this is bbc world news. the headlines — north korea has announced that it may abandon plans to give up its nuclear technology if the united states continues to demand unilateral denuclearisation by pyongyang. a government spokesman said the stance taken by us negotiators was gangster—like. he said both sides should take steps at the same time. the 12 boys trapped in a flooded cave system in thailand have sent handwritten letters to their families, to reassure them that they are well. their football coach, who is with them, also sent a note apologising to their parents. the team were cut off when exploring the cave two weeks ago. at the football world cup, england and croatia have reached the semi—finals. england beat sweden 2—0. in the other game, the hosts, russia, went out to croatia 4—3 in a penalty shoot—out. england will play croatia on wednesday. the other semi—final will pit france against belgium. now on bbc news, dateline london.

welcome to dateline london, the programme that brings together some of british journalism's leading commentators to debate with internationaljournalists whose dateline is london. this week: high noon in the chiltern hills as cabinet ministers finally agree on brexit. now they just have to persuade the eu. and donald trump's european tour, via windsor castle, nato hq and tete—a—tete with vladimir putin. with me to discuss those stories are, david aaronovitch, columnist for the times newspaper, jef mcallister, an american writer and broadcaster, maria margaronis of the nation, and the british conservative commentator alex deane. good to have you with this

on an interesting weekend. i said it was high noon at chequers, the british prime minister's country residence. perhaps i should have said high tea. this was the moment when theresa may had to corral her disputatious, at times disloyal, cabinet colleagues to accept a single uk negotiating position on brexit. we'll be out of the single market, but will "harmonise" our trade in goods with eu standards, not on services where the uk will go its own way, though even here, the uk wants "strong reciprocal arrangements" with the european union. we'll be out of the customs union but in a new customs territory. the eu's freedom of movement is replaced by a mobility framework so europeans can study and work here and we can do the same in the eu. the european court ofjustice won't have jurisdiction any longer but the uk will "pay regard" to its decisions. and in case her foreign secretary, borisjohnson, wanted to denounce this plan as crazy, as he had an earlier one, mrs may told her ministers that collective cabinet responsibility is back.

they have been warned. what should we make of this package she has come up with and the outcome of what had been predicted was going to be a very tough day? i think it reflects well on the prime minister that she has managed to pull these forces together to something that everyone has agreed. everyone was predicting she could not do this without resignations and she did have to take brexiteers with her but also satisfy remainders, and she has done that. people said she could not get a stage one deal and she has delivered. it is to her credit but there are two further things that are on the horizon — the next is monday. she has to present this to the conservatives party at large in parliament. and the second is what the eu says to it. in the end, negotiations are all about compromise. nobody gets everything that they want and the cabinet has compromised with itself and its ideology to come up with this position. if the eu continues to balance this, in the end, i think, they make it more likely that option b, no deal, comes about because the prime minister has always said

nothing is agreed until everything is agreed. what did you make of her ability to come up with anything, given that the previous versions had already been rejected 7 at some point or other, she had to come up with something. the question was whether or not the cabinet brexiteers swallowed it all. they essentially re—ingested the vast amounts of hot air that they've expended on this subject and decided they were going to sign up for it and keep quiet. last night, the non—cabinet element of the hard brexiteers were going absolutely tonto. they hate it. they know they are

susceptible to the argument. it is actually edging towards what you call a norway—type solution. in that case, the idea will be why did you not do it in the first place? it is full of stuff, like essentially, if we do decide to deviate from trade rules in that place, we will pay the penalty. hold on, alex... this is more or less the arrangement norway has with the european union. it is already... nick clegg has said if i was a brexiteer i would be likely to say, why have i gone through all this business to get to this stage? and that is even before we have a discussion with the eu which, of course, in the end, people like alex, i suspect, will try to blame for the fact that they have got nowhere near the place which they always suggested we were going to get to. it depends what we say. we made an agreement to cooperate on security and they said no. that is the sort of people

we are negotiating with. that is the example you always use. you always end up relying on someone on the right wing of the german coalition. you did it last week. i watched last week's programme and you are doing the same thing. the interior minister didn't say that last week. they don't actually amount to very much. we shouldn't talk about this deal if we don't know all the details yet. we don't. the extent of any rebellion on the conservative right will depend on whether in reality they can do trade deals outside of our relationship with the eu, or there will be real rebellion if they are stymied. let's talk about how brussels might respond to this. do you think it is ultimately a political decision whether or not they move, because we hear... the european union has rules

