there's no one way of telling the story keeping is telling right and to be respectful that's our desire is great to get to know the person for me to. this is al-jazeera. and this is the al-jazeera news hour live from london coming up 2 veteran diplomats testify in the 1st televised hearings as part of the impeachment investigation into president donald trump. our answer to these questions will affect not only the future of this presidency but the future of the presidency itself. the u.s. president said he was too busy to watch the impeachment hearings as he met his

turkish counterpart the 1st time since turkey's syria offensive. dozens are killed as israel launches further ass trikes on gaza more than 200 rockets are fired from gaza in response. and in sport big changes of football's arabian gulf cup which is to be hosted by katz author initially boycotting the events saudi arabia bahrain and the u.a.e. say they will now play in dark. is the 1st televised day of the us impeachment inquiry into president donald trump with both sides presenting opposing narrative democrats accuse trump of an abuse of power all republicans say it's a smear campaign 2 senior u.s. diplomats william taylor and george kent. center stage on capitol hill the

cross-examination by the house of representatives intelligence committee both men presented evidence condemning the president but house republican devon is described as fat chick will perform as the chair of the committee says the inquiry is simply about whether trump violated the presidential office to abuse of power as i mentioned the questions presented by this impeachment inquiry are whether president trump sought to exploit that allies vulnerability and invite ukraine's interference in our elections whether president trump sought to condition official acts such as a white house meeting or u.s. military assistance on ukraine's willingness to assist with 2 political investigations that would help his reelection campaign and if president trump did either whether such an abuse of his power is compatible with the office of the presidency the matter is as simple and as terrible as that

the democrats are not trying to discover facts they're trying to invent a narrative and if the facts that they need do not exist then they'll just make it up. what is your question is live from capitol hill in washington d.c. sort of what emerged from this so this 1st hearing what was the main takeaway. or we saw a very opposing readings of the same narrative now democrats selected these 1st 2 witnesses strategically we heard from the acting u.s. ambassador to ukraine bill taylor and a top official in ukraine at the u.s. start to the state department george kent and both of them told a compelling story about discovering the existence of what taylor called and in the new regular channel al taylor really is playing the role of a storyteller here and the democrats are trying to have the american public kind of put themselves in taylor shoes as as he discovered how this irregular channel

unfolded and test he testified today that the person behind this channel was trump's personal attorney rudy giuliani who was aided by a select group of trump's aides and taylor said that the goal of this year regular channel was to get a public statement from ukraine that it was going to launch investigations into trump's political writers and to get that taylor says that there were 2 things dangled as leverage towards the ukrainians one was a meeting for the newly elected ukrainian president to come to washington and meet with trump at the white house and secondly $400000000.00 worth of u.s. security aid that ukraine was expecting fact was counting on in taylor's testimony because that was going to continue to fund its defense against russian incursion and ambassador taylor said that this was dangerous that it was wrong to withhold

the aid for trump's political benefit because it in danger to u.s. national security it's all. objectives towards ukraine and that the only winners in all of this was russia and was trumps own political ambitions now democrats have the burden of proving that this happened and that it is wrong in their their witnesses today testified to those 2 points however republicans pointed to the great weakness that democrats have not yet proven that president trump himself ordered this to happen so far all the evidence has been against his personal attorney or his chief of staff and republicans made that clear by asking these witnesses who did you get this information from and taylor you know he said he said that he has not met with trump personally that he heard this from other people and it in fact that is what republicans are zeroing in on as the weakness in this

argument impeach the president so what do we expect next time and took us through the process and what happens after this 1st televised day of hearings. sure will today was a marathon but it was just the very beginning on friday is yet another public hearing we'll be hearing from the former u.s. ambassador to ukraine who was ousted for mysterious reasons and then next week there will be a slate of more witnesses there'll be more minor figures but they're expected to corroborate the key points that we've already learned from these more principal witnesses and then of course there is the bigger picture once these public hearings conclude expect house leadership democrats to call for a vote on impeachment all indicators are that they will vote to impeach the president they have the numbers to do so and then that is when the real suspense comes in because of as you know the trial of president would occur in the u.s.

