BBC news 2011-03-25 加文本

BBC news 2011-03-25

BBC News with Fiona MacDonald

The West African regional body Ecowas has called on the United Nations Security Council to strengthen the mandate of UN peacekeepers in Ivory Coast. Ecowas said the UN soldiers should be authorised to use all necessary means to ensure power was transferred to Alassane Ouattara, the man widely recognised as the winner of last year's presidential election. John James is in Bouake.

Leaders in the region are getting increasingly frustrated at Laurent Gbagbo's refusal to step down despite calls by the Ecowas region, by the African Union and many other bodies that have looked into the election. And really many people fear now that force is the last resort and the only resort to get Laurent Gbagbo to leave power, especially given the prospect of a civil war which seems to be happening on the ground here. A lot of violence is in Abidjan, which is the main city, and there we've seen urban fighting between fighters loyal to both sides, and also attacks on civilians, the shelling of civilian areas.

Syrian television reports say that President Assad has ordered the release of all people detained during recent unrest. The move came soon after the Syrian government said it would examine ways to meet the legitimate demands of people in the city of Deraa, where at least 25 protesters were shot dead by security forces on Wednesday. Lina Sinjab reports from Damascus.

The announcement came as a surprise to many observers here. Political activists were not expecting a revision of state emergency laws that have been in effect since 1963. Soon after the press conference, some political activists who were arrested in recent days were released. The president's adviser confessed that mistakes were made in Deraa, but said they weren't the responsibility of the leadership. She denied reports that security forces attacked protesters in the city.

The United Nations human rights committee says it believes hundreds of people have disappeared in Libya over the past few months in what may amount to crimes against humanity. The committee said it had received credible reports of demonstrators and army members who refused to fire on crowds being detained. Imogen Foulkes reports from Geneva.

In the last two to three months, the committee says the number of reported disappearances has increased enormously and now stands in the hundreds. In most cases, the fate of the disappeared, many of whom were reportedly opponents of the Libyan government or members of the armed forces who refused to fire on protesters, remains unknown. But the UN fears they may have been tortured or even executed.

Libyan state television meanwhile has been showing footage of what it says are funerals of those killed in coalition air raids.

The former Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma has been charged with abuse of power over the murder of the investigative journalist Georgiy Gongadze. The journalist's headless body was found 11 years ago in a forest outside Kiev. Mr Kuchma denies involvement.

World News from the BBC

The British energy company BP has again been blocked from proceeding with a proposed joint venture with the Russian company Rosneft. An arbitration tribunal in Sweden has upheld a freeze on the tie-up that would have seen the two companies jointly develop new oil fields in the Russian Arctic region. Russian investors said they should have been consulted on the deal with the state-owned Rosneft.

A European Union summit is taking place in Brussels a day after the collapse of the Portuguese government raised the prospect of another crisis within the eurozone. Leaders will consider how to expand bailout funding for countries using the euro that get into financial difficulties. Here's Andrew Walker.

The summit was supposed to rubber-stamp a package of measures to settle the tension affecting the euro area, but developments in Portugal have cast a shadow. The government has been struggling to gain control of its own financial situation, but now parliament has voted against austerity proposals, the government has resigned and a leading credit rating agency has downgraded its assessment of the government's debt. It'll now be even harder for Portugal to avoid the path taken by Ireland and Greece with emergency loans from Europe and the IMF.

Many of Mexico's leading media organisations have agreed common guidelines on how to cover the drug-related violence that's sweeping the country. Newspapers and broadcasters agreed not to glorify drug traffickers, publish cartel propaganda or endanger police and military operations. The accord promises joint action to protect journalists, at least 20 of whom have been killed by the cartels since 2006.

The aviation authorities in the United States are investigating whether an air traffic controller fell asleep at Reagan National Airport near Washington as two planes attempted to land. One pilot said he made several attempts to contact the only controller on duty and had to abort his landing during the final approach. Both jets eventually landed safely.

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