and the rules will have to be observed and you cannot cherry—pick, but is there political will to overcome that response? the european union has to stick by its rules on the four freedoms if it is to survive as it is. and this deal or negotiating edition is very much a pro—business brexit. it gives free trade within the eu but free on services and assist service that are four fifths of the uk economy are not included in this. that means presumably that britain can have very low financial regulation. we can be singapore, or try to be, while still maintaining trading relations with the eu. i don't think the eu would like that, because that is having your cake and eating it. on the other hand, there is so much uncertainty and turbulence in europe, you can see why they might say, ok, let's just sign this. let's keep a reasonable relationship

with britain and carry on. it is not impossible. what in terms of the kind of package that theresa may is selling to her party, david — you have talked about the scepticism already from the limited information they have — is it possible that the brexiteers in the cabinet had made a calculation that there is no point resigning over this because the chances are it is going to get rejected and it will never get out of the traps and therefore, we will still be in a position to have a harder brexit than perhaps this offer from theresa may looks like? it is a great question and if i could actually... alex will recall he was one of three people who suggested setting up a museum of brexit at one point or we were wondering what would be in it. it would be a series of connecting empty rooms with incredible amounts of sound montages with people saying it is going to be great and fantastic. you end up in a final room and you open it and you find yourself in a place that is just very slightly worse and shabbier than the one you left in the first place.

that is going to be the museum of brexit. it is your suggestion, your museum. tell me what is going to be in it. does it worry you that after all this process, it started with an attempt to renegotiate that david cameron ultimately didn't get much that brexiteers were satisfied with, he went ahead with the referendum, the referendum happened, britain voted to leave, the process takes two or three years, we end up with some kind of deal that actually looks like we got a kind of a sort of relationship with the eu that is not a huge amount different to what we had before? the only thing that worries me at the moment is the prospect of the government repeating the mistake it made before the referendum, which is not preparing for one side of a binary outcome. we stand the prospect,

albeit we now see noises from the cabinet this will not be the case, of failing to prepare for a note of brexit. if we stumble into that fate, at the 11th hour, when we realise that a deal is not going to come off, despite all these compromises we are making, that would be a bad outcome. i have allowed you to remain silent, listening with fascination of the agonies for brits and europeans alike. where does it look from the american perspective, this bridge to the european union that britain used to be seen as? well, does donald trump care about a bridge anymore? the traditional architecture where britain was in some sense between the us and europe was more useful to europe because the relationship to the united states, if you don't care about the architecture, which i think he doesn't, i don't think that this makes much difference. he was pro—brexit.

he is not interested in institutions generally. he says the eu was created in order to basically cheat the united states, so how anybody navigates this intelligently... i think he would let britain be prosperous and to be a good place for people to come to his golf courses, but i don't think he has a big strategic idea into which brexit fits or does not. and a trade deal has been talked about yet again, his ambassador in london was making encouraging noises once more. we had john bolton, the national security adviser, meeting some of the leading brexiteers just a couple of weeks ago. is the mood music from washington that this is something that could be done in a reasonable amount of time, assuming britain can disentangle itself from the european union? i do think there are problems with the customs arrangement internally. i don't think it's going to work. i don't think the irish are going to be able to handle that. getting back to washington, well, nothing seems to move very quickly in the american congress these days. britain does have a favoured emotional place in the hearts of americans.

i don't think the democrats would be against it in orderjust to bother donald trump. but i think all these trade deals get negotiated in a very micro level and if you want chlorinated chicken and gm foods to come, you better get ready for that. it is not going to be what the uk is all that interested in. alex predicted last week, correctly, there would not be any resignations and we had all this lovely theatre that was organised by downing street, providing taxi cab numbers as ministers would lose their cars immediately and it is a long walk back. do you think that the cabinet she has now is the cabinet that is still going to be in place at the end of this brexit negotiation?

do you think all these people are going to be able to swallow this? if they can, then it does suggest that they have just been talking non—stop. .. for two years. that is essentially it. if they can actually sign up for this, despite everything that they have said over the last two years — it reminds me very much of the old days of the communist party. someone turned round after stalin had done some programme and said if they can stand this, they can stand anything. likewise. if the hard brexiteers can stand for what is going on, they can stand for anything. i find it hard to believe. i find it hard to believe you won't have a sequence of resignations and it will be a sequence of resignations in preparation for a leadership battle. for me, the most important thing is we leave the european union.

