of swedish society following friday's attack in stockholm, which killed four people. police say they're increasingly certain the uzbek man they've arrested is the one who drove a stolen lorry into a crowd and rammed it into a department store. police in the norwegian capital oslo have carried out a controlled explosion after finding a bomb—like device in the city centre. the area's been sealed off while investigations continue. a suspect has been detained. police in norway began carrying guns in response to the lorry attack in sweden. the russian foreign minister sergei lavrov has warned that the us missile strikes on a syrian airbase has played into the hands of extremists. he reaffirmed russia's stance that accusations that the syrian regime had launched a chemical weapons attack on tuesday did not align with reality. now it's time for dateline london. hello and welcome to dateline.

this week we look at the consequences of america's air strikes on president assad's air base. and we discuss the relations between beijing and washington. my guests this week are the china expert isabel hilton, the north american writer and broadcaster jeffrey kofman, and rachel shabi, a writer on middle eastern affairs. welcome to you all. the horrific pictures of the gas attack in syria have brought a swift american missile attack. rachel, how is this seen in the middle east? where do we go from here? it seems to have support for trump's reports. there was praise for

the courageous move. bahrain, jordan, turkey. israel, the allies in the region were supportive. the reaction from syrians has been positive but measured. of course, people welcome some retaliation for such a horrendous act, a chemical attack against your own people, syrian people are going to be positive about anything that retaliates against that, to show that in an international community that is not acceptable. it is also measured in the sense that syrians would say

"that is good, but why are there no similar reactions when there is attacks when the syrian regime throws barrel bombs on us or when there are chlorine gas attacks?" there was also a reservation in terms of what is this actually mean? does this change anything on the ground? is this a recalculation in terms of us policy? it has been clear that they have been keen to stress this doesn't change its policy, it is a one—off strike of retaliation for those chemical attacks. the trouble with these things is that often military attacks have their own calculation. when we look at the syria conflict, it is clear half a million people have been killed, two million have been injured and over half

the population are now refugees, some internally. torture is a regular feature from both sides. it is clear the syrian regime are responsible for most of those killings but it is also clear that neither side would be able to perpetuate this war were it not for external players, and that is the problem. i saneff shaking his head. american foreign policy suggests there is some sort of logical strategy here. i think we have seen this displayed this week. there is no foreign policy. this is a man who in his speech to congress said "america first, we will take care of our own" and he is doing exactly what obama and others did. he was horrified by the images and said, "let's drop some bombs." did he say it or did others say it?

there was a problem where there is no coherent strategy. it is the lack of strategy. some believe obama showed weakness when he drew his red line. he has brought in people like hillary clinton and senator john mccain who support what happened. this is an incredibly domestic policy. what it underlines is we can't logically calculate where he goes next. that is terrifying.

a lot of people have been saying that this has been a good thing but where does it go? who will support trump? one of the many unanswered questions is where does it go? that was part of the problem. there was a proposition to join obama for a limited military attack on assad's chemical weapons. i still don't hear the answer now. cameron couldn't answer it then. there has been revisionism about what happened in 2013. the reason cameron lost the commons vote was because of a lack of clarity about what would follow. it seems to be the case again.

you have the "something must be done" reaction to the horror of those events earlier this week in syria. something has been done. assad is still in place. you have this heightened tension with russia. ijust don't see where it is going. in terms of international alliances, there have been declarations of support from the british government and elsewhere but it transforms the us relationships with these countries. britain was told — i don't blame america — britain was informed a few minutes beforehand. that is a massive contrast with the blair/bush relationship where blair played a subservient role but was involved in iraq and afghanistan. was anyone told earlier? my understanding is a few minutes before, britain was told. russia might have been told.

this is a different operation. the us didn't need britain for this operation and doesn't need it for what it says is planned. it is worth looking at this as a moment in the trump administration. we begin to see a bit of maturity not necessarily in the emotional reaction to pictures of dead babies, because there has been a lot of dead babies in syria. if you look at the campaign promises or the rhetoric trump had, everyone who understands international relationships and united states's role in it, rolling our eyes and dreading what was to come. this week, as this has been going on, we have had steve bannon pushed out of the highest levels of security. they are pushing this radical destruction.

they are being sidelined and you have a more experienced security team getting a grip and explaining to donald trump that you do need a policy. can you explain to donald trump? he is proposing to cut 40% of the state department's budget. they enable a lot of the information. i would be interested in six months' time if we don't look at this moment and think this could have been a moment where trump realises that winning it for an audience in pennsylvania is not the same as being president. i love your optimism. let's agree to reconvene in six months and see. i think this is a guy who doesn't know history and he's not that curious and i think he's learning that this is not like running a real estate company in new york and actions have massive consequences and you can't control what those consequences will be.

i like what you're saying but i am as optimistic that even with a smarter team, there is the resemblance of a team taking a hold of foreign policy. i think we are really vulnerable to these kinds of knee jerk reactions. i agree with what you say. chemical weapons are apparent but let's be clear. assad has been killing civilians for six years now and to suggest this is more vile than all those other murders, it's inconsistent. it is notjust bashar al—assad. he has only been able to do them because he has backing from outside players who may read this situation differently. that is the problem. let's talk about russia.

