has made an already had humanitarian situation worse. at least ten people were killed on sunday during fighting between former allies — separatists who want independence for south yemen, and forces loyal to the saudi—backed government. afghanistan has been observing a day of mourning on sunday. more than 100 people are now known to have been killed in a suicide bombing in kabul, on saturday. we're now getting reports of a new attack in kabul, on the marshal fahim university, the country's highest military academy. police in moscow have released the russian opposition leader, alexei navalny, after detaining him at a rally. his lawyer says he will have to appear in court, where he may face charges. now on bbc news, dateline london. hello and a warm welcome

to dateline london. the conversation has already begun. i'm jane hill. this week we ask — was anything achieved at the world economic forum in davos? what do the british chancellor's comments there tell us about brexit? and the situation on the syria—turkey border — what is the us going to do about its muddle in the middle east? my guests this week — henry chu, europe bureau chief of variety. eunice goes, the portuguese writer and journalist. the french—algerian journalist, nabila ramdani. and the british political commentator and author, steve richards. welcome to you all. we start in the swiss resort of davos, where donald trump was the first us president to attend the world economic forum

for 18 years. his presence attracted an enormous amount of attention, just as he likes it. was there just a shade less protectionism in his speech than had been anticipated? you'd have thought the gathering was all about trump. of course, the world's political and business elite was there too. emmanuel macron of france called for greater co—operation, so did germany's angela merkel. but was she overshadowed by him? and as for brexit, while theresa may was keen to discuss the issue of internet reform, her chancellor was ruffling feathers, not least in his own party, when he suggested that actually after march 2019, divergence between britain and the eu would be pretty modest. we will come onto brexit in a while. let's begin with the bigger picture, everything we heard at davos. what was under discussion? henry, let's start with you. we will start with the president, the first visit for nearly 20 years. was it more conciliatory

than the audience anticipated? i think people were anticipating a nativist speech, the kind of rhetoric we are used to from trump. it was more temperate. he said america first, but not america alone. that isn't a bad phrase. the first president to visit for many years. he had never been invited before as a businessman until now, as president. you always have to be careful about rhetoric and policy with trump. he is hard to nail down. he says one thing one day, and his administration does another thing the next day. he said at davos, we are not protectionist in the scary way the press are portraying, and yet at the same time, tariffs have been slapped on solar panels and washing machines from allies like south korea. and also on china. it is hard to marry his rhetoric with the actions sometimes. did you pick up on a sigh of relief from other countries? what was your take

on how he was received? i think it was clearly an effort to sound conciliatory. he made an effort to address that particular audience of businessmen, plutocrats, etc. but he couldn't help but make a few slights against the media, and that didn't go down well with the audience. i think people were, as henry said, perhaps expecting a more nativist speech. that didn't come through. he is the president of the united states and maybe there is a bit of expectation that he is becoming house—trained, getting into the wording and the style of becoming president of the united states. people are not holding their breath for very long. but as henry also says, there is what he says and what the administration does. in terms of his attack on the media, he is still aware of his base back at home.

being at davos, with a crowd of plutocrats, oligarchs, people with vast amounts of wealth, so different from his core voters, he has to also make some sort of show that he still keeps those voters in mind. so attacking the media is very popular with that base, as well as, i think he said, we should not forget those who had been left behind and forgotten. he had to make some concessions in his speech. what i thought was interesting about the speech, it was a well constructed speech. i don't know if he wrote it or somebody else did. it was still full of contradictions. he put a huge focus on the fact that he despised regulations and was getting rid of loads of them. but he is a regulator. immigration and his plans for that will involve bureaucracy coming out of the united states' ears. he praised tax cuts and condemned government. and yet, he is pledged to be one of the biggest spenders apparently on infrastructure and capital spending of any president. so like a lot of outsiders, he is not alone in this.