senate which is controlled by republicans and at this point there are no republicans in the senate who have defected from their still very popular president . i do thank you very much indeed. let's take you straight now to the white house where expecting president donald trump and the turkish president recha top at one at to speak they've been having a meeting there the 1st time the 2 have met since the incursion from turkey into like you or whatever place. i want to begin by welcoming. the 1st lady with us today and the 1st lady of turkey thank you very much for being here the see great honor to have you. we had a wonderful very productive meeting before we start i would like to thank president or one for releasing detainee serkin girl gave

who was in detention in different forms of detention and i appreciate that very much that was a very nice tribute and he'll be coming back at some point in the not too distant future. so that's that's very good news for the united states and also very good news for turkey. turkey as everyone knows is a great nato ally and a strategic partner of the united states around the world our economic relationship has tremendous potential and continues to expand and to grow directing gauge meant that diplomacy between our nations are essential to ensuring a future of peace and prosperity and promise for our citizens over the course of the day president early on and by had a frank and productive conversation on

a range of very important topics among those topics we discussed was the situation in syria last month. sent vice president pence secretary of state pompei o is with us national security advisor o'brien thank you to meet with president early gun in the hopes of ending all of the hostilities the negotiations were very successful and the united states and turkey achieved. a tremendous amount on that day and i think we're working toward getting it better and better to complicated situations been going on for hundreds of years today the ceasefire continues to hold and i want to thank the president for his partnership and cooperation as we work to build a more stable and peaceful and prosperous middle east. we've assurity each other that turkey will continue to uphold what it's supposed to

uphold i'm a a big fan of the president to tell you that and i know that the cease fire while complicated is moving forward and moving forward at a very rapid clip there's a lot of people that want to see that work after so many decades and so many centuries you might say the united states and turkey are working extensively and many other security issues turkey has the 2nd largest armed forces in nato after the united states and there are very strong 2nd i might add and i'm pleased that turkey has been steadily increasing its defense spending and it's very close to the 2 percent of g.d.p. range and like many of the other countries at this moment there are 8 of the $28.00 countries that are current in terms of their obligation financially turkey has made a vital contribution to nato is resolute support mission in afghanistan and

its partnership was important to our destruction of the isis caliphate fact just recently when we took out al baghdadi and take them out we did turkey knew that we were going over certain areas they were very very helpful we appreciate that very much good for both countries we really appreciate it we're grateful to president early gun and to the citizens of turkey for their cooperation in the constant struggle against terrorism he fights it like we do. key to our security collaboration is our trade defense and military equipment program american foreign military sales to turkey total many billions of dollars and turkey supplies component parts to many american defense programs they make parts of the frame as an example for the f. 35 turkey's acquisition of sophisticated russian military equipment such as the s

400 creates some very serious challenges for us and we are talking about it constantly we talked about it today we're talking about in the future hopefully will be able to resolve that situation we've asked our secretary of state and minister of foreign affairs and our respective national security advisers to immediately work on resolving the s. 400 issue we've also recently agreed to work toward a $100000000000.00. 2 way trade agreement secretary ross is here and i think we've made tremendous progress in that we have a lot of trade with turkey but it could be many times larger and turkey would like to see that and it would also be good for the united states so we intend to bring it up to about $100000000000.00 that would be 4 times what it is right now our goal is to expand commerce between the united states and turkey reduce our trade deficit

and ensure a truly fair and receptacles relationship. we are just for those of you that have any interest we discussed it today also our trade agreement with china is moving along. very rapidly see what happens but it's moving along rapidly china wants to make a deal that i can tell you one of my chief priorities as president has been removing the barriers to american trade and investment and ending the illicit practices that harm our workers we encourage turkey to further open its markets and they are doing that they're doing that very much toward american goods and american services our markets are open turkey is opening up their markets and they're opening up rapidly mr president as we have seen in recent weeks the u.s. turkish alliance can be a powerful force for security and stability not only in the middle east but beyond

i look forward to working with you and your representatives i want to thank you very much all for being here i've gotten to become very familiar with all of you and i really appreciate you doing a fantastic job for the people of turkey. and i look forward to continuing to find a common ground harness common purpose and to advance the vital interests of our people and the abiding friendship between our nations we have a great relationship both personally and with the great country of turkey and we look forward to moving that forward and making it an even bigger and better relationship thank you very much thank you thank you. so much. mr president my day friends my ministers distinguished ministers secretaries distinguished members of the press i'd like to. say.

