Cairo/Tripoli, February 18
Libyan security forces were expecting violent demonstrations today, a day after an estimated 45 persons were killed in clashes across the country.

Online postings by opposition groups called for demonstrations against the country's ruler of 41 years, Muammer Gaddafi, to start after Friday prayers. Violent clashes erupted between demonstrators and security forces across the country yesterday in what opposition organisers had billed as a “Day of Anger”.

Videos posted online appeared to show the bodies of several young men in different locations, and hundreds of demonstrators tearing down a monument in honour of Gaddafi's Green Book in the eastern coastal town of Tobruk. In the Green Book, first published in 1975, Gaddafi outlines his philosophy of direct democracy through popular committees. Critics say that he actually uses those committees for political repression.

Coverage of the unrest in the Libyan media has shown pro-government demonstrators taking to the streets to proclaim their support for the country's leaders. — DPA

Bahrain, February 18
Thousands of mourners called for the downfall of Bahrain's ruling monarchy as burials began today after a deadly assault on pro-reform protesters that has brought the army tanks into the streets of one of the most strategic Western allies in the Gulf.

The cries against Bahrain's king and his inner circle reflect an escalation of the demands from a political uprising that began just with calls to weaken the Sunni monarchy's hold on top government posts and address claims of discrimination against the Shiite majority in the tiny island nation. The mood, however, appears to have turned toward defiance of the entire ruling system, after the brutal attack yesterday on a protest encampment in Bahrain's capital Manama, which left at least five dead and more than 230 injured.

“The regime has broken something inside of me ... All of these people gathered today have had something broken in them,” said Ahmed Makki Abu Taki, whose 23-year-old brother Mahmoud was killed in the pre-dawn sweep through the protest camp in Manama's Pearl Square. “We used to demand that the Prime Minister should step down, but now our demand is the ruling family to get out.” Outside a village mosque, several thousands mourners gathered to bury three men killed in the crackdown. The first body, covered in black velvet, was passed hand to hand toward a grave as it was being dug. — AP

Beijing, February 18
China is developing a new type of conventional missile with a range of 4,000 km, which can engage targets in land, sea, air, space and tackle cybernetic attacks “greatly enhancing” the capability of the Chinese military, official media here reported today.

The China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation (CASIC), the nation's largest missile weaponry manufacturer, is set “to complete research, production and delivery of this new generation of missile by 2015,” state run 'Global Times' said. The new missile will be a part of a network forming a solid defence system, which can be used for attack as well as defence and capable of dealing with various threats from land, sea, air, space as well as cybernetic attacks, the report said.

“The subject under development is a medium-and long-range conventional missile with a travelling distance of as far as 4,000 km,” it quoted an unnamed military official involved in the development of the missile as saying. — PTI

Islamabad, February 18
The Pakistan government is exploring a possible “blood money deal” between American official Raymond Davis, arrested for double murder in Lahore, and relatives of the victims for ending the tense standoff with the US.

Finding itself on a sticky wicket on the issue of freeing Davis (37), the government is looking at a face-saving option, under which the relatives of the two men killed by the American agree to withdraw charges in exchange for money to be paid by Davis. Davis, who was arrested on January 27, after he shot two men he claimed were trying to rob him, may have to spend at least three more weeks in the custody with a Pakistani court yesterday putting off till March 14 the case to decide his diplomatic status.

The police has rejected his claim that he was acting in a self-defence and charged him with murder. The government had planned to provide details about the diplomatic status of Davis during the hearing of petitions seeking his prosecution by the Lahore High Court, but dropped the move after former Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi's assertion that the accused is not entitled to “blanket immunity”, official sources said.

The government yesterday sought three weeks to inform the high court about Davis' status, following which the case was put off till March 14. At the same time, the Prime Minister has raised the possibility of “blood money” to settle the case under Islamic and Pakistani laws. Gilani made references to such a settlement during his speech to a gathering of Islamic scholars and clerics and also his meeting with US Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman John Kerry on Wednesday.

The Premier told Kerry, who was sent to Pakistan by the Obama Administration to calm tensions over the diplomatic row, that the “expression of remorse and regret by the US over the loss of lives as well as the option of benefiting from the Qisas and Diyat Law (which was part of the Pakistan Penal Code) should be considered to cool down the rising temperatures in bilateral relations.” — PTI