North Korea Announces No Change in Policy Towards South Korea; Update in the Middle East
ANDERSON: A very warm welcome back. It's just about half past 9:00 in London. You're watching CONNECT THE WORLD on CNN. Let's get you a check of the world headlines at this point. In a massive display of defiance in Syria huge crowds took to the streets across the country as the Arab League presses ahead with an observer mission there. Their president hasn't stopped the violence. Activists say at least 35 people were killed on Friday. Four people are reported dead and three wounded in Nigeria's latest violence. An explosion and gunfire rocked a mosque in part of the country. This comes after more than 40 people were killed in Christmas bombings and shootings blamed on the Bacaram (ph) Islamist sect. Turkey's prime minister is expressing his regrets over an airstrike that killed 35 Kurdish villagers. He says the area where they died was constantly being used by terrorists. Turkey's been on the offensive against separatists based in northern Iraq. And it appears a new leader in North Korea will not bring any immediate changes in policy towards the South. A day after Kim Yong Il--sorry, a day after Kim Yong Eun assumed the rule of Supreme Leader, the state run news agencies in Pyongyang will have no dealings with South Korea's president. Well, as Libya moves out of the shadows of decades of dictatorship, al Qaeda could be creeping in. That is at least according to a Libyan source, who says the terrorist network is mobilizing hundreds of fighters in Eastern Libya. Now that source says al Qaeda's leader Ayman al-Zawahiri personally dispatched at least one of the jihadists earlier this year as Moammar Gadhafi's regime lost control of parts of the country. CNN's senior international correspondent Nic Robertson has the story. And he's with me now. Nic, what do we know at this point?</s>NIC ROBERTSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, what al Qaeda is trying to do here is take advantage of the chaos that the Arab spring has caused. As we know in Libya, there is no strong government in place right now. And al Qaeda for a long time has wanted to gain a stronger foothold in the north of Africa. From the east of Libya, we know that a lot of jihadists have come from there. A lot of them went to Iraq and joined al Qaeda and Iraq. And what Ayman al-Zawahiri, the new leader of al Qaeda did in May this year, was to turn two top lieutenants to Libya to set up a camp. One of them was arrested in Europe on the way there. The other one is a guy that has been loyal to him and friendly to him since the 1980s. This is somebody he trusts implicitly. This is somebody we know to be somebody who will go after U.S. interests, who will pull out al Qaeda's global ideology, and somebody who also has a very ruthless outlook, even by al Qaeda's own standards.</s>ANDERSON: This is fascinating stuff. So what you're saying is this is an incredibly radicalized man. What else do we know about him? And where is he at this point? Do we know?</s>ROBERTSON: He's in the east of Libya. He has about 200 fighters under his command. In the early 1990s, he was training in and fighting against the Soviet backed Afghan government, training in mujahedeen camps in Afghanistan. He came to England in the mid 1990s. In the early 2000s, he was known to be radicalizing young men in a garage in Manchester, talking to them about Abumasawel Zarqawi (ph), remember him? He was the al Qaeda leader in Iraq, ruthless, beheaded people. So this was one of his sort of hero figures, if you will. And this is who is telling young boys to emulate and go to Iraq and join the fight. He also spent time in jail here. And the authorities wanted to keep him locked up for longer, but then UFA (ph) put in evidence the information the intelligence information they had against him. It would destroy their sources.</s>ANDERSON: Nic, on a--just pause for one moment, because I want to get our viewers to just have a quick look back at some of the coverage, which I think is important tonight and from Libya. This clip I want to show you. Really goes to show the potentially dangerous mix here of what is an al Qaeda recruiting force potentially in the country and what they may have access to. This is what CNN's Ben Wedeman encountered with a Human Rights Watch team in September. Have a look at this, and then we're going to chat.</s>BEN WEDEMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The empty boxes are scattered over the floor in a Tripoli warehouse. Their deadly contents gone. This packing list from a single box, written in Russian and English, describes the goods as "9M342". That's the Russian designation for the Igla-es (ph) surface to air missile. This box contained two missiles and four power sources. The Igla-es (ph) can shoot down a plane flying as high as 11,000 feet. It's the Russian equivalent of the U.S. made Stinger missile. Peter Bouckaert of Human Rights Watch has been tracking these weapons in Libya for months.</s>PETER BOUCKAERT, EMERGENCIES DIR., HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: In every city, we arrive. And the first thing to disappear are the surface to air missiles. We're talking about some 20,000 missing surface to air missiles in all of Libya. And I've seen cars packed with them.</s>WEDEMAN: If Bouckaert's assessment is accurate, thousands of surface to air missiles could be on the loose. American officials worry they might end up with Iran's al Qaeda or other terrorist groups.</s>BOUCKAERT: They could turn all of North Africa into a no fly zone.</s>ANDERSON: Thousands of surface to air missiles could be, well, in rogue hands in Libya. Nic, your thoughts?</s>ROBERTSON: It could be a worst-case scenario. It could be the perfect storm. Al Qaeda gets his hands on a trove of weapons. Those weapons are out there. The fact that there are 200 fighters that are loyal to a man who has a very radical agenda, and these weapons are out there, that there is no strong central government. In fact, the antithesis of a strong central government. In fact, the country seems to be going from bad to worse, al Qaeda will exploit this. It will exploit this to maintain and strengthen its foothold not only in Libya, but across North Africa. We were talking about al Qaeda-related groups attacks in Nigeria, just to the south of there. It's not so far away. And as well, using it as a base to attack Europe and U.S. interests elsewhere.</s>ANDERSON: Nic Robertson with you this evening has spent, well, probably more weeks than he was there wish to remember in Libya last year, and indeed, across the Middle East and North African region. Nic, we thank you very much indeed, sir, for joining us this evening. What a fascinating story. You're watching CONNECT WORLD here on CNN. Still to come on tonight's show, how the horror unfolded in Japan. I want to take you back to one of the defining moments of 2011. Stay there.