while the us assures this is a one—off retaliation for the chemical attacks, bashar al—assad's supporters might see it through a different lens and they might choose to retaliate by escalation. that has always been a problem with this conflict. the syrian regime can only do what it is doing. it controls a third of syria and it can do that because it has support from russia, iran, hezbollah and shia militia coming in from afghanistan and iraq. without that, it wouldn't be able to hold the grounds that it does. we also have to accept that the opposition is only able to maintain its opposition because of outside players. that is the worry. russia might see this as a need to bolster its support for the syrian regime. it could have terrible consequences on the ground for the syrian people. the opposition might see this as an opportunity to use it

for leverage for more weapons pouring into the region. that is what we don't want to happen. we don't need military escalation in syria. the only thing that can possibly work is a de—escalation on military terms and that is something we are not seeing trump and his team engage with. there is a different layer to this and that is american/russian relationships. trump was talking about a reset and he has used this embrace of putin and the lack of questioning of putin's tactics. now he has thrown a tomahawk missile in the middle of that relationship. the reason i think it would be a one—off is it will become a huge pressure on trump.

what really generated his emotional response was the tv pictures, the chemical weapons were the triggers but it was the emotional pictures on tv that made him want to do something. he will be under pressure to respond if there are equivalent pictures through other means other than chemical weapons. once a line has been crossed, it is difficult to say, "i am not doing anything this time. it was a one—off." there is a danger of this escalating without clarity as to where it is going to end. we will end this part of the discussion. i'm sure we will be coming back to it. oh, to have been a fly on the wall at mar—a—largo this week, president trump's florida white house where he met with the china's president.

was anything achieved, particularly over troublesome north korea? jeff, what do we know? all of that was disrupted by what happened in syria. i know you want to move on but it is hard to separate them. this was meant to be a relationship—building exercise and this unilateralism by trump changed the agenda and changed the message. i think it is a question of what the lingering effects of syria and that unilateralism are between the relationship between them. we have this 100 day plan. expectations were low and settling over china, we had fingers crossed to make sure nothing goes horribly wrong. you have mismatched sides. you have a chinese president who hates surprises. everything he does is choreographed and prepared long in advance. he has a difficult political year this year. he has a party congress in the autumn which he needs to consolidate his grip on power.

it is always a challenge in china. he doesn't want to be put in any embarrassing public position. they've sat through chinese rhetoric for months and things like questioning the one china policy. from his perspective, what they had to do was present an image to the domestic audience that the president is treated with dignity and can manage this lunatic in the white house. that was successful. they were unhappy about syria and china is a big ally of syria. if you look at the chinese press this morning, syria is buried on page eight and images of a harmonious exchange are front and centre. for the domestic audience, that's fine. in terms of substance, there was nothing much to be achieved in this period.

what they needed to set in place is what are the structures of this relationship going forward? things like the climate exchange, which was extremely promising. that has gone. the 100 days on trade is the beginning of a new structure of routine exchanges in which what the americans will be trying to do is get some concessions they can present to the voters back as having an impact on the economy. the chinese have things to give in terms of market access in china. it won't make a substantial difference to the condition of the american economy which has problems for other reasons. on korea, they can agree that they are both equally concerned, even if they have

different solutions. steve, you are my widening—out man. the relationships, those meetings at the white house will have been watched closely because the relationships between america and china are really important. they are, and on the biggest scale. what happened this week was rather in the same way as when theresa may went out to see trump. it was more symbolic than anything else. she had to get through it without some catastrophe in the same way the chinese leadership had to get through this without some terrible thing going badly wrong. they had to get through this, common ground is going to be around trade and trying to do something about korea. it was completely overwhelmed by this unilateral act in syria, with the implication that however much you discuss and seem to get on superficially with the president

of the united states, a unilateral act could follow which calls into question relationships and alliances. this was absolutely wiped out, the significance of this embryonic opening and potentially difficult meeting. the reaction of the chinese to the action in syria? publicly they have said very little about it. there has been some commentary that this was a signal to north korea and i would hope he would have taken donald trump aside and said, "do not strike north korea." syria doesn't have the capacity to hitjapan or south korea or the united states. north korea has that capacity. the problem with north korea is the development of a nuclear programme which you cannot guarantee to wipe out in one strike.

