BBC news 2011-09-02 加文本

BBC news 2011-09-02

BBC News with Kathy Clugston

Leaders from 63 countries have met the top officials in Libya's National Transitional Council to map out a future for the country. Speaking after the conference in Paris, the co-hosts - the British Prime Minister David Cameron and the French President Nicolas Sarkozy - said there was unanimous support to continue Nato air strikes for as long as Colonel Gaddafi remained a threat. Mr Cameron paid tribute to the conduct of the Libyan opposition.

"Some people warned, as Gaddafi himself did, that the Libyan people could not be trusted with freedom, that without Gaddafi there would be chaos. Some people thought that chaos would start the moment the regime fell. So what we are seeing emerging now in Libya, despite the years of repression and the trauma of recent days and months, is immensely impressive."

Mr Cameron said all countries had agreed to ask the United Nations for permission to unfreeze all Libyan assets. The UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said the top priority was to provide Libyans with medicine, fuel, food and water. The NTC president Mustafa Abdul Jalil said the people of Libya now had to seek reconciliation and forgiveness, and respect the rule of law.

A senior NTC official has told the BBC that tribal leaders in Colonel Gaddafi's hometown of Sirte will be given another week to persuade his troops to surrender. The NTC says that many prominent members of Gaddafi's government have been in contact to discuss handing themselves in. Paul Wood reports.

The rebels believe that Colonel Gaddafi is not in Sirte, and therefore they can afford to wait to take the town. Tribal leaders will have until 10 September to persuade the loyalist troops in Sirte to give up their weapons. In that time, the rebels will be keeping up the pressure. They intend to cut off the water and electricity to Sirte, and also crucially to advance closer to it.

In a new audio message, Colonel Gaddafi said he was ready for a long battle even if Libya burnt.

Syrian security forces are reported to have made many arrests in Hama in their search for a top legal official there who announced his resignation in a video posted on the Internet on Wednesday. The official, Adnan Bakkour, said he was resigning because of crimes against humanity by government forces, but the government has issued its own version of why he's speaking out, as Owen Bennett-Jones reports.

There are two entirely contradictory accounts of Mr Bakkour's current situation. The opposition says he broke ranks with the government on Monday and then issued a video statement in which he claimed, amongst other things, that there were hundreds of bodies in mass graves in the public parks in the city of Hama; but the official Syrian news agency insists that the attorney general's statement was made at gunpoint and has quoted his driver as saying seven terrorists with Kalashnikovs kidnapped him. In response, the attorney general posted a second video to say he was speaking freely.

World News from the BBC

Two former Kenyan ministers have appeared before the International Criminal Court in The Hague for hearings that will decide if they should stand trial for crimes against humanity. William Ruto and Henry Kosgey deny allegations that they incited violence that nearly killed 1,200 people after the disputed 2007 election.

Europe's human rights chief has accused European governments of complicity in what he called American crimes during the war on terror. With the details, here's Risto Pyykko.

Thomas Hammarberg, the human rights commissioner of the Council of Europe, describes the US war on terror as a systematic violation of human rights, and he says European governments were deeply complicit in this. They had cooperated in a programme of renditions that saw suspects being flown to third countries to be tortured and had then sought to conceal their participation. Mr Hammarberg said the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks should lead to an urgent rethink of a misjudged and failed counter-terrorism policy.

Health authorities in Guatemala say nearly twice as many unsuspecting Guatemalans were included in medical experiments carried out by US scientists in the 1940s than previously thought. The president of the Medical Association of Guatemala, Carlos Mejia, said up to 2,500 prisoners, psychiatric patients and orphans were deliberately infected with sexually transmitted diseases during penicillin studies. Doctor Mejia said the US ran the programme while German Nazi doctors were being tried for experimenting with typhus and malaria on prisoners of war.

Reports from several cities in China say the number of caesarean births rose sharply last week with many women aiming to have their babies before the annual cut-off day for school enrolment. One hospital said its caesarean deliveries were more than double the norm. Children who are six years old by the end of August can start school in September, but those with September birthdays have to wait another year.

BBC News