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>> and now, "bbc world news america." >> the most wanted man in europe appears in court in serbia after more than 15 years on the run. he could face trial for genocide. despite tensions, southern sudan's president says there will not be a war with the north. welcome to bbc news broadcast to our viewers on pbs in america and around the globe. coming up later for you sliding towards civil war. yemen, foreign governments warn their citizens to get out. claims and counterclaims. corruption allegations take a new twist.

welcome once again. most wanted man in europe who has been on the run for 16 years, the former bosnia military commander appeared at a and hearing following his arrest on charges of genocide. the court judged him to be in poor health. doctors will decide on friday whether or not to resume the hearing. he is accused of orchestrating the killing of thousands. our special correspondent has the story. >> he was fanatical and mersless. for three and a half years in the early 1990's his mens watched down the barrels of their guns.

targets, easy to select. 12,000 died in the bombing and the sniping. he commanded the men who did it. once serb leaders protected him. today the impunity that granted him evaporated. i announce that today we arrested him. >> his forces thought to establish an ethnicly pure serbian state. hundreds of thousands were excelled from their homes. it came to be known as ethnic cleansing. he was there in person to reassure the terrified muslim population that they were safe. they were not. 8,000 muslim men and boys were murdered in the space of a few days. >> here was a bombastic thug who had no sense of the rules

of warfare. and if he did, he ignored them. >> 18 months ago i went back there and they were still finding and burying the dead. closed to a thousand died in a hail of gunfire in this warehouse. >> the men who pulled the triggers stood right here a few feet away. >> the prosecution in the hague will have to prove that they were acting on his direct commission. the survivors struggled and the women left behind, there is no doubt. but their satisfaction to the arrest is tempted by anger that it has taken so long. >> i am not that happy. i was disappointed so many times by the work of the hague tribunal. serbia protected him for so long. he enjoyed life for so long. he was supposed to have been arrested years ago. i feel a small satisfaction in my soul.

this is proof that this type of crime never gets old and that the perpetrators will face justice. >> for many serbs he remains a folk hero. this is the village where he was found today. tonight his lawyer claimed that he was seriously ill with an unknown condition and not well enough even to undergo questioning. but for the serbian government the arrest of this broken and defeated old man is a signal to the world that serbia is normalizing, in its anxious progress to the european mainstream it is at last turning the page on all that he stood for. >> the question is what happens next. professor david crane with the chief prosecutor for an

international war crimes tribunal. professor, let's assume that he will be extradited to the hague. he was accused many, many years ago. how quickly can the court set itself in motion? how quickly can this trial begin? >> it has to follow their rules and procedures of evidence. the key is that he will be given every right that is necessary under law to ensure that the trial moves forward fairly and openly. the procedure will be that it will move briskly forward to start the trial. >> well, back in the late 1990's, a deputy commander in the serb army, that same court found him guilty of gwen sigh. he got more than 40-year jail sentence. what does that precedent mean?

>> again, we do not automatically assume facts or law. we go before a court to ensure that the evidence that is presented to that court is beyond a reasonable doubt. he will be tried. and then he will be judged. each case is done individually. certainly there is long-term juris prudence with war crimes. the judges will follow that to make sure that he is fairly judged openly. >> his lawyers said he does not recognize the authorities of the courts in the hague. that is surely not a point, that is a political point, isn't it? >> certainly. the bright red thread of his of his stuff is politics. and these individuals,

particularly the single individuals use this as political theatre. at the end of the day it is the law and the facts that will convict this individual. >> as the actual events of the massacre is not in dispute, is it a question of the courts trying to establish how responsible he was for that massacre? is that the main point? >> well, certainly we have to look at command responsibility. he was in command of the serbian forces resulting in war crimes and genocide. it is up to the prosecution to peruse each and every element of those crimes beyond a reasonable doubt. >> thank you very much indeed.