i imagine many of the leading luminaries of brexit and the cabinet feel that they are going to do a betterjob delivering that inside and out. you cannot help but feel this is what democracy looks like. the tory cabinet locked up in a country house with theresa may in the room, nobody leaves this room until i have identified the murderer, and their phones are confiscated. which isjust like the closed—door meetings in brussels that everyone complains about. we don't know how decisions are being made. just as well it wasn't like a re—enactment of a round of cluedo. if they can raise their sights above the brexit skyline this weekend, cabinet ministers may be asking what donald trump may yet do to the western alliance. on wednesday and thursday, the us president will be at nato headquarters. he's certain to repeat his complaint about how little europeans spend on their own defence. indeed, his defence secretary

jim mattis, a former marine commander, wrote to britain's gavin williamson, the former boss of a company making ceramics, suggesting the french could displace the british unless mr williamson could persuade his boss to open the purse strings. with reports that he's also looking at the cost of re—locating us personnel out of the uk and that cosy chat — a deux with vladimir putin, the russian president, in helsinki, there's reason to be watchful. are they nervous, do you think, about what they come out of this with? every american president has complained that european countries are not spending enough on defence. and they have been right, really? well, it depends how you look at it. i have to say greece which has no money at all is the second highest the thing is that there is no rule about how much you are supposed to spend on defence. there is an aspiration. there's a guideline. some countries are over that.

but this is not about defence spending. this is about how do we contain donald trump? how are the europeans preparing after the g—7 debacle... what do you do when the bully is coming into the playground but you need him? and i don't know what they are doing. that is interesting. you have hit the nail on the head. you may not like him and you may think he's a bully, but you still need him. there is a really big problem because there has always been an incredible worry in europe, particularly germany and to an extent in britain, about american disengagement. it would look to other interests in the world and say you would have to manage oi'i the world and say you would have to manage on your the world and say you would have to manage on your own, we are not interested. and there have been big periods of american isolation. we think about the one preceding the second world war. the question is, what do you prepare for? do you prepare to palliate this president? do you prepare for this to be america's position going forward? do you think this is a temporary blip and it will be replaced by somebody who has what you might say is a more multilateral perspective on how the world works?

rather, then "i am the man and i get it done with whoever" — a sequence of bilaterals? i think there are elements of all those discussions going on in european capitals and probably in britain as well. what if trump represents the long term and notjust the short term? is it possiblejef that the mood has changed and if he's able to deliver something that looks different, american politicians afterwards will say, you know what, 78, getting towards 80 years, stuff has changed. we don't need boots on the ground in europe? i never thought he would be president, so my predictive powers are limited. i think there is still such an institutional and cultural understanding, widely spread among the american elite, such as it is, that european balance of power and the american role, and russia being a menace to that balance, requires active engagement, including troops.

i think donald trump is trying to use this to get more money out of the europeans. i think he wouldn't mind taking the troops out himself. he does not care. but i think there are so many institutional drags on that, especially from the pentagon, that he is unlikely to accomplish it. if he is no longer president — i don't think another republican would be as unusual as he is in the foreign policy. unusual. he is a remarkable danger, i would say, to the alliance, and to get used to him, because he's the president. you have to make do with the bully. but he is extremely unusual and a threat to the order that has brought relative peace and prosperity to the west and people do have to keep being vigilant about him and figure out how to manoeuvre around him. not only do we think you are right

in yourfirst not only do we think you are right in your first frank comments. but the american presidents of long—standing right do criticise underspends on defence by european nations? i think that is true. we have a responsibility to help in the world. and to pay our own way. two people have referred to donald trump as the bully. president assad, vladimir putin, these are the bullies. there is a suggested moral equivalence between someone who. .. he chooses words that i would prefer not to use myself, so does david, but in the end, he is the president of the united states, it is not the bully in the room. when you start thinking it is, the problem is not with that person, it is with you. sorry, i am a proud american and i believe in the alliance and he is a bully. when it comes to the alliance, i agree with you completely that vladimir putin is a genuine danger and malign. i don't think donald trump is actually scheming in the same way. i don't think that is the way his mind works. he is not smart enough! but he is anti—institutional.

he says that kim jong—un is a good guy, intelligent and honourable and justin trudeau is a liar and disreputable. you just cannot marry this up. he likes dealing with the strong man. his election was pretty would partly by vladimir putin and that is one —— his election was procured partly by vladimir putin and that is one of the reasons why this is dangerous. he will not acknowledge this or have it investigated properly by his agencies. it is a tremendous threat to his own sense of himself. so i mean, putin and trump, they are two sides of the same bully. we have to be careful about him. he is anti—institutional, he is a bully, he is a blatant obvious racist, he is a liar, a danger to his own country and already fraying checks and balances that have been in place in the world since 1945. one example that jef was

one example thatjef was using. in korea, many of this president's predecessors have tried and failed through various conventional means to bring a change. what did he get from the north koreans? the release of presidents. denuclearisation. none of those things happened. do you not think it is progress? all of those things progress. of course, it is some progress to see them crossing the border. he says kim jong—un has promised that he would denuclearise, he gave up the military exercises in south korea, which has been important for 30 years as a sign of us engagement. if president obama had dinner, you would be clamouring for a nobel peace prize. obama would never have come back and lied about what he did. let's stop with the twitter stuff. that is a twitter response. what is essentially being said, the thing we don't know is whether or not it was a success for the american president, but we do know for sure that it was a success for the north korean dictator. it was a huge success. the jury is out on whether it is a success, including your

