BBC news 2011-05-25 加文本

BBC news 2011-05-25

BBC News with David Legge

The Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he's ready to compromise to achieve peace with the Palestinians, but he told a joint session of the US Congress in Washington that a future Palestinian state would not see a return to the borders that existed before the 1967 Middle East war. Our Middle East editor Jeremy Bowen reports.

Mr Netanyahu declared he would make painful compromises for a peace with the Palestinians, but his speech shows that the gulf between his view of an acceptable peace deal and that of the Palestinians is as wide as ever. Mr Netanyahu declared that Israel would never allow Jerusalem to be divided. The Palestinians want a capital in the city's eastern half. He demanded a continuing Israeli military presence along what would become an independent Palestine's border with Jordan. The Palestinians want to control their own borders. And to more applause, he said that while Israel was prepared to make territorial compromises, it still had historical rights to the territory the Palestinians want for their state in the West Bank, which Israelis often call Judea and Samaria.

"I recognise that in a genuine peace we'll be required to give up parts of the ancestral Jewish homeland. And you have to understand this, in Judea and Samaria, the Jewish people are not foreign occupiers."

The United Nations nuclear watchdog, the IAEA, says it's very likely that a remote site in Syria that was bombed by Israel four years ago housed a nuclear reactor. It's the first time the agency has made such an assessment since it began investigating. Syria has denied Israeli and US allegations that it was building a covert nuclear reactor.

Officials in Egypt say the former President Hosni Mubarak and his sons will face trial for the murder of protesters during the uprising which ousted him from power in February. They are also to be tried for corruption. Human rights groups say hundreds of people were killed during the protests. From Cairo, here's Jon Leyne.

Once again, Egypt's military rulers have responded to growing pressure from the opposition by announcing new and tougher measures against the former president and his family. This appears to be a clear attempt to defuse a major opposition protest planned for Friday. The former president is accused of corruptly acquiring a palace and four villas in the resort of Sharm el-Sheikh. Hosni Mubarak and a businessman who's since fled the country are also accused of corruptly selling cut-price gas to Israel, losing Egypt millions of dollars in potential revenue.

The World Bank has announced an extra $6bn of aid to Egypt and Tunisia to help modernise their economies after the uprisings which toppled the veteran leaders Hosni Mubarak and Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. The World Bank said the money would sustain the momentum of change but only if coupled with real reform. The announcement comes ahead of this week's G8 summit.

World News from the BBC

President Obama and his wife Michelle are attending a banquet given by Queen Elizabeth on the latest stage of his state visit to Britain. One hundred and seventy guests have been invited to the dinner at Buckingham Palace. Our correspondent Peter Hunt has followed the rest of the American president's engagements which included several of London's famous sites.

After lunch, Barack and Michelle Obama went to Westminster Abbey. The president laid a wreath on the Grave of the Unknown Warrior. He also visited a secondary school with the Prime Minister David Cameron. They played table tennis with some teenagers; the two leaders lost. And tomorrow, the focus will shift to Downing Street and talks on a range of issues, including Afghanistan and Libya. By then, the pomp will have been replaced by politics.

Airlines have cancelled 500 flights in Scotland and northern England as a plume of volcanic ash spreads from Iceland. The International Air Transport Association criticised the British authorities for lacking test aircraft to monitor the cloud. The Irish airline Ryanair said there was no high-density ash over Scotland and accused Britain's Civil Aviation Authority of incompetence. Jonathan Astill from the air traffic control company Nats says conditions should improve in the next 12 hours.

"The higher-density volcanic ash clouds will continue to sit over the north of England, and then as we go through into the early hours of the morning, that ash cloud will start to disperse into the North Sea. And so tomorrow, provided the forecast holds true and the volcano doesn't get even more active, we're looking like a slightly better situation."

Police in Somalia say they've arrested six foreigners who were carrying more than $3.5m in cash. A police officer told the BBC that the foreigners arrived at an airport in the capital Mogadishu on board two private planes from Kenya. The officer said the group included British citizens, Kenyans and an American.

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