so i'd like to thank my friend mr trump is to tell the chaos today with mr president. we have had very sincere discussions with mr president with turkish american relations will continue. if. you. so. we have confirmed. well against di and our fight against.

be coordinated together of course this is very important and as you know since the death of baghdad there and the process after it. we have stopped many escape escapees from the prisons from the other side to towards our country we have now holding 2000 die members in our prisons. peace operation in i started the 9th of october this is a very important step for the peace in the region with this operation. as with this operation our country has stopped as a major head on the agenda of p.k. k. who is trying to build a terror country beyond our borders p k k y p g. trying hard to harm disagreement and. they are carrying out provocative

attacks on civilians within the last 24 hours by the terror organizations they have been 19 attacks and the beginning of this month in tel aviv out there has been a bomb in the marketplace and 13 civilians lost their lives. despite it is we are working hard trying to find a solution for syria and we are cooperating with the united states. some circus who are sympathizing for terror organizations we know that they are uncomfortable with this development and they are trying to spread lies and they are trying to damage our relationship with the united states we can see that they are even distorting historical facts and they are trying to damage our relationship current relationships in the representatives.

committee and you can see that the decisions were taken in the committee were just serving this and it is trying to put a shadow on our relationships i have expressed this to mr and to mr president to. any event that has happened during 1st world war this is a subject that historians should decide about we are very confident on this matter i want to be very clear turkey as never has ok but from dialogue on this topic and it's always open to discussion we have offered a common committee historical committee for research we have opened all our archives and our security forces. are holding 1000000 documents on this topic and they can always come and visit and they can always do their research on this topic. between turkey and united states was trying

to eradicate. permanently our we are working together on this united states. turkey is the one ally that united states can trust to establish this go. we are the only nato ally that is fighting against the chest to chest and losing. servicemen. about 707-7000 people are banned to enter our country who are found out that they have relationship with. we have. we have 1216 prisoners die of prisoners in turkey at the moment.

there are. 187 people that were captured by us some of them are women and children. that has caused. many many attacks in turkey we have lost $300.00 of our civilians and we are going to be are going to continue to fight against. of course it's very important that. the members should be accepted by their original countries that we are working on trying to persuade. the countries who are the or original nations of the members and we are working on it with mr mr president trump. 9 years ago when the conflict started in syria. we are the country who has been most affected we are currently hosting 3000003500000 syrians in our countries all of

them are arab summit yes they did and also some of them 350000 of them are kurdish and we are hosting these refugees these people are. given from our budget we have spent 404-0000 1000000000 so far but. he has only centers $3000000000.00 a year is and it on assented to our charities. accordingly we are also sending regular aid to syria and the syrian public. this suggestion the call that i have made in n.g. to end say that call wasn't received so as a result of that many civilians lost their lives this cannot continue like this

previously with everett as shield and olive branch operation we have cleared 40 square kilometers of area we cleared it from tara. of course i agree with mr president's declaration of safe zone and i think this is very important that we have to establish that. previously i as i said a freighters shield and olive branch but 360000 of syrians we have retracked related the syrians back to syria in the cities that we have secured and we have made safe the returning has started. the plans that we have shared with mr trump we have also. shared it with the united nations and we are hoping that we're going to get support from united nations and international community so hopefully we are going to have more people repatriating

back to syria so from iraq general bliss this is going to be 20 miles of the dead in that and we can put 1000000 people in there in rocca in their lives we can also put another 1000000 so we can reach 2000000 of syrians repatriating as you know. so has had an attack on turkish turkish constitutional system and it is a terror organization. we have lost 200 of us civilians and we have casualties of 2000 of our civilians we have even. parliament were bombed from the air by this terror organization of course we have discussed. this better terror organization and we have expressed our expectations of the end of that presence in the united states. our goal to reach the

