BBC news 2010-12-06 加文本

BBC news 2010-12-06

BBC News with Kathy Clugston

The former South African leader Thabo Mbeki has spent a day in Ivory Coast meeting the two men who are claiming to have won the country's presidency after a disputed election. He met the incumbent Laurent Gbagbo at the presidential palace before leaving for talks with Mr Gbagbo's rival Alassane Ouattara at the hotel where he's being protected by United Nations troops. From Abidjan, John James reports.

Thabo Mbeki was guarded in his comments after meeting with Laurent Gbagbo at the presidential residence. The opulent surroundings of the state house were as clear a sign as any that Mr Gbagbo is still very much the man in charge in Abidjan, backed by the army, police and state television. Mr Mbeki said he'd only comment when he finishes a round of visits that started with the head of the United Nations mission, Young Jin-choi, and will continue with the heads of the Constitutional Council and the Independent Electoral Commission. The council said Mr Gbagbo won last weekend's presidential election, overturning an earlier announcement by the head of the commission that Mr Ouattara had won.

Some of the latest classified diplomatic documents released by the website Wikileaks reveal American concern about the ease with which militant Islamic groups raise money in the Middle East. Wikileaks has published a secret memo from the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Mike Wooldridge reports.

It's been an ongoing challenge, the cable sent by Hillary Clinton says, to persuade Saudi officials to treat terrorist financing emanating from Saudi Arabia as a strategic priority. It acknowledges that the Saudis have begun to make important progress on the issue, but, it goes on, still donors in Saudi Arabia constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide. The Clinton memo suggests that the greatest challenge in policing the transfer of money to militant groups occurs during the Hajj and Umrah pilgrimages.

The United States says Iran's announcement that it's using domestically produced uranium for processing into nuclear fuel calls into further question Iran's controversial nuclear programme. The US National Security Council spokesman Mike Hammer told the BBC the Iranian move raised additional concerns. On Monday, Iran is due to attend a new round of international talks over its nuclear programme after a gap of more than a year.

A member of the British parliament, Mike Hancock, has given complete backing to one of his researchers after she was arrested on suspicion of being a Russian spy. Mr Hancock said he'd seen no evidence to support the allegation against Katia Zatuliveter, who's a Russian national. The Liberal Democrat MP sits on the defence committee in parliament, but he insisted the material he handled wasn't sensitive.

"The papers are not marked secret, and they go to, you know, Defence Select Committee papers have been leaked to newspapers before now, and I've never read anything in a Defence Select Committee paper or report which was worth anyone believing they had something that they couldn't get from another source."

World News from the BBC

Egypt has held a second round of parliamentary elections a week after a first round that was marked by allegations of widespread fraud. From Cairo, Jon Leyne.

With most opposition candidates boycotting, the second round of voting seems to have gone much more smoothly than the first. Most of the run-off votes were between rival candidates from the ruling party of President Mubarak. It's not clear yet what the turnout was, but it's widely expected to be very low. Many Egyptians have long since lost faith in the democratic process. An overwhelming victory for the ruling party is already assured. The question now is what this result means for the presidential election next year, in which President Mubarak will either stand for re-election, aged 83, or look to install a successor.

Shipping officials in Bangladesh say a vessel sailing under their flag has been hijacked by pirates off southern India. They say the ship was attacked after a long pursuit by suspected Somali pirates near the Lakshadweep group of islands, 200-300km from the Indian coast.

A rocket carrying three Russian satellites has crashed into the Pacific Ocean. The Proton-M strayed off course after being launched from Kazakhstan. Iain MacKenzie reports.

The rocket took off from the Baikonur cosmodrome on Sunday but crashed into the Pacific Ocean, around 1,500km northwest of Hawaii. Its cargo was three Glonass-M navigation satellites, each weighing 1.4 tonnes. They were intended as replacements for the Glonass global positioning system, a network of 24 satellites providing location information, similar to the US-run GPS network.

Police in Italy have arrested a Moroccan man after a car ploughed into a group of amateur cyclists, killing seven of them and injuring others. The accident happened in Calabria in southern Italy. Police say the car was going too fast and was overtaking when it hit the cyclists head-on.

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