>> it is also claimed by the south. south sudan has become an independent nation this july. a peace deal in 2005 ended 22 years of civil war which one and a half million died. will grant reports. >> with their homes still burning, the residents of this village fled the growing violence. theirs is a story repeated across this disputed region. it is an oil rich area claimed by northern and southern sudan. inhabited by the people from the south and the north the tension in the area is escalating fast. last week northern tanks rolled in and swept aside a fledgling force from the south. coming weeks before southern sudan is due to declare their independence the president of the south said they will not

retaliate. >> we remain committed to peace. and if anybody thinks that they are going to retaliate by attacking anywhere in sudan, we are not going to do it. >> for his part the president is reiterating his uncompromising position that it belongs to the north and that his forces would not withdraw. so it is the local population which is caught between the violence and the fragile peacekeeping efforts. the u.n. says tens of thousands have been forced from their homes. >> since there are no local population residents in the town at the moment we can estimate that between 20,000 to 30,000 people are on the move. >> earlier in the week u.n. helicopters were fired on by suspected northern milishace. with the standoff showing no

signs of abating, united nations is now considering deploying thousands of peacekeeping troops to southern sudan after it suseed from the north in july. >> at least 30 have been killed in northwest pakistan. a suicide bomber was targeting government buildings. the pakistani taliban claimed responsibility for the attack. seven soldiers from the nato force in afghanistan died in a militant attack while on foot patrol in the south. they were killed by two roadside bombs. their nationalities won't be released until their families have been informed. british government ministers approved the deployment of apache helicopters in libya. they are expected to be sent

within the next few days. the french government already approved the use of 12 similar attack helicopters. that news emerged recently. >> this is a part of what david cameron calls turning up the heat on the gadhafi regime. they are faster to deploy, they can hit smaller targets in more urbanized areas and with less chance of civilian casualties. that is apparently the upside. the downside is that they are more liable to be targets themselves in a country which has thousands of ground to air missiles. they are known and feared by the taliban in afghanistan known by the name of the mosquito because of their lethal bite. there is a spin being put on that by downing street. it is not a desperate last attempt to break a stalemate

but portray the gadhafi regime asock the run, colnel gadhafi chasing from one hospital to another for safety and they hope this will deliver the final blow. >> in yemen brit andish u.s. government urged all of their nationals to leave the country immediately. the warning comes as the fighting escalates with a full-scale civil war seeming likely. the president has said that he will not step down from power despite appeals from the united states for a change of leadership. our security correspondent, frank gardner, reports on the latest developments. >> yemen is sliding towards open warfare. with dozens killed and wounded this week as the president's forces battling their opponents.

tonight the foreign office said it is pulling out all but essential staff and warned britains in yemen to get out while they can. >> we continue to support the departure of the president who has consistently agreed that he would be stepping down from power and then consistently reneged on those agreements. >> the president does not want to leave. he is warning of civil war and an al qaeda takeover if he goes now. his opponents say it could be civil war if he stays. it looked like a war zone today as they rushed to defend their leaders from the president's forces trying to arrest them. any type of mediation will not work. he is a liar. a liar.

a liar. and this is why the west is worried. al qaeda in yemen. the c.i.a. said it is now more dangerous than al qaeda in pakistan and it is look to exploit the current chaos. >> yemen is one of the country where is there are a huge number of people with small arms living next door to wealthy saudi arabiaians. there is a lot of risk for destabilization. >> if yemen can only find a way to secure the peaceful transfer of power the civil war that is being threatened may not materialize. it does risk becoming one. bbc news. >> this is bbc news. as fifa launches a corruption inquiry, bbc finds further details of wrongdoing. consumers in germany are being urged to avoid using cucumbers

and to. usually part of the recipe for good health, salad ingredients are off the menu for many germans. e. coli has been traced back to cucumbers that came from spain. it prompted urgent action. >> we have published these findings as an immediate warning. we are monitoring the cucumbers. we will remove them from the food chain when necessary. we ask the consumers not to eat them. >> dozens are in the hospital trying to fight off the disease. amid signs that the outbreak is spreading across the continent health workers are taking precautions. cases have been reported in other european countries

including sweden and denmark and britain. they have identified the extremely rare form of the e. coli virus. symptoms include waterery diarrhea, abdominal pain and in rare cases, a fever. while spanish salad is the means how it entered the food chain, how it got into the salad is unclear. >> it is difficult to say how long the epidemic will last. we can't exclude the source is still active or the possibility that more will come. >> many products have been removed from shelves in germany and the european union is monitoring the situation. meanwhile the spanish health ministry says an investigation will be carried out into the cause of the virus. >> this is bbc news.

headlines, a former bosnian serb military commander appeared at a and hearing following his arrest of charges of genocide. south sudan's leader says he will not lead his people into a conflict with the north over disputes regions. let's get more on our top story. indicted for war crimes but lived openly until he went into hiding in 2002. since then he has been protected by serb nationalists who still see him as a hero. to the rest of the world he is seen as the worst of the bosnian civil war. we look at the man and his reputation. short, stalky and immensely powerful. he was the kind of soldier who would not balk at anything, a man perhaps without a conscious.

