to cross the border into the united states near the city of tijuana. the government said some of them incited violence and encouraged others to run towards the fence that separates the two countries. a european union summit in brussels has backed the brexit agreement, marking another step towards britain's departure from the bloc. the president of the european commission, jean—claude juncker, said it was the only deal possible. the british parliament will vote on the agreement next month. the ukrainian president, petro poroshenko, says russian special forces carried out an act of aggression when they seized three ukrainian navy vessels in the kerch strait off the coast of crimea. russia says the ukrainian ships breached its territorial waters. the security council will meet on monday to discuss the crisis. it's just gone 3:30am in the morning. now on bbc news, dateline london. hello and welcome to

dateline london, bringing together in debate leading uk commentators with foreign correspondents who file their stories with the dateline london. on today's programme: theresa may exercises her muscles in brussels this weekend, but will the knock—out blow to her brexit deal be delivered at westminster? is a gulf opening up between the west and the gulf states 7 and as the british museum lends to nigeria valuable stolen bronzes, is it time to hand back the loot of empire? with me: janet daley, columnist for the sunday telegraph — nabila ramdani, who reports widely on thre arab world, us broadcaster michael goldfarb,

host of the podcast, the first rough draft of history, and the belgian journalist marc roche of the weekly magazine le point. a weekend in brussels for theresa may as she and the leaders of 27 other countries sign off on the uk's divorce from the european union. mrs may has been fending off last minute objections. brinkmanship, perhaps from countries like spain and france, hoping forfurther british concessions. because only a majority of eu countries need to approve the deal, in all likelihood the brussels summit will end in smiles and handshakes. back in london, though, the withdrawal terms face a much tougher audience. her former brexit secretary, an enthusiast for leaving, thinks the terms are worse than staying in the europeran union. with the support of the democratic unionists, a party from northern ireland, on paper the prime minister has a majority of the votes in the house of commons — just. but the dup won't back the deal, and 80 of her own conservative mps say the same. if we were to go back to the european union and say ‘people didn't like that deal can we have another one?,' i don't think they are going to come to us and say ‘we will give you a better deal‘. "this is the deal that i think works for the uk," is it a deal they shall?

as theresa may said, it is take it or leave it, this is the only deal to lead the european union and at the same time keep links with it. brexiteers are happy nearly the european union and the remaining somehow unhappy also because for many years there will be a link through the customs union. britain has no choice, this is a good deal, a compromise deal, it makes business people very happy, gives continuity to business and more than anything it gives a future to britain and europe but outside the eu. i think that people like janet who disagree should forget about delusion of grandeur, forget about going on your own, you should think this is the deal and you should embrace it for the national

interest of britain. i thought the only people who made you an offer he couldn't refuse or the mafia. —— were the mafia. this is a new political development on the world stage. there are sound reasons why people are saying it would be better to stay in and some of them mean it because they are mischievous and are remainers and want to stay in enemy and other people are saying it sincerely because what they mean is that it is a basic principle of modern democracy that the legitimacy of the law derives from the consent of the people and once you remove the principal, you are doing something that should be morally repugnant. therefore if we stay in without a voice in making the laws and rules and regulations and we accept like a colony of a conquered nation, rules that have been made by other countries, then we

are losing the plot in terms of democratic... you are a vassal of the european union, it was united and the british were disunited. this has been going on for two years and the first time i said the grass was long and this is where we would end up but i am not sure this will happen now. why are we going through this two—week long charade? she will have to write a couple of columns and when she brings this withdrawal agreement to the commons, the arithmetic as of today does not work. she is going down. perhaps that is why the other leaders have decided that it is going to be no photo call, no handshake because they don't want it

printed two weeks later when the deal is demolished. what i really talk about is, majority are majorities, 60 million people voted to remain, 17 million roughly voted to leave. the 16 million have no party that are arguing their case and parliament. oh yes they do. both parties are arguing strenuously and getting an enormous amount. . . crosstalk. what is the labour party policy? that is a complete mystery. can we talk about the specifics? the

official party line? yes. now we are going to get to what seems to be inevitable, just as julius caesar was offered the crown three times, yesterday she is theresa may was offered the question will you resign if it doesn't get through parliament, and she declined to answer. we are entering a new season of the parliamentary arithmetic is correct when she is not going to get the withdrawal agreement through then there will be a general election and then what on earth will happen? there doesn't have to be a general election, there has to be in theory a leadership election, although the party could do the same thing and decide by acclamation to appoint a caretaker who will say explicitly i will not stand at the next general election but i will see us through this period. that would be the most sane and rational way to approach. it is the only deal on the table.