volume of trade that is 110-0000 billions we have also talked about lots. we i have explained we believe that trade deals and political relations should not be mixed and our trade ministers are working on this together our aim and our hope is to eliminate all the hurdles that is going to make these goals difficult to achieve are rooted to relationships also in our agenda. about as $400.00 and. 35 all day. all the hurdles that we have about this subject we can only have dialogue to solve these issues turkey is all turkey has been. wrongly judged about as for hundreds and i think mr president expressed this very

well in a satire in turkey is all turkey has been. wrongly judged about as 400 and i think mr president expressed this very well in a satire recently. if we have received a good offer we can always buy patra i have mentioned this again i'm saying this again as turkey. with the united states congress we would like to have a. fords and i have shared this feelings with mr trump. on that night i would like to say that i hope that this will bring fortune to our countries and i'd like to thank you for their hospitality. i'd like to thank president trump for a foster tallaght on behalf of my delegation and myself. thank.

you thank you very much mr president and i called up the senate i asked a couple of our senators and we really ended up with 5. others wanting to come and we'll keep them apprised but some of them joined us they happened to be here senator jim risch thank you jim very much ted cruz thank you very much lindsey graham lindsey thank you and rick scott thank you very much joni is here joni ernst someplace. these are people who want to see peace in the middle east and i thought it would be appropriate to have them come over and they met with the president and we had a lot of very frank discussion and we're dealing with a very big subject a complex subject it's been going on for centuries in many cases but we're making a lot of progress tremendous progress in the middle east ok a couple of questions go ahead go ahead.

thank you 1st i'd like to start out getting your general reaction date to the hearing on the l. do you feel that the crowd made their case and how do you feel about the republican form are. you talking about the witch hunt is that what you mean is that what you're talking about i thought here it's a joke i haven't watched i have a watch for one minute because i've been with the president which is much more important as far as i'm concerned this is a sham and shouldn't be allowed it was a situation that was caused by people that shouldn't have allowed it to happen and i want to find out who is the whistleblower because the whistleblower gave a lot of very incorrect information including my call with the president of ukraine which was a perfect all and highly appropriate and he wrote something that was much different than the fact i want to find out why the gee why would he have presented that when in fact all he had to do is check the call itself and he would have seen it i'm

going to be releasing i think on thursday a 2nd call which actually was the 1st of the 2 and you'll make a determination as to what you think there but i've heard just a report they said it's all 3rd hand information nothing direct at all can't be direct because i never said it and all they have to do is look very very simply at the transcript if you read the transcript this was analyzed by great lawyers this was analyzed by a great jared it was analyzed by mark levin it was analyzed by everybody they said this statement that i made that the whole call that i made with the president of ukraine was a perfect one so that this country gets put through that that we have to waste this gentleman stime by even thinking about it talking about it i'd much rather focus on peace in the middle east and i hear that it's i hear that it's. a hoax and it's being played as

a hoax that's what i hear but you'll have to tell me go ahead then if i may on syria and peace in the middle east as they don't want to talk about we repatriate syrian refugees back to their homeland have you had those discussions with european leaders or are in the 3 were no i think that frankly europe should be paying for this to a large extent as of this moment turkey has been paying for most of it i think the president was saying today they've spent over $40000000000.00 on. the cost of that $40000000000.00 how much. of you know. 40. that's west. whatever you spent a lot ok to give it a thought out all these different numbers i heard was 40000000000 dollars how is that 40000000000 correct so 40000000000 dollars and i've heard that number from others and that's a lot of europe has contributed about 3. and

a lot of these people would go all throughout europe i mean it would be a devastating situation for europe because he's got 4000000 people he has a lot of kurds too that they're helping and taking care of so i have spoken to europe about it i think they should help us with isis because many of them left france and they left germany and they left u.k. they left different countries and these countries should help us because if they ever did get released which we won't be doing but if they ever did get released that's where they want to go they want to go back to france and germany and u.k. and all of those other countries that are not helping us i gave them the option would you like to have them back and intelligently they said no thank you but that's not right and it's not fair i can tell you also that turkey captured when they some escaped during the conflict when they had the heavy shooting and i mean i think i know how they happened to escape but one of those things doesn't matter because turkey captured everybody that escaped plus an additional group when we