jury, alex. the rest of what our colleagues have said here seems to be absolutely true. we face a tremendous problem in dealing with the kind of politics that trump represented, that is going to be the long—term perspective american president. you can sign up to that. you don't lose anything by signing up to that, so please do. alex, what about the meeting with vladimir putin? the most surprise ending about that is even compared to kim jong—un, they are doing it alone. two men going into a room together. should we be worried about that? what i do agree is that this is a president with an unconventional approach. you are a rocket man, you are someone i can do deals with, you're a bad guy, i'm not going to have a summit with you,

i am not coming, i'm coming tomorrow. it does seem to sort of work because even if you don't think there's been progress or you seek to deny credit, more has happened in terms of advancing the ball than happened for several presidencies beforehand. on putin, i mean, if this president can get further than with putin than his predecessors did, that will be a very significant achievement. what do you mean further? any kind of meaningful dialogue on what is happening in eastern ukraine? what would that be? international observers allowed in. to observe what? if the american president recognises the russian annexation of crimea which he has said he would. he has hinted at that. you are constructing your own bogeyman. lam not, i am not, i am asking the question. i did not raise the question, actually, the trump administration did. it would not occur to me to suggest that the american mid—administration would recognise the annexation of a part of a friendly country by another country and yet, that came from within the administration. this is our problem.

they did sign up to the sanctions. the thing is you want the president of the united states and russia to talk. you want to two men to do it on their own, though. i think in some ways, vladimir putin is exactly what donald trump would like to be. it isa it is a reasonable point. but david's dislike of the individual are so visceral, you cannot contemplate the idea of advancement. you are going to have to show me some advancement. i know that you are desperate to. because one of the things on what used to be the right wing in british politics and so on is a gradual movement to the acceptance of position of people that you simply would not have tolerated for five years ago. it is a part of the process we have seen in europe but in america as well. we all have to accept your real

moraljudgement? we have to be pragmatic. he is in the white house. he is in the white house and we have to work out what to do about him long—term. that was my original point. one thing europeans need to consider is whether this is a long—term trend to un—rely on america, and the big threat for us is whether or not that effectively lets people like the chinese in as big levers of influence because these are the people essentially that we have to do a lot of business with in the absence of an american friend. europe has been for some time quitely beefing up its own defence arrangements. as alternatives to america? yes, possibly as an alternative. and not best possible way. and not as i would say the best possible way. there is a lot of involvement with defence contractors and it is a shady business. and that is going on quietly behind the scenes. as somebody pointed out, things have changed dramatically since 1945. nato has been on the wane for some time anyway. as i said before, it is not really about nato. it is about what we do about this wild card in the most powerful

position in the world? how do we contain it, deal with it, what do we do? one thing we do is lay out the red carpet, i suppose. he's going to get to meet the queen and get a lovely dinner at blenheim palace and he is going to... and the balloon. yes, we have got to mention the balloon. the mayor of london has given position —— permission for that. a balloon of baby donald trump will be floating over london. gesture politics at its worst. we will be watching out for it. we will be back next week with dateline london to analyse what has happened at that nato meeting. and indeed, how donald trump has been received here in the uk. from all of us on the programme, until the same time next week, that is dateline london. thanks for your company, goodbye. if you are crossing your fingers

we re if you are crossing your fingers were a bit frame for the garden you be disappointed. things are looking dry in the forecast for most parts of the country but if you like you with a hot and sunny you are in for a treat because once again thunder is looking predominantly dry, lots of the strong sunshine on offer as well and it could be another warm day. more cloud across parts of scotla nd day. more cloud across parts of scotland and northern ireland so temperatures to play in the mid 20s. further south, 25— 30 across england and wales. hot and humid with again. sunday evening and overnight, we keep with the dry theme, things cool across the north—east of scotland and north—east england but sticky, humid conditions elsewhere with some of us seeing temperatures no lower than 18 overnight. one day is another dry day again, lots of sunshine, some cloud here and there,

a touch cool around the eastern coast, top temperatures not quite as hot as weekend, hires 18— 29. goodbye. isa. welcome to bbc news, broadcasting to viewers in north america and around the globe. our top stories — north korea warns that denuclearisation could be off if the us continues to insist on a one—sided process. could a rescue operation operation be imminent? thai authorities are clearing the area around a cave in which 12 boys and their football coach have been trapped. hello and welcome to bbc world news. north korea has issued strong criticism of the us, just hours after the secretary of state, mike pompeo, left pyongyang after two days of talks with the leadership there.

the foreign ministry says america made too many demands,