britain has been renegotiating its relationship with europe for centuries but the myth... laughter ..that the uk can now throw the entire chessboard in the air and go it alone has been exposed and i think the biggest problem facing britain at the moment as the vast disconnect between ideology and practical reality. if you strip all the ideology out of brexit, the nationalism, the flag—waving and sense of exceptionalism and entitlement, you are left with mind—numbing practical problems that would potentially go on for decades if they can be resolved at all. i think the brexiteers are more excited by the idea of brexit than the reality of it and european politicians are actually slaving over fiendishly complicated divorce bills, it sums up the problems, you have hugely sensitive issues

such as gibraltar and the irish border who are the kind who would require huge amounts of time and energy and yet they are being tossed into the big brexit pot. that is the problem. the irish border problem was addressed, something everyone noticed on thursday morning, and it got lost in the shuffle. the irish border problem now miraculously the eu has decided could be solved by technological means and trusted trade agreements, they described as five minutes ago as "magical thinking." crosstalk it is very "fudgey", and there is great heavy weather being made of the fact that the withdrawal agreement still talks about the backstop and puts it into more although it would be a world stopping event and if it can be resolved

as everyone who knows about these things that says it can, with technology and trusted trade agreements, and the backstop disappears and the need for us to stay in the customs union and definitely disappears. now various outright contradiction between the withdrawal agreement is legally binding. business people listen to your business people. no, some businesspeople. can i take you back to the question i asked right at the beginning, it feels like a lifetime ago now, is this summit charade if it is going to be defeated at westminster? the whole bloody thing is a charade! what is probably going to happen now as they managed no deal,

we are going to get no deal and come out and it is going to be much less traumatic than everybody has been claiming it would be. within six months, everything will settle back. crosstalk in six months i am calling janet. people will continue. we will have your back together maybe around six months to see if that has come to pass. us president donald trump has concluded that it doesn't matter whether or not saudi arabia's crown prince knew in advance about the plan to murder jamal khashoggi. the united states will remain a steadfast partner, he said, regardless. uk officials appeared a bit more embarassed about their partnership — 200 of its military engaged in a joint exercise this weekend. not that all is well in uk—gulf relations. the british have courted displeasure with their efforts to sponsor a ceasefire in the war being waged in yemen. on wednesday, a court in the united arab emirates jailed

for life a post—graduate student the uae says is a spy. the british foreign secretary warned of serious diplomatic consequences. there are signs as the weekend is upon us that the uae is sending a different signal about this case, it is possible this young man could eventually be released, but there seems to have been real shock at the sentence, and a kind of disconnect between what the british were thinking would happen and what actually happened. this is a horrific story that has captured the imagination of the british audience and public for all the right reasons. and the uae is currently considering clemency and there are talks for a presidential pardon given the relationship between the uae and i think it is likely to be granted.

i think this is also probably in response to the public outcry which has been led by the media, of course, but the british government, diplomats seem to have been taken by surprise by the sentence. and you would have thought british diplomats would have looked more closely into this case, especially as it involved an alleged british agent being charged for spying. there's something changing about the relationship between the west and the gulf states? in the past they have been thought of as close allies, the west not always keen to call out some of the things happening that it might normally not approve of in those countries, broadly following a foreign policy line that the western approved of. i think with all these cases that you've highlighted actually shows the abject amorality of the west, including britain relations with super rich gulf states. both parties in this cosy relationship pretend they can keep

this together, and that the petrol dollar profits can keep flogging whatever happens. the truth is that the gulf states will do whatever they want as long as they remain one of the markets for british arms and can assist in the west and perpetrating devastating prosecuting devastating wars against middle eastern north african countries. due process or any kind ofjustice actually goes out of the window if countries such as the uae and saudi arabia do what they have in mind. meanwhile, i have to say, britain pretends to impose civilised values, when in fact the west‘s entire value system is based on multi—billion dollar profits and the maintenance of security on its own terms. what do you make of donald trump's remarks this week that we are going to remain steadfast partners and says it doesn't matter whether of not crown prince knew about it. it's interesting.

there is one thing you can say, the man does actually say without any diplomatic hailing about, what the truth of the relationship is which is very similar to what nabila just being said. there has existed going back 50 years or more a perfect feedback loop. we give them money for oil, the ship a considerable amount back in forms of arms purchases and the us has never broken from that so when trump says they're going to buy $150 billion worth of arms, no such order exists. the usual trumpian lies and tweets but it does not matter because he is saying an essential fact that when he says "if we do not

trade with them somebody else will." he does not mean britain, he means russian and china. russia will not trade with them because they train with iran and that will become a problem but china will trade with anyone. he'll say that. this props up the house of saudi and the continued acts like they are which is essentially an absolute feudal monarchy and saudi arabia's economy is feudal, in a sense. the money goes into the family and gets distributed to other tribes and people and this is what sustains the economy. unfortunately, the harsh reality is the crown prince can and it is alleged, sent a hit squad to turkey and literally butcher a dissidentjournalist it wasn't even a dissident.

he was part of the insider group who was saying in public you are not the reform of you used to be. clarissa is now be considered for matthew hedges, it seems to have caught the nitish foreign office on the hop. —— british foreign office. these situations are so opaque that we don't actually know how much people knew what they knew and it is difficult to read these situations but it is, on the face of it, appalling and it is a very peculiar way for a country that considers itself to be an ally to behave. why would the british be sending a secret agent to a country that is an ally? there isn't even any plausible pretext for doing so and they were not claiming he was an agent for some other country, for britain, something has gone seriously wrong. and that doesn't bode well for the long term relationship. if there are are all these fractures opening up. at the end of the day,

you know... the main arms dealer with the uae as france and salt for france —— and so. to criticise the uae is out of the question. if you are going to dubai you have this marvellous model but it is a nastier human rights abuse because i never going to cover this poor model accused of prostitution, she got torture, no lawyer and only the intervention of the president... these poor indian workers in dubai who do not have a president or a foreign secretary, those are nasty places. there seems to be more susceptibility to public opinion now. i think the crown prince and saudi arabia has been a great end and i think that is because it was very bad optics in washington and so i think they are not invulnerable

to public opinion as we might once have thought. one other thing, in the case of donald trump, he does so much personal business with all the gulf monarchs and the saudis and this is actually potentially dangerous for him although i don't think he recognises it. the american constitution, there is a section that works to try and prevent the creation of aristocracy and within that paragraph there is a clause which says the chief executive cannot profit personally from relations with other countries. qatar has taken out a massive lease on his son—in—law's trophy building which was losing vast sums of money and now they have guaranteed he will be in profit. the saudis whenever they are in washington... we're getting off the subject. the point is that there's no reason for donald trump to stand up to the saudis because he personally, it seems, profiting from this.

no previous american leader has either. never. it's the unfinished business of europe's colonial past — the treasures from africa and asia held by the collections of empire. this week, the governor of easter island pleaded for the british museum in london to return one of its giant statues, taken by british soldiers in the 1850s as a gift for queen victoria. the governor said, "you have our soul". the museum has, though, announced it will loan another stolen treasure, the benin bronzes, to a museum in nigeria. on friday, a report commissioned from a french art historian and a senegalese writer, recommended that the law should be altered to the allow cultural works to be returned. janet, it's pretty straighforward, they were stolen and should go back. well, some of them are stolen, they

we re well, some of them are stolen, they were given. this is a very dangerous and complex situation and what is at risk as the very idea of a global museum, it will resume in which cultures can be compared and displayed to a world audience, it is a kind of cultural ethnic cleansing in which everything has to go backward where it came from. would you carry it to the extent of the italian renaissance paintings in america being sent back to italy? they were not stolen, they were bought. but they were bought by very rich people, and there were many who would say that that was a corrupt use of wealth. there is a difference between that and punitive expeditions that went to other countries? that is a difference between religious relics and burial remains, that is a different case, but art objects, if you are going to decide that art objects belong to the world, that there is a benefit in the cross—cultural meeting, we were all into inter—cultural

things now... they were taken by military means and that is why macron decided to give back 26 statues. the louvre and the british museum have too many works of art. anyone who wants to see the great benin bronzes will have to go to nigeria. yes, and i think will be very important in the development if you do not give it back you also help this country to create a museum and create curators. i think the status of art stolen during the days of powerful european empires is part of a new ongoing process of decolonisation. decolonisation does not just

happened with a declaration or the lowering of a flag, it goes on for decades and these are part of it all. the main difficulty in dealing with colonial art as it is worth millions and nobody likes to give up assets that are worth millions. another important aspect is that gallery owners in the west believe that if works are displayed in museums such as the louvre for example, it will be seen by far more people and be safer than as opposed to be displayed in relatively isolated places in africa. we were just talking about the gulf. louvre has opened up in abu dhabi and is going to build even more tourism, the rich get richer. it is the story of the gulf states. i don't think you can come up with a single view about returning art because every set of objects and state is different. that was the criticism that the director of the v&a made when this macron plan

was originally announced, it was a sort of all—guilty approach. everybody knows i am a liberal, not. i hate that word. but if you think of some countries why not send to nigeria the benin bronzes for six months? look why this happened.. —— on the other hand, nabila's going to say, look why this happened.. there fantastic treasures destroyed by isis and in many parts of the world unfortunately — and you will say the west is the cause for this and civility, and you would have a point. but nevertheless they are actually safer and it was part of the treasure house of humanity,

of civilisation, all humanity and all the civilizations of 8,000 years, then i'd rather they be kept safe in the subbasement of the louvre than perhaps be returned to a country that in ten years will overrun by civil war. you cannot decide who is innocent enough to hold the great works. why should only rich tourists see it? oh, mass tourism. and belongs to the national countries. you would have to be richer to go to nigeria to see the benin bronzes than to take the eurostar to paris! if you are nigeria and belongs to you so why cant you see why do you have to go to the louvre? why can't you decide your great artworks belongs to the world, that this is no longer a kind of parochial concern and just your national interest? these constitute a world of comparative culture and if you destroy the idea

of the comparative historical museum there will be no scope any longer for cultures existing side by side. it belongs to the rich world. you mean only rich people go to museums? yes, you know it very well! and it is very important that the people of nigeria can see it and that this art is sent back, it is not ours. is the solution, loans that sometimes never ends? on a more diplomatic approach that macron took when he pledged to return some of the works back to africa but you notice the only makes this kind of declaration during his trips to africa. —— he only makes. do you want africa to disappear from the world cultural stage? that is a question we will have to leave in the air, thank you all very much.

i hope we will not be sent back from whence we came. that's it for dateline london for this week — we're back next week at the same time. goodbye. hello. there is some sunshine in the forecast for monday. not for absolutely everybody. the best of the weather will be across western areas of the uk. whereas further east, it's likely to remain fairly chilly and cloudy. so overall, another fairly chilly day on the way for many of us, for the start of the new working week. this is what it looks like early hours of monday morning. a fair bit of cloud across many eastern parts of the country. the temperatures in towns and cities will be around 3—5 degrees, but outside of town,

particularly where we would have had the clear skies overnight, there will be some frost. and the forecast for monday itself, still a bit of an easterly wind around these north sea coasts. this is where it's going to be cloudy and even some showers around across the north—east of england, but western areas will have sunshine. so from cardiff all the way up to the lake district, western isles of scotland, looking absolutely fine. then gradually, as we go over the next couple of days, the weather will go downhill. by wednesday, milder, wetter and windier. welcome to bbc news, broadcasting to viewers in north america and around the globe. i'm reged ahmad. our top stories: mexico says it will deport a group of migrants who forcefully attempted to cross the border into the united states. after 20 months of negotiation, european union leaders endorse the terms of a brexit deal. now theresa may has to sell it back home. i will take this deal back

to the house of commons, confident we have achieved the best deal available, and full of optimism about the future of our country. in parliament and beyond it, i will make the case for this deal with all my heart. russian special forces seize three ukrainian navy vessels off the coast of crimea in a sharp escalation of tensions. and as the un releases confronting data about the rates of violence against women, we have a special report from el salvador.