took over when i became president isis was rampant all over the middle east and as of about a month ago i think lindsay we can say that we have now 100 percent of the caliphate they'll always try and grow but they haven't been able to do that and what we did last week with al baghdadi who is the absolute founder leader set them back we also got his number 2 and we have our sights on his number 3 so they're not going to be growing too fast but i will say turkey has been helping us a lot. question for president you know the one with the what you're calling a realignment of the war the stealing of water a lot of christians in that region are feeling very vulnerable groups on the ground are saying that attacks on christians are reduced under this new policy and that they are not only in war can you guarantee that the turkish government will offer

whatever christians in that region evacuated out of the army at least he died in a smaller house with isis claiming responsibility. think you very much on the contrary and. if it is even christians about them. we have a very special effort and we have a very special work on that's. sort of in syria. and you can. start to have their worship times we are restoring their places and we are securing that they can go in there were ship houses and they can do they were ships in that this is what we have to pay it already cal danis he c.d.'s are all means christians all of them.

are escaping towards turkey and of course they have no problem in turkey but the ones who remained in syria of course we are going to. make sure that the day conditions are better and we are going to have a special effort on this we are sending them food every day and medicine and clothing thank you very much would you like to pick somebody. didn't wish a friendly person from turkey please friendly only friendly reporters would like to see there aren't too many of them are in the thank you. you would have heard and all obama a lot of foreign policy and one of those a lot of us. live the way the us. government the p.k. you know shit but. you are trying that and that is good cus.

you also want to believe there. is life called name on the planet it is this month for the early eighties. into. its cause the 104th altars on 48 civilians so up to this weekend the oh my isn't even to divide 1000 she'll be very hard for the target and you. will have a very good talk with him we had a very good recently and we're working very closely together and we're also working very closely together with you a great president and a lot of things are happening a lot of very positive developments happening a lot of that is definition what's your definition of the various groups within the kurds you call the kurds and then you have various groups and some like them and

some don't but i think we've made a tremendous amount of we've gained a tremendous amount of momentum and strength and knowledge over the last short period of time so we'll see what happens but i will say that. the relationship with with president early gun in turkey has been outstanding and you know it's a major country with a tremendous military they're one of our very big purchases of military equipment they have the finest equipment in the world which the united states makes we make by far the best equipment in the world turkey understood that a long time ago so i think a tremendous amount of progress is being made thank you very much. you could ask the president a question. same with a reporter you don't work for turkey with that question. that. was a. specially about better subject we're

not receiving very good news from the united states there are a lot of. activities from the lobby in the united states. but there are also signs that they are ready to listen move from this latest meeting you had together do you think there has been more development on this issue do you think we should expect new steps in the coming coming days all of those we have. presented a lot of documents to them this time as well. and under the light of these documents of course we should better better is a terror organization for us they have killed 251 of our civilians that there has been a coup attempt and 3000. about the millions are injured and

of course this is a person who is the perpetrator of all these crimes and this person is livin in america in. and he's operating and controlling other places on earth from that spot where he lives and this is not acceptable and this visit that we just had in this in our discussions and we brought loads of different documents with us an evidence of course that we are presenting these documents and hopefully they are going to give this terrorist back to us. jonna fox chris. they didn't know that you didn't spend a lot of time to t.v. today it was one of them were bastard bill taylor regarded conversation that needed his or her it was the day after the phone call the selenski on july 26th in which

the aide says it here heard you say solomon how are things going with the proceeding with the investigations someone repeated back to you order to say that the ukraine was prepared to do everything it wanted to do it was that is that correct can you fill in some more but i know nothing about that 1st time i've heard of the one thing i've seen that side one said was that. he does speak to me for a brief moment and i said no quid pro quo under any circumstances and that's true of the other i've never heard this in any of it it's more secondhand information but i've never heard it if you recall the conversation i don't recall no not at all not even a little bit and the only thing and i guess saddam in that state with his testimony that there was no quid pro quo pure and simple yes please if president it was president trying to say a letter october that night urging you not to launch

a military action in northern syria he said quote don't be a tough guy fool huge ignore that letter if you went ahead and you launched a military action in northern syria could you explain why you would nor the president's one. to be of course this let. it go. i have given these letters back to mr trump of course. and i have. spoke to him about this terror is very shy and and. i said to him that i'm very saddened that he is. considered as someone who can meet the president of united states of course this is a terrorist that has killed many of our citizens and of course this is the adopted son of the leader of p.k. k.

