tens of thousands have taken to the streets of venezuela in rival mass rallies as the opposition leader won quite is trying to take leadership from nicolas maduro. russia has announced it is pulling out of a cold war arms control treaty and says it will develop a new hypersonic missiles. it follows a move to withdraw from the treaty by the united states on friday. the governor of the us state of virginia, ralph northam, has refused to resign after he was accused of being in a racist photo in his yearbook. he says the person in the photo is not him. now on bbc news, dateline london. hello and welcome to dateline london.

i'm carrie gracie. this week, questions for the united states in venezuela and in yemen. and the british prime minister wins parliamentary backing for something?sort of. my guests today: eunice goes, the portugese writer american broadcaster michael goldfarb alex deane, who's a conservative commentator and the french algerian journalist nabila ramdani. welcome to you all. but with less than two months to go till b—day, what alternative can the british prime ministerfind to the troubled irish backstop that i gets her an eu withdrawal agreement with brussels that she can also push through her own parliament? i think that this has been real progress, because the challenge from ourfriends in brussels, from the time we voted to leave

the european union over two years ago has been at not unreasonably, what do you want britain? and for the first time, this is our parliament sort of exposing a majority view in favour of something. which is, very significant process since the prime minister failed the deal on the so—called meaningful votes which as we take all of the withdrawal agreement is negotiated with brussels, except we need that backstop to be changed or rearranged in a certain way that would be agreeable to the parties. that is more easily said than done. but the significant thing as rather than focusing on that stumbling block which is easy to focus on, focus on everything that has been agreed by our parliament, because these things have to go through both sets of political authorities. the european anti—british. the british parliament have just expressed approval for the withdrawal agreement in its entirety, for the expression of the backstop, that is process progress. eunice, it you are shaking your head. essentially, what was agreed

was agreement on unicorns, because those alternative arrangements do not exist yet and we don't know when they will exist. the reality is the backstop has been a pretext to stall at the whole brexit project, because the people are raising objections to the backstop, they do not want to deal with european union. they want to leave the european union without a deal. if it wouldn't be for the irish backstop, it would be something else. so you don't believe any good faith? i do not believe in a good... no. absolutely not. it is really shocking the scenes in parliament this week were really shocking to see. a parliament pretty much giving up on its power, on its ability to influence such an important decision that it is going to affect the lives of britons for decades to come. this is really, really serious. we are seeing britain being the victim of a political class that has abandoned any sense of responsibility towards the people that it's supposed to represent. essentially, what everyone

is playing at as for how long can i hang onto power, for how long can i play on to power to get to power and so on. and who suffers with this? are what british voters. the irish backstop is a pretext, the irish backstop is there. let's have the others have a view on that. first, you we've had two very different analysis of the week we have seen in westminster. which i do with? i have to say, at the moment, nobody really knows what those alternative arrangements are and i suspect the eu will be willing to engage in renegotiations if those alternative arrangements are fleshed out. but this can take a great deal of time and after two years of waiting, time is really in short supply and i think that hammering out renegotiating deal, in record time is highly responsible and could have grave consequences but i think it is highly significant and the whole brexit process is finally boiling down to the northern ireland issue. if you issues in recent

history has been divisive, have been more divisive than the future of the six counties and now it has been combined with another issue that leads to justice much angry disagreement. and i've been to northern ireland, recently and i'm particularly disturbed to see a senior british politicians discussing its future in such a cavalier fashion. conservatives especially, the most extreme brexiteers are guilty of this, because it seems that they are prepared to accept any deal, voiced by mrs me as long as the backstop is recast. yes, yes or no on whether you think it's recast double, and that she can get something passed europe. i think the primary role of the backstop is to avoid a hard border on the islands of ireland and i think this is particularly important. i spent time in belfast recently and i've seen in the wall separating irish nationalist and loyalist communities, curfews

are still in place and there is every possibility of hostilities resuming of hard resuming if hardboard is returned. michael, we have had two pessimists about the week we've just seen in westminster, one relative optimised, where do you set? essentially, i know we don't remember anything anymore. part of tweet we sent out, two weeks ago, i was done two weeks ago, i was done in parliament on the night of the big float when theresa may got defeated.