he rose rapidly in the old yugoslav army because he was ruthlessly efficient. when yugoslavia broke up he was given the charge of creating the biz nian-serb army. the president, head in the clouds theoryist who sometimes seemed worried by the casualties from the war. he had no such doubts. >> he would consider himself to be the top man and therefore he would have said during the war everything that happens happens because i am making it happen. i find it very hard for him to say he was not in command when he was obviously in charge. he beat up a writer's correspondent and i watched him almost throttle a dutch reporter i was with.

his bodyguards would have killed us both if he gave the order. nobody on either side had any doubt at all about the responsibility for the major crimes carried out by the serbs was his. first was the siege, like something out of the middle ages. cut off supplies of fuel and food. in the heat of summer he cut off the water. they had to endure daily sniping and regular mortar attacks. but the chief accusation against him remains the massacre here. it was deliberate. carefully planned and yet completely pointless from any conceivable military point of view. >> he command the army.

he knew exactly what was going on. i would be very surprised if he is not found guilty of that crime amongst others. >> this was by far the worst series of war crimes in europe in 60 years. over time bodies have continued to emerge from the mass graves. it was an embarrassment that he stayed free for all of these years, given the long tally of the victims. john simpson, bbc news. >> now the recent increase in violence in iraq shows how instability threatens the country. now they have threatened to take up arms against american troops unless they leave by the end of the year. he has told the bbc he believes u.s. forces will not withdraw from iraq by january 2012.

on thursday tens of thousands of his supporters called for the americans to withdraw. >> the cleric's supporters were out in force. this is the shiite militia who fought a bitter sectarian war in the aftermath of the american invasion. today they sported a new uniform. they wore the colors of the iraqi flag, red, white and black. it was an attempt to turn a sectarian past into broader, nationalist appeal. the message said iraqi shi'ia or sunni against the americans. there were no weapons. but speaking to the bbc he made it clear that this was still a fighting force to be reckoned with. >> i know that the iraqi

government is under a lot of pressure from the american occupiers to allow them to stay on in iraq. if the americans do not withdraw we will reactivate the army. at the moment if the americans stay, that will change. we are still the resistance and we can still hit their bases, troops and equipment as long as they are in iraq. >> until january he spent most of the past few years in self imposed exile in iran, squeezed out by a combined u.s. and iraqi military effort. last year's election marked a turning point. his party did better than expected and now he is back with seats in parliament and a growing sense of confidence. americans still have nearly 50,000 troops in iraq and nervous of iran's growing influence they made it clear they would like to keep some of them in the country beyond the

end of this year. in order for that to happen they must be invited to stay by the iraqi government and he seems determined to portray himself as the man who pushed them out. >> the allegations of corruption within fifa have taken a new twist. the president of the asian football confederation is being investigated for bribery probes has calmed on fifa to investigate their own president. the bbc obtained an email that supports allegations made against the fifa vice president. >> this is one of the men at the center of fifa's latest corruption storm. vice president jack warner has been accused of bribery. now new evidence to support claims he asked for favors in supporting england's doomed

world cup bid. it is a number of claims made. >> he said the thing in his view would lift the spirits of the people was if they could see the world cup. >> according to david, warner wanted them to buy the rights to show 2010 world cup matches on giant screens as a jesture of support for the country after it was devastated by an earthquake. in the emails dated february 6th last year warner writes before the earthquake the owner of the rights charged them $1.6 million. i can get this figure reduced substantialally. he goes on to say if you believe you can assist them in any way by contributing in part or in whole to the purchase of these rights i am sure all of haiti will be eternally grateful. but fifa are the ultimate owners of outdoor viewing rights. and in a statement to the bbc the world's governing body said

to the best of our knowledge fifa hasn't had any public viewing license in haiti. it is my understanding that the email will be a key part of an inquiry into the allegations by the lawyers. with fifa already facing a wralingt of other claims against their most senior officials it could add to the pressure on the organization to reform. >> if they want to be taken seriously be exceptionally transparent about the evidence and make the right decision for futball and not just the short-term. >> he is asking for four more years as president. but it could take a lot longer than this to restore the governing body's reputation.

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