. of course we are not expecting our strategic ally to hurry system in this way of course this is very saddening for us at the same time this person has been hosted by. by russia too we are finding it very hard to understand. rigor in rigor with regards to fight against terrorism if we are going to fight against terrorism in a healthy way we should be much more sensitive. it's all problem today it will be someone else's problem tomorrow of course we are continuing to be sensitive about this we have given many documents about this that we have presented many documents and we have presented documents from cia we presented back to mr trump today of course the cia also recognizes this person as a terrorist and this is documented and these documents were sent to us. and

we have presented this document back to mr trump and the letter of course we have given the letter back to them. oh totally. thank you a pretty much mr crow from criticism thank you very much mr president for all you have done for the stuff on for medicaid fight against isis thank you very much i appreciate it mike walker these are all thought on i need all your might to be you know we could just run with your feet when the middle east on protests all morning notice right what is your lead policy when do i go on another question for president obama while you are unable or in the future read

because in syria you know all of this. do you feel better in future thank you very much thank you very much bill thank you very much and i will say that we've had a great relationship with the kurds and we fought with them bursts excessively against isis we fought together we had we had great generals and we have great equipment and it certainly helped a lot but we were very verse 6 s. full and we captured as i said before 100 percent i was going to when we were at 97 percent i was going to say well that sounds pretty high to me and i was thinking about stopping it then and a lot of people said please go to 100 and very quickly very rapidly the military got the 100 i wanted to have that but we have a great relationship with the kurds we have had we're with them now we get along

with them and by the way i think the president he may have some factions within the kurds but i think the president has a great relationship with the kurds many kurds live currently in turkey and they're happy and they're taken care of living health care we were talking about it before including health care and education and other things so that's really a misnomer but our relationship with the kurds has been a very good one thank you. most of all i would like to make it very clear that. we have no problem with kurdish people. our problem is with terror organizations. the terror organization that came out of kurdish people what are these p.k. k y p g u y d these are the overshoots of the k.k.k. . how of course we don't have any problem with our kurdish brothers in northern iraq we have no problem with our kurdish brothers on the northern syria.

during the time that assad was not except in the kurdish at this city in syria isis told him not to do this i told them to give their passports secondly more importantly in our parliament. we have 50 m.p.'s in our party in our parliaments that are kurdish we have no problem with the kurds we have a problem with a terrorist of course you are not going to recognize those terrorists are you. this is a very important difference and of course our fight all our struggle is against terrorism because terrorists do not have race they do not have religion they do not have a nation terrorist is a terrorist if you don't fight against them you will pay the price sooner or later . thank you richard thank you. for.

his conference there with the president trump and president added one at the white house guests are bringing out their senior political analyst moment to share his in the studio with me so they are partly quite good mates now since much of the letter that as we reminded that in the news comes that president trump sent a letter to add one at the time of the just before the syria offensive saying don't do this don't be a tough guy and threatening sanctions and to destroy the economy if if he went if he crossed any lines and now he's a big fan of the president apparently a big fan. outstanding relationship tremendous. showering the one with complements and showering turkey with compliments as a great ally. as

a powerful need to our ally. yes and and really underlining commonalities and agreement on a whole host of issues i can't imagine that president or the one would have could have ever had a better reception especially after all the rocky months in years under obama and the trump so a clear agreement and consensus on the fight against 3rd or a clear agreement on syria and the turkish policy there a clear apparently agreement on on the cards on the p y d and the pigalle and so on so forth a clear agreement on the fight against diversions also huge plans about trade quadrupling trade up $200000000000.00 certainly. quite close see eye to eye on the question of nato and the role of nato and so on so forth. even president or the president trump expressed his sympathy

