BBC news 2011-01-17 加文本

BBC news 2011-01-17

BBC News with David Austin

Security forces in Tunisia have been fighting a gun battle with suspected members of the presidential guard at the presidential palace, several kilometres north of the capital Tunis. The Tunisian Prime Minister Mohamed Ghannouchi told national television that there'd be zero tolerance for anybody who'd threatened the country's security following the overthrow of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali last Friday. Mr Ghannouchi has said a new coalition government could be announced on Monday. With more on the day's events, here's Wyre Davies.

It appears that small groups of armed men perhaps loyal to the former president are trying to disrupt this very slow process of change. All of this happening of course while the interim president has been trying to convene other interested political parties to form his government of national unity and hopefully pave the way for national elections, but it's not a smooth process. There have been attacks, not by the army - I think that's a crucial thing - the people perhaps who are, perhaps are to be more sinister as some of the security services that supported the former president.

The leader of the militant Lebanese group Hezbollah says his movement will reject any indictments from a UN tribunal that's investigating the murder in 2005 of the country's former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. In his first public comments since the Lebanese government collapsed last week, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah accused the tribunal of being highly politicised. From Beirut, here's Owen Bennett Jones.

Hassan Nasrallah said the indictments are targeting Hezbollah. In an hour-long TV address, he gave a highly detailed account of the negotiations that had taken place within the Lebanese government concerning the tribunal. In general terms, Hezbollah had asked the government to disassociate itself from the tribunal and to state it would not arrest those it indicted. When agreement proved impossible, Hassan Nasrallah said Hezbollah had decided to bring down the government using democratic means and had not taken to the streets. "We should be thanked," he said, "that we resigned in a constitutional way."

The President of southern Sudan, Salva Kiir, has urged his people to forgive the mainly Muslim north of Sudan for the killings that took place during the two-decade civil war. It was his first public announcement since voting ended in a week-long referendum on whether southern Sudan should become a separate state. James Copnall reports.

Salva Kiir asked for eternal peace for those who died in the war and forgiveness for those who caused their deaths. He was speaking from the pulpit in a Roman Catholic church in the southern capital Juba. The vast majority of the millions of people who died in two north-south civil wars were southerners. Mr Kiir's conciliatory remarks are significant as he's all but certain to become the leader of a new country. Many polling stations and Southern Sudanese in Europe have released results showing more than 95% chose independence.

World News from the BBC

India's environment ministry has ordered the demolition of an apartment building in an exclusive part of central Mumbai because it violates coastal protection laws. The 31-storey high rise was originally planned as a six-storey housing project for war widows, but apartments were sold to politicians and military officers allegedly at prices far below the prevailing market rate.

The Irish Prime Minister Brian Cowen has announced that he'll stay on as leader of the governing Fianna Fail party, despite pressure to resign over the financial crisis. He said his resignation wouldn't be in the country's best interests, but that a confidence motion on his leadership would be put to his party on Tuesday. The Irish Foreign Minister Micheal Martin, who's offered his resignation, says he'll vote against the prime minister as the party needed a new leader.

The new leader of the far-right National Front in France, Marine Le Pen, has promised to continue what she called the fight for France's sovereignty. After succeeding her father as leader at a party convention in the city of Tours, Marine Le Pen said politicians had let unbridled capitalism and the rights of minorities undermine French society.

"Who from now on can prevent the French from seeing what their cities have been transformed into? The corruption of our political classes and the super-rich who sell off the fruits of our work and the country's wealth? The surrender to the anti-libertarian demands of minorities who try and impose their values on us?"

A woman in Mauritania has been convicted of keeping two girls in slave-like conditions in a rare successful prosecution against the practice. The woman, a bank employee, was sentenced to six months in prison. The mothers of the two girls, aged 10 and 14, were given six-month suspended sentences. The court said the mothers had exploited their children by handing them over to the woman.

That's the BBC News.