you would create a massive crisis on that peninsula and on the whole of north asia. you would spend years regretting it. trump has said he will take on north korea. this is really frightening about what has happened in syria. trump has done a 180 on his policy towards syria in a matter of days and has done things where he has condemned others. north korea is a much more geopolitically menacing presence. simple solutions to that problem not going to work and will create a domino effect. you have to hope that trump got that message. china can sit quiet over syria despite it being an ally. they cannot sit quiet over north korea. that is right on the border

and there is no easy solution in north korea. do you want the collapse of north korea? north korea does not want that and borders china or south korea. china doesn't want south korea on its border. south korea doesn't want to pick up the mess. rachel, how do you see it? i'm not a china expert, but i found this meeting was interesting in terms of reminding me about the meeting with angela merkel. trump hasjust been dissing china throughout his campaign. you know, terrible china, responsible for america's trade deficit, provocative in its own region. what was it — gaming the economy. all kinds of things and insults he hurled at china. much the same way that he hurled at angela merkel in the way

she was running her country. they then have to come and meet him. it is absolutely the case that if he is then going to do these u—turns on his policy, it does throw into question the point of these lines of diplomacy in the first place. he obviously doesn't hold them in much regard. jeff, what happens now? are we going to move into a more serious presidency? no. i don't believe that. i think we are starting to discover that swagger doesn't work. that's clear. perhaps it is too much for us to be reading into television images and photographs. he just looks like he doesn't want to be there. when he is in the real white house, in washington, not the fake one

in florida, he's like a lion in a zoo in his cage pacing back and forward with cnn. reacting and tweeting at what he sees. there's no precedent for this kind of world leader. i don't think we should assume that we are going to see inconsistencies. is he dangerous? he's certainly dangerous. there was an interesting part of this wild erratic february press conference he gave where at one point he said, "i suppose you will have to call me a politician." as if this was the greatest insult. to give him credit, no one can accuse this victory of going to his head. it is as if he thinks being president is a downgrade from being this dynamic business leader, because it involves politics and being political. and he regards these things as almost with a degree of disdain.

and it's fascinating because most people, if you become president of the united states, at the very least they think, well, that's not bad. i think he now thinks, oh, now i'm involved in politics. he doesn't like failure and he has had a number of huge failures. he will not admit that it is his fault but he will change his team and i think we are beginning to see that. and he is beginning to understand that if he is not to repeat these failures, i mean, he needs to have a structure in place. the best we can hope for is a man who may now be contained in a structure that can now be built. i wasjust in washington and one of the questions that comes up is how long will he be president? is he going to be president for months? years? eight years? 0reven12 years? will he try to extend? it's an interesting game. like chavez in venezuela,

will he try to change it? he doesn't like the responsibility and doesn't want to be seen as a loser. there is a scenario that says that he could actually step down at some point and say, "i've done what i wanted to do and have pivoted the country and set it on a new course." "i'm going to let mike pence and others continue". then he ensures that his legacy is not that of a loser. he writes his own exit lines. it is an interesting theory because the question is, he is 71, 72. does he have the drive to actually do a really hard job? he did say he is one of the healthiest presidents. well, one of his doctor says this. given what is happening, are you

feeling very unsettled ? given what is happening, are you feeling very unsettled? given what happening everywhere ? feeling very unsettled? given what happening everywhere? everywhere. in the time i have been covering politics, mainly uk politics, it's the most uncertain, unstable, unpredictable period that i've covered because in all kinds of areas from china, the middle east, it is hugely uncertain. let's not talk about it for any length of time because we spend our lives doing it. brexit is another example of it. the presidential election in france is another extraordinary moment. i have never... journalists exaggerate dramas and the significance of fleeting events. this all seems to me to be very unstable and turbulent in quite an unprecedented way. rachel? i agree, but if you're

in any way progressive, what's interesting is watching the reaction and the opposition to that, and one of the disappointing things that makes me even more worried is even looking at the way people who have consistently said, "trump is dangerous, unstable, we can't trust him," they have switched to support his action on syria. that lack of consistency worries me. we have run out of time. wouldn't you know? thanks to all of you. that's all we have time for. dateline will be back next week, same time same place. but as this is my last time hosting, i want to thank all of our guests and also you, our viewers. until we meet again, goodbye. hello there, good morning.

more sunshine on the way for many of us on more sunshine on the way for many of us on sunday. a chilly start again. his downfall in southern england and east anglia, but a lovely morning for england and wales. sunshine extending the southern and eastern scotla nd extending the southern and eastern scotland before the cloud moves from the north—west. eventually cloud filling in around western coastal areas of england and wales. those areas of england and wales. those are the temperatures out west. with the sunshine continuing for central and eastern england it will be very warm. temperatures in the east up to 25. this is the last of the warm air for a while. the weather fronts sweeping down across england and wales will bring little or no rain again, but it draws down cold air instead of the southerly winds. more of the north—westerly wind. a lot of

places dry, with sunshine for a while, but more cloud and a few showers dotted about. cold enough for wintry showers in northern scotland. temperatures significantly lower. hello, i'm gavin grey. swedish police say they're increasingly certain the uzbek man they've arrested is the one who drove a stolen lorry into a crowd before ramming it into a department store. friday's attack killed four people. danjohnson is in stockholm for us. misses the department store in the centre of stockholm where the truck hit yesterday —— this is. this has become the focus of people's tributes, people placing flowers and attaching messages, placing a teddy bear. we spoke to a