with president then the one regarding europe and why europe has 40 shorts in helping turkey pay more than $3000000000.00 to words the $40000000000.00 that turkey apparently paid and complimenting turkey for paying or spending on military defense far more than other nato members the only disagreement it seems is one on the s s $400.00 but even that seems like not a disagreement they're all saying you know it will be resolved by their log and we've gone a long way to do it and i've actually read a number of reports saying that one of the ways with this with which they would deal with it is that they might not make it all operative any time soon and someplace meant that as we've heard by the purchase of perhaps but 3 missiles and so here to me that was the one as you say the one native of dissonance was the same

the s 100 creates a very serious challenge for us and that's kind of code for this is you know this is really bad we can't wait we did not settle and to think that it is going to be resolved simply through buying some small kit to me that is not the way they do it well there's a good number of things and by the way the assessment of why it's such a big deal is it is an issue of disagreement among the military experts some say that to have an s s $400.00 in operation means that american and nato military operations within anywhere close to turkey will be under scrutiny and under sites of those assess for hundreds in turkey meaning american bases in turkey the operations of american drones the parishioners of american of 30 five's and so on so forth will all be surveyed by this sophisticated assess 400 so one part is not to make it operative and in time soon 2nd. is perhaps too kind of that it die

out and supplement that or replace it eventually with with with with american patriots and put up probably the purchase of a $55.00 the most advanced aircraft now i think for nato in general the idea that you buy. advanced weapons from russia and the whole point of nato during the cold war and after the cold war is some kind of a pact visit via russia is of course a problem and that's why the purchase of those weapons were a major deal or a big deal for nato just briefing on the issue of refugees you mentioned the fact that the trump agrees that says that you should be putting more money towards it and on said something about they could they with their operation in syria than nothing it could repatriate 2000000 refugees is that realistic that in the current situation i mean the whole point of the no fly zone back in 2013 and the whole point of today presumably the safe zone in northern syria is to start.

repatriating or start moving some of the syrians who remain in really dismount conditions in turkey to live in their own country in syria and start to help people resettle within syria and hopefully then go back to their villages and towns whether it's $2000000.00 is ambitious or not of course or to all depend on how much money turkey has or could be granted in order to help with the settling of the refugees because the idea of 3500000 refugees in turkey is really a huge deal for turkey and a lot of them want to go home and all of them should be able to go thank you very much. as part of that news conference at the u.s. president was asked about the impeachment hearing more now from white house correspondent kimberly how kit as a committee as a familiar refrain from him it has watched it all a hoax. yeah the president has said throughout the day when approached by

reporters that he's not watching the impeachment inquiry that consumed american television sets for most of the day but even before the president was about to speak in that joint press conference he was retreating i presume from his personal phone but you know it's hard to say but that's something he's been doing throughout the hearings as he has been tweeting retreating sort of similar refrain arguments that this is a hoax that this is a scam as we heard from the president just now he says that he doesn't believe that these inquiries should even be held that this is all 3rd hand info what he's referring to is one of the star witnesses for the democrats a spoke on capitol hill today bill taylor a former ambassador rather die very prominent diplomat. testified repeatedly that he was concerned about sort of different channels of diplomacy that were taking place official channels of diplomacy and then sort of what he called back channels

of diplomacy with regard to the trump administration's ukraine policy the president pushing back on that saying that his calls and his conduct with the ukrainian leader back in july of 2025th rather july 25th in fact his call was a perfect one and then he said it a number of republican radio hosts that have in fact confirmed what he believes to be true this was really sort of the elephant in the room the president calling on reporters that he knew would ask favorable questions right leaning networks mostly there wasn't really an opportunity for some of the networks that are more critical of the president concerned that there has been a strong case for impeachment made on capitol hill that continues to be made they were not called on did so the president really didn't have any difficult questions to answer certainly the president was trying to set the narrative one that he's been trying to do all day on social media even as he says he's very disinterested in this. he busy with the meeting with the turkish leader and committee just on

there was one other mention from him that he was going to release another information transfer of another cold with the ukrainian president which went back to a promise to what we expect from that was coming and stated do we know this was coming . well this is something the president has said before and he's been a little bit dodgy about whether or not this was coming so it's hard to read these latest statements because initially when he was asked about this last week he said yes this is going to be a transcript that will be released the later he said you know we're considering it and then maybe it will happen so really reading from these latest comments you sort of have to wonder if this is going through some sort of legal review process the president has maintained all along that there's nothing wrong with these calls but yet we've heard repeatedly on capitol hill throughout the day that there has been a climate that has been unusual to say the least in terms of ukraine policy with respect to this administration mainly that it was led by the president's personal

attorney rudolph giuliani which would certainly be outside the typical diplomatic channels of the state department so concerning in fact that it raised alarm bells within the state department channels and led to very detailed notes being taken much of what we heard of on capitol hill today so in terms of whether this will be released out we have to take the president at his word that he says he's going to do it but he often makes promises and speaks in generalities so in terms of nailing down precisely when that will happen it's very hard to determine if in fact it will be thursday as he says or for the next thursday or thursday year from now can be how to thank you very much indeed. john rubin is a former u.s. assistant secretary of state and president of the washington strategy group he joins us from washington now thanks so much for being with us just one thing i want to ask you is it what's your impression of when people watch something like this that the impeachment hearings have they already made up their minds as to who they are whose version of events they support what you think they can change their minds

and come to a different conclusion based on what they say so the polling suggests there is a lot of open minded thinking out there that american the american people want to understand what exactly happened but the hearings by their nature can be very. deep they can be very extensive when i served at the state department i testified to congress i would prepare a senior state department officials as well to do the same and it's a dense process so the american people will probably look more to the highlights to what's on twitter to what the cable news networks say the summaries thrilly get a feel for this but yes people definitely are paying attention so what did the key will be for in terms of the democrats what they're trying to achieve here i mean it does it doesn't matter who they eventually get to be a witness because i mean some of the witnesses have not been allowed so far to come

forward it will that be the critical thing. you know what the democrats are going to have to do is make the case crystal clear about how this was corrupt behavior and that the president was using public funds in order to advance his personal agenda his personal political agenda and they have to explain why that's a problem and why that is an impeachable offense and adam schiff he has taken pains to try to bring out the data bring out the witnesses from behind closed doors republicans are trying to obviously get the facts that these fact witnesses are putting out that the end of the day if the house democrats can make their case put in writing in the articles of impeachment that then goes to the senate and we really have the clash where the house democrats who are managing those articles of impeachment to convict the president go toe to toe with the president's attorneys with the supreme court justice presiding that's where the real fireworks will come

what about the line that the hot property conspiracy took today that this is basically his say it took you from these witnesses that we've had so far. yeah no that's a simple line to try to confuse listeners but witnesses are witnesses it's not hearsay when these witnesses have direct corroborating 2nd and 3rd 4th across grating testimony is coming from others and there will be more witnesses who were directly in touch with the officials who were either talking to the president and in some cases even talking with him and one key note in this press conference with president and one president trump denied ever making a call to ambassador gordon saw and talking about what he wanted from ukraine which was an investigation and ambassador taylor today testified in the exact opposite direction under oath so there is no clash and this does potentially open up the

president to more scrutiny and a potential for additional witnesses to be called and that could be significant ribbon thank you very much indeed. and that's it for me to retain if this news hour i back in a moment with another for round up the day's news thanks for watching i have no.

thank you very much the prime minister. should be true to the british on the 31st of all turned on and making this country the greatest place. britain's departure is delayed but for how long followed the drama of bricks it on al-jazeera from the al-jazeera london. t.v. special guests in conversation as the resistance and i see joy in the midst of pain your books do that on from to its uninterrupted wire all of the people of color and they're just one color because like it is why don't they write should they be people of no color exactly fatima bhutto meets marc lamont hill i very much thought

i was going to get shot they look like a bad movie studio unscripted on al-jazeera. al-jazeera . swear every. 2 veteran diplomats testify in the 1st televised hearings as part of the impeachment investigation into president donald trump our answer to these questions will affect not only the future of this presidency but the future of the presidency itself.

to this is al jazeera live from london also coming up the u.s. president said he was too busy to watch the impeachment hearings as he met his turkish counterpart for the 1st time since techie's syria offensive.