a historic defeat. more than any kind of parliamentary form of democracy, that is a ready resignation moment. she's got to go. here we are, two weeks later and everything is fine. she came into parliament, she said with the irish backstop as negotiated in the withdrawal agreement, this is the best i can do, this is the agreement was that he or she is two weeks later, we can reopen it. what i have learned in these last two weeks is that something that i think the europeans who are negotiating know is that in fact, in this country, the drg, the hardback sitting tail of the conservative party wags the entire dog. —— the erg, the hard—brexiting tail. the entire country, notjust england but scotland and northern ireland and i think the european view is, they shouldn't be wagging the rest of europe either. many of the suggestions about how to avoid the hard border were explored over the last two years, david davis had his idea, borisjohnson had his ideas about a camera on the border, you don't need to look inside. it's been gone over, is not that we have arrived at this point and suddenly said we can have some flexibility. this is a way i think of pushing...

it is a european negotiation. you push things to the last minute and at 11:59pm on march 29, suddenly everything happens. it's like speed chess and i think that is what they are doing what is didn't make it's a dangerous game. these things always tend to go late but i don't agree that people have forgotten the lessons of the last two years, we should have been prepping before that because we fail to prepare for one side of the binary outcome that we had. i don't think we have failed to learn lessons. nor do i think people are being cavalier about the future of our country. i'm certainly not, but the point about the so—called backstop is nobody wants it. nobody actually wants to have to call it into b. —— into being. all of the party say they don't want it and act. no insurance policy has an infinite period, you have to renew your policy from time to time. i imagine that one of the ways

we will see the so—called backstop become acceptable to parties around the eu as it has a time deadline set on it. if i couldn't say, that time deadline could be a very long one, ten or 20 years if invoked after the transition period has been completed. so are you saying that we see the irish leader go to brussels this week and that despite the kind of absolute know we have seen to renegotiating any of this, that actually, behind closed doors, he is going to come under pressure. —— absolute no. there will be a conversation about the irish getting a deal as a whole over the line which had been not having a deal, and the europeans getting the 39 billion but on the timing point, i agree with michael, it goes late. it will go, we won't see a final situation yet, it won't be this week, next week. theresa may has promised votes around valentine's day. i imagine those votes will be basically... it's interesting to say i went down to parliament for my pod cast a couple of weeks ago for that big vote and i ran into a couple of old colleagues who covered...

did you think 25 years ago we would be in the situation today having the same arguments? nobody could believe it. one of them said, i have no idea what is going on. reporters after two years of covering a story are commenting on a story, you sort of know what is going to happen. nobody knows what is going to happen, yet. there we are going to have to leave this one and we will come back to it next week and the week after and the week after that, probably. you will get a chance. let me want a story we don't cover often enough. venezuela should be rich but instead it is desperate, despite vast energy reserves millions of venezuelans are fleeing hyperinflation, shortages and crime. the man who presided over this crisis clings to power while a challenger calls protestors onto the streets. where is this haddad? i think it probably is dangerous, but one of the things from almost a different hemisphere on the side

of the ocean as we don't really have a sense of what is happening on the streets there. i had reporting trip to venezuela about a decade ago and i listen to the programme made out of that and i think the critical thing that has changed is that it was a similar kind of crisis. people were out of the streets protesting against hugo chavez but when i went, there were quite a few people that still supported chalmers. —— cavez. —— chavez. madero seems to be losing the chavez supporters. that climb up the hillsides around caracas. 3 million people have fled the country but there is also another element. there is the almost two centuries of involvement of the united states of america. notjust in latin america

but in the caribbean region and... if there's going to be a real solution, it's going to have to come from inside venezuela itself, what's this particular administration, the trump administration has done so far doesn't make me terribly hopeful, because the person they have put on this is a guy called elliott abrams. we are going to come back to the us involvement in a moment but ijust want to focus on the inside characters, i don't think we know enough. a lot of us don't know enough about them. it's an interesting dictatorship. there is an opposition. hundreds of thousands of people marched in caracas. there is a brutal police repression but it isn't a kind of totalitarian... he tweeted over the last week he is indestructible. is he? maduro? he is destructible. he can take the easy way out, we keep seeing a picture of a russian plane on the tarmac outside caracas.

