Mr Mitchell said negotiators would meet next week to prepare the next round of leadership talks.

World News from the BBC.

Election officials in Guinea say the second round of the presidential election due to be held on Sunday will be postponed. The officials, talking to journalists in Conakry, said they would meet on Thursday to decide a new date. The second round had been in doubt all week after days of clashes between rival supporters of the former Guinean Prime Minister Cellou Diallo and his opponent Alpha Conde.

A former senior member of the Tamil Tiger rebels in Sri Lanka has said he now believes their decades-long war against the government was “a waste of people’s lives”. Velayutham Dayanidhi told the BBC what the Tamil people wanted was education, and the war had little popular support. Mr Dayanidhi surrendered to Sri Lankan forces just before the civil war ended. He was released on bail a year ago and is now living in Jaffna, one of the Tamil Tiger’s former strongholds.

One of the drills being used to bore a hole to rescue 33 miners trapped underground in Chile has been brought back into use after it broke last Thursday. Part of the drill had broken off when it hit an obstruction. Gideon Long reports.

The engineers are digging two escape tunnels for the men, and plan to start on a third one soon. Work on the second of the tunnels is going particularly well. Rene Aguilar, one of the chief engineers at the site, said he expected the drill to reach the area where the miners are sheltering this weekend. Then the engineers will haul the drill up to the surface and start digging again to widen the shaft until it’s big enough to serve as an escape route. Aguilar said the team expected to rescue the men in early November.