his actual ideas, even in a relatively coherent speech, are wholly contradictory and confused. was he — is there not a valid point though into the broader point when he says a thriving, prosperous american economy is good for the global economy? he is effectively saying everybody benefits. well, i must say davos is always a conciliatory affair. there is something about the beautiful surroundings and the sense of varnished privilege that makes everybody relaxed and happy. donald trump in particular sounded as if he wanted to get on with everybody, to be nice and civilised towards everybody, and he was exceptionally fawning towards britain, continually saying what a great country he thinks it is. i think he feels a visit to the uk is very important to his legacy and he wants to be loved here. but of course the truth is that many millions of britons view him as a pariah and will let him know this when he eventually visits.

i think the only group that trump expressed his usual venal prejudice towards at davos was the palestinians. at the time, he was sitting next to his ideological ally and close friend, benjamin netanyahu, and he effectively said he wanted to stop millions of dollars of aid to palestinians because the palestinian authority showed disrespect towards mike pence, his vice president, during his recent visit to israel. so essentially, donald trump accuses the palestinians of not being polite enough as their land is stolen, as they are routinely murdered in their thousands, imprisoned in their hundreds, and undergo all manners of human rights abuses. there was no mention of the incredibly provocative decision to move the us embassy to jerusalem, while completely ignoring the palestinian right to east jerusalem as their capital.

i found it unsettling the way trump threatened to wash his hands of the entire israel peace process, making out he had enough of the boorish palestinians, again signalling that they should accept their fate and be polite towards the billions of dollars poured into israel to ruin their lives. and we will certainly talk about that on another day. davos is the world economic forum. that is what it is. that is what it is there for. away from trump, is this a glorious talking shop? is this just an opportunity for people to get together and network? does it achieve anything? i think it is the place where politicians present their visions. it is where the plutocrats of the world feel good about themselves. because for three days they will discuss inequality, refugees, all the problems of the world that very often they have contributed to create, but they are there discussing potential solutions.

for the politicians, it is the perfect platform to talk about their visions. that was clearly the case of emmanuel macron, the french president, who used the opportunity to say that france is back and it is a france that will lead in europe. very different for theresa may, the british prime minister. she seems really out of place in davos. it is a place of posturing. she is not a prime minister who likes to posture. she feels very uncomfortable. she looks very uncomfortable. she is also not a visionary. that has been one of her greatest handicaps as a prime minister. and she doesn't seem to like the attention, which is something very strange for a politician who reached the heights of political power. normally politicians are very vain. and sometimes in a very good manner. you could say it is quite striking that she is like that. absolutely. it is fascinating because what her chancellor said in davos caused

all kinds of ructions back here — the use of the word ‘modest‘. it is remarkable. yeah, and what eunice said about theresa may, that is very perceptive. in britain and the united states we tend to elect actors as prime ministers. not just that, but they love the performance of politics and the art of politics. they spend a lot of time reflecting on their own role on the stage. she is a publicly awkward, shy figure, who clearly doesn't like that side of politics, and it's unusual in britain to have that kind of prime minister. on philip hammond — in fairness to hammond, what he said does not necessarily contradict the government's position. because it is still so vague on brexit. virtually anything can be said and could fit in. so what he said, he subsequently defended by saying, "but we are hoping to have as close to a free trade agreement as possible with the rest

of the european union". but what isn't clear is how that becomes possible. so he can pop up and say, "don't worry, things can be pretty much the same". that is true. that is the government's aim. but they still are at their have their cake and eat it phase of their objectives. equally, you could have another hardline brexit minister say, "we must have the right from march of next year to start trading with other countries as a separate country outside the single market, outside the customs union". which implies a very big break with the rest of the european union. so we are more or less a year away from this happening. and actually, you could have two wildly different interpretations from different senior cabinet ministers of what will happen. they can both claim it is close to government policy because government

policy is so imprecise. and this circles right back to theresa may. if you had a strong enough prime minister who was able to exert discipline and have a unified vision for a cabinet, it doesn't mean you have no dissent, but it means you can manage it in a way she hasn't, we wouldn't be in this position and we would be further along in terms of negotiations than we are. the fact that anyone can say anything and it somehow seems constant with government policy means you don't have a policy at all. if you are a policy of everywhere, you are a policy of nowhere, just like she said of citizenship. how much longer until a decision has to be made? it has to come down one way or the other, ultimately, doesn't it? it looks like theresa may is hoping to get to march 2019, she will be going through the transition period, that might take three years, without any clear vision of what brexit actually means. this is what i think she hopes for.

interesting. i think psychologically brexiteers will insist something very big happens in march 2019. all the indications are that very little will happen and in fact britain will continue to muddle through a transition period while there is no certainty in the meantime. there is no concrete policies. this to me shows what a vague concept brexit always was. there has never been an impression of britain ending its dealings with the european union. i think people who voted to leave knew what they thought they were voting for. you are saying politically, it is not...? i think the in and out referendum, for many, was possible. britain is redefining its relationship with the eu, which is very different from leaving the eu completely. in fairness to theresa may, even if she was replaced — and there is talk about that, it is beginning to happen again among conservative mps — it is very hard to see, even if a titan who liked

the theatre of politics, who had a clear idea of what form brexit should take, could guide his or her parliamentary party, could get a deal through this particular house of commons. now it might be in the end that she gets quite a bad deal. and it still gets through the house of commons because of various factors. but if the deal is defeated in the house of commons, then the united kingdom is in an extraordinary constitutional crisis. a hung parliament is not impossible. but i think if she were to be replaced, a, that would throw the negotiations into complete disarray. there would be a tory leadership contest. and there are presumably lots of people making that point in the party? you talk to people in the party in westminster all the time. are people saying that would be more disruptive

than what is happening now? there would be some stirring, saying "this is going so badly wrong that we have to act". but most people i speak to still say it would disrupt the negotiations. the brexiteers, some of them say, that might jeopardise brexit, which is what they have been waiting for since they were six months old! so the sort of forces that keep in place all of these sort of negative ones. if we do this, but could happen. if we do that, but could happen. it is not that unusual with british prime ministers. quite a few have been kept in place for many years for fear of the alternative being worse. and that keeps her in place for now. politics is so febrile in the united kingdom, as in many other countries, that could change very quickly. but it means at the moment, she keeps the job. isn't this the bed, again, that she has made, that she has to lie on? she has no full majority of her party in the house of commons because she chose to call

an election which she effectively lost, and now we are in the situation we're in. it goes back to her again, doesn't it? there is no doubt the election is the context of everything. it is very unusual for a leader to lose a majority for a party and stay on. she stayed on. it explains the sort of enhanced authority ofjeremy corbyn. the election of last year changed everything in the uk. and, of course, it is the context of the precarious brexit talks. if she had a big majority, she could basically tell her party what form brexit would take. and they would vote for it. and she lost it. it does seem like a particularly precarious period at the moment. wild politics at the moment. thank you for now. for the last week, turkey has been sending tanks into north—western syria to fight the kurdish ypg militia. though turkey is sheltering three million refugees from the 7—year—long civil war in syria, it is alarmed by the ypg,

which it regards as terrorists linked to the banned pkk, carving out land along the long border between the two countries. turkey is the us‘s nato ally. the kurds have been a support to the us in the drive to eliminate so—called islamic state. the us, therefore, appears to be on two sides in one war. what happens now? president erdogan on friday actually declared he might expand this offensive. first off, the us role in this, is it in a muddle? what does it do to resolve it? well, i think we can spend plenty of time working out how donald trump gets out of a muddle. but the truth is everything about him seems to be based on muddle. he is arguably the most inconsistent, confused and thoroughly unprincipled us president in history. which is saying something.

i think "muddling along" is a phrase that suits him perfectly. because all his policies, if they can be called that, are based on pettiness and mood swings. the reality is that the kurds are a decidedly unusual ally to trump's america. they are internationalist and leftist by nature. they want to get rid of borders. and they are anti—islamist, which has become a byword for anti—islam. anybody who is anti—islam is ok by donald trump. that is why he ended up supporting britain first — although he has apparently apologised. and turkey is a nato ally. and america will be duty—bound to support them, even though the turks generally view the kurds as terrorists. you mentioned the pkk. it is a party that been calling for an independent kurdish state within turkey for decades. but it is also lending military support to the kurds currently

fighting in syria, but also in iraq. it is a listed terrorist organisation, notjust by turkey, but also by several states and organisations, including nato, the us and the european union. the fudge is that kurdish militia groups come in a number of different varieties. america will continue backing what they view as the good kurds to try to wipe out groups like isis. but we have to remember that america have been palling up to fight a common enemy. they have done that in latin america, supporting the contras, the guerrilla groups, more recently in libya, they supported the rebels, many of whom were affiliated with al-qaeda. we also must bear in mind that a lot

of that logistical support that will be provided in theatres of war will be covert. donald trump's america will be offering logistical support without anybody, let alone the turks, knowing about it. he will keep instructing his commanders to do what they have to do. it is notjust the us though, is it? all western nations, if they had to pick one primary aim in that region, everybody wants to eliminate so—called islamic state. that is something an awful lot of countries agree on. absolutely. knowing your enemy is the famous saying about the art of war. but it shows how difficult it is to identify your enemies nowadays. we have got into such a complicated — you know, the world is so complicated, especially in the middle east, where it is hard to identify where the alliances lie, and we have increasingly mass combat groups substituting for traditional armies. i want to talk about

rex tillerson‘s speech. the point here is that we need to think about what triggered this reaction from turkey. it is essentially the united states going back on promises made a few years ago. of our support of the kurdish militia is only going so far. in recent weeks we have the us announcing they are going to build a 30,000—strong border separating turkey from syria. and that is essentially seen as a massive threat by turkey. if we add to that the us's recognition of jerusalem as the capital of israel, this is something that profoundly irritated turkey. erdogan, in fact, turkey was quite instrumental in making sure there would be a vote against the united states at the united nations. there is quite a lot of dissonance between turkey

and the united states. there is — turkey is becoming very strategic in its relations with russia as well. and of course they are, and you would think the trump administration would understand that. the way they see it, they are securing their border. you would think the administration in america would understand the importance of a border. not that i ever feel like absolving the trump administration of anything, but it was under 0bama that we first started to support the kurds as our proxies in that fight. and the us choosing questionable allies to prosecute the war against isis has been true from the beginning. we have also partnered with islamic radicals in the region. the good ones, we somehow decided. because they were somehow taking it to isis. this dates back before the trump administration, now trump finds himself in the middle of this morass. rex tillerson has been talking about it again this week. did you detect any

shift in us policy? did it become clearer? i didn't detect a shift in us policy overall. if you took it back to the 0bama administration, which was looking at this as a longer term project. it was a shift from donald trump's own vision of no more foreign entitlements, of being much more isolationist. because what rex tillerson said was that we are going to be in there for the long haul, diplomatically and militarily, to help build up syria. this is what donald trump said he wanted to get us out of. whether they have devoted resources to that is another story. so, you have a policy. do they have a strategy? i'm not sure they do. this is all part and parcel of wider american — notjust trump — wider american muddle in that region and getting themselves into a quagmire that we haven't figured out how to extract ourselves from. and does it ultimately then — if there aren't the resources

to back up what rex tillerson said, they're hoping to bolster regional actors? well, i think... state governments can call these groups terrorists or freedom fighters, depending on their ideology or allegiances. what we know is that these allegiances can and do change over time. just look at how gaddafi was a close ally of the west before they turned on him. so if i were the kurds, i would be very guarded, that the us may turn on them as well, once they feel theirjob has been done. historically, powerful nations have always used other groups as cannon fodder. the french used africa and north africans in conflict. there is nothing new there, frankly. and with president erdogan on friday saying this could intensify, the tanks will keep rolling across the border, this continues with the world watching on? i think it's going to be quite dangerous if he continues pushing.