he can be in cuba in an hour. he could be at a number of places. one assumes if he is halfway decent at hisjob, he has a swiss bank account full of enough money to see him through the rest of his life. he can be got rid of. he is not chavez. who is guaido? no one knows. relatively unknown, what else? i think he has the benefit of being a fresh face of venezuelan politics, completely untainted by the past, so no association to the completely corrupt political party that used to govern venezuela before chavez and this is not an approval of the regime of travers, but he appeared and was elected and re—elected because of what was before was very far from perfect. so guaido is completely untainted by the past.

he is charismatic and he managed to assemble the support of almost overwhelming support of the international community, russia, china, iran and other countries are not ready to recognise him as the interim and very soon to be president. the problem for him, the risk for him now is managing at the support of the us. because if the us decides to become very muscular and tries to organise a military intervention in venezuela, this can undermine his legitimacy in the eyes of the venezuelan people, he will be seen as a puppet of the united states and in venezuela, in the whole of american region, the united states and united states government has a terrible reputation. i think he has to navigate his line very clearly, he had an interview with al—jazeera last night where he did not rule out the possibility of a military intervention. i think he has to be very careful, because at the moment, he has a lot of popular

backing in venezuela, a lot of international backing, he should not throw away all of that capital that easily. we are talking on what a saturday morning, venezuelan time and it is a big weekend with the protests called, with the deadlines that the eu powers have set on maduro calling new elections. what do you think would make the military chain side at this moment is? —— change sides at this point? do you think, big crowds on venezuelan cities will do it? it has to be said that the absolute tragedy of the venezuelan situation is it has been trying for years. it has been trying to impose an ideology rather than pragmatically dealing with endemic social and economic problems. it's almost been six years since maduro has been in power taking over from his mentor, hugo chavez.

in elections that were widely viewed as fraudulent. and he has pledged that the chavez style, socialist project would remain in place and effectively, that meant a war against capitalism, rather than trying to sort out the problem in an effective manner. things have got worse ever since and now you've got constant rioting, rampant inflation, refugee crisis and extreme poverty. while the country is descending an absolute horror for the venezuelan citizens, the prospect of a looming presence of trump's america is not helping. america has participated in the overthrow of dozens of latin american governments, openly or covertly and there are even claims now that trump's america is trying to assassinate maduro. do you think america should stay right away and not because it —— not be getting involved, at all?

this kind of meddling often involves america appointing its own strongman and that is exacting what trump is doing withjuan guaido and regime change by america is of great concern indeed. it's easy to forget that venezuela has the greatest oil reserves in the world, by far, more than saudi arabia. america has already imposed sanctions on the venezuelan state oil firm, pdvsa, and crippled its shipments, which amount to almost all of venezuela's exports. given america's legacy in its involvement in oil wars, it wouldn't be surprising if america got sucked and... people would say... i wouldn't over—focus on oil, the social crisis is what's important. america has very bad history. one other aspect you have to remember is venezuela has very close ties to america. when i was on this trip a decade ago, i met a woman, solid chavista,

solid socialist, her son was in america playing baseball. there is constant interchange, this is the dynamic that people up here don't realise about american relations into latin america. it's familial, except that your big brother is also a bully. it makes for a very difficult dynamic. a lot gets put at the doorstep of america but it's notjust the americans that have a responsibility to take a position on these questions, albeit proximity and history means they may be more urged to do so than others. we are too, and the british government's position has been to recognise his rival of late. the trouble i think for our country taking a unified position on something which could be something we could rally around and have a specific position

on is that there is a very small portion of our left which are still in love with the idea of the socialist south american country which was completely accurately described, the possession of an ideology, running a country into the ground. it is that part of the 19705 obsessive leftism that is now running the labour party and jeremy corbyn remains one of these people who are in love the idea of a socialist republic... if he was here, he wouldn't say he was in love with it but obviously he has said outside interferences are unhelpful and other senior labourfigures have said regime change, remember iraq, libya, which is a fair points. