CNN 2011-04-26

Hey there, everyone, happy Monday and thanks for turning in the CNN Student News. I'm Ben Tinker, filling in today for Carl Azuz who's got today off. As we kick off this last week of April, we are going to get things started today, in the Middle East.

There is a deal being discussed in the nation of Yemen that would remove that country’s president from power.That something protesters have been pushing for for weeks. They have been marching through the streets, demonstrating and in several cases, those demonstrations 1 have turned violent with fighting between protesters and security forces. The protests are centered around this man, President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who’s been in power for more than 30 years. This deal, which is put together by a group of countries in that region, says that President Saleh has to step down within thirty days. It also gives him and anyone who served his government complete immunity 2 from prosecution 3. Thousands of Yemeni people are angry at the deal, especially because it offers immunity to Saleh. They also want him to step down immediately but as if Sunday afternoon, president Saleh had not signed the deal and government representatives insist he won't unless the opposition 4 groups agree to it.

From Yemen, we move west to North African country of Libya and the city of Misrata. The battle to control that city has gone on now for 7 weeks. Hundreds of people have been killed in the fighting between Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s forces and the rebels who want him out of power. Over the weekend Libyan officials said they stopped their operations in Misrata, but a rebel spokesman calls that a flat-out lie. CNN senior international correspondent Nick Roberson who’s been covering the conflict in Libya explains how we’ve got to this point and what some of the potential outcomes might be.

Well, Libyans have Muammar Gaddafi leading the country for almost 42 years and there’s been a push to see democratic change there. Although Libya is on Tunisia’s borders and the revolution in Tunisia really sort of came to its initial conclusion with the oust 5 of President Ben Ali who took exile in Saudi Arabia. That really sparked the revolution that dental place in Egypt on the other side of Libya. So really it was these two events on both sides of Libya that then gave the confidence to the opposition.

People want democracy and people want the chance now to choose their own political leaders, to have political parties in some cases, to have a voice in their own futures 6.

They went from being a sort of unarmed civilians 7 against government situation that we saw in Tunisia and in Egypt into more even armed rebel revolt against the government which is where it is today. You have the rebels in Benghazi. In the east you have Gaddafi and he ceded 8 power and with the support of a lot of the principle tribes in the country. In Tripoli and you have a siege around the town of Misrata where rebels are surrounded by government forces and are being shelled.

It’s reaching a stalemate of sorts ,but behind the scene, there are political back-channel talks that are going on. The Foreign Minister who's talked about possibility of an interim 9 solution, being an interim government to last for six months before elections.But at the same time Britain France and Italy are talking about sending advisors 10 for the rebels which potentially will stiffen 11 positions, stiffen the Libyan government’s position and make it harder to potentially to reach any kind of deal.

Two potential futures, one is that there is a ceasefire troops on the ground to monitor a ceasefire, an interim government and ultimately elections. There’s been a lot of blood-led in so far. It’s gonna be hard to ,sort of ,walk away from this situation right now without further bloodshed. The other scenario is that the both sides dig in deeper refuse to negotiation ,and that becomes a much wider spread civil war in the country