unfortunately, in the wider context of us—turkey relations, they haven't been worse in a long time. besides this conflict, there is a sense in turkey of a conspiracy on the part of some in the us of trying to overthrow the erdogan government, because there is a cleric named fethullah gulen who resides in the us who was probably behind the coup that was put down a couple of years ago. i think this whole situation is now at a point where nobody really kind of knows how to get out it. it'll be interesting to see how the member states will react. will they come in defence of turkey? there is also the un agreement with regards to refugees. the european dimension, that is also fraying. the cooperation between turkey and the european union is fraying. will london and paris come to help, or at least support erdogan? that is something we will watch in the coming weeks. that is what we wait to see in the coming weeks. thank you very much to all of you.

that's all we have time for on dateline london this week. we'll be back with more passionate debate next week at the same time. thanks for being with us today. goodbye. hello there, good morning. winter is set to return this week but nothing too serious, nothing out of the ordinary. what was unusual was the temperatures we had over the weekend — 15 degrees in that mild south—westerly on sunday. there's colder air to come down from the north, and it comes in initially behind this weather front here. that is moving southwards, it's been bringing the rain that we've had across the

northern half of the uk. and that rain, on monday, is moving south across england and wales. behind it, we're starting to see some colder air already, by the morning, in scotland. maybe some wintriness over the tops of the high ground, as those showers come in. one or two showers coming into the north of northern ireland, but much drier, by this stage, after some heavier rain overnight. here's the rain though, across the northwest of england and wales, where it could be heavy over the hills. south of it, still some gusty winds for a while, but very mild air — temperature 9—10 degrees early in the morning. get a bit of sunshine in the south—east, and those temperatures could rise a few degrees higher in the morning. that's ahead of the rain. here's the rain. it's moving southwards and, as it moves southwards, the rain becomes lighter and more patchy but it will drop the temperatures across southern areas in the afternoon. we get some sunshine following behind that in wales and the midlands. and further north, some sunshine, a scattering showers, and again, just cold enough to give us some wintriness over the higher ground in scotland. it gets cold overnight where we have the clearer skies, across southern and eastern parts

of england, in particular. there could be a frost returning by early tuesday, but we start with some sunshine across most of england and wales. and gradually, through the day, the tendency is for things to cloud over more and more. a little bit of drizzly rain coming into the far south—west, but the wetter, windier weather is in the north—west of scotland. in between, it looks like it's going to be largely dry. but temperatures 6—9 degrees — that's nearer normal for this time of the year. it may start to feel colder around the middle part of the week. these weather systems do move through. this one the more significant one, coming down from the north—west, sweeping down across the uk, and then it introduces another bout of colder air that will sweep across all areas. and the wind direction changes once again. so we're going to find more in the way of showers on wednesday. we've still got this band of rain on the weatherfront, to clear away from southern areas. and then it's sunshine and showers. but those showers will be more wintry, notjust in scotland but as far south as wales, perhaps into the peak district as well. nothing serious, but a change from what we've been seeing. and it will feel colder, as well,

given some strong to gale—force winds — 11—5 degrees typically across the north. wind direction changes to a bit more of a northerly, so more inland areas will be more sheltered, so inland parts probably dry on thursday. the showers more likely around exposed coasts. but again, it will feel colder in the wind. welcome to bbc news, broadcasting to viewers in north america and around the globe. my name is duncan golestani. our top stories: separatist clashes flare up in yemen, raising concerns that the country's fragile humanitarian situation will become worse. a day of mourning in kabul — more than 100 people are now known to have died in saturday's suicide bombing. russia's opposition leader, alexei navalny, is released after he and dozens more are arrested at a protest rally, in moscow. and the grammys are under way in new york. attendees wear white roses in solidarity with victims of sexual harassment.