sometimes within a time frame that is acceptable to domestic, public and political opinion."

The French President Nicolas Sarkozy has re-appointed Francois Fillon as prime minister as part of a government reshuffle that had been widely expected. Hugh Schofield is in Paris with the details.

At one point, it seemed certain that the president would replace Francois Fillon as prime minister, but in the end, he's decided otherwise. Mr Fillon is a calm and steadying figure, whose popularity ratings regularly exceed those of the president, and Mr Sarkozy has clearly decided that he needs his reassuring presence at the helm. Other senior figures are on the way out, though, notably the Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, a Socialist who's recently expressed unease at some government policies, and Herve Morin at defence.

The annual Muslim pilgrimage, the hajj, has begun in Saudi Arabia. Several million Muslims from all around the world are making the five-day pilgrimage starting with a night in the temporary tent city in Mina, just outside Mecca. For the first time, a train service will help pilgrims cover the long distances between the holy sites.

The Philippine boxer Manny Pacquiao has beaten Antonio Margarito of Mexico to win a historic eighth world title in eight different weight categories. Pacquiao, who's also a congressman in the Philippines, won every round against his larger and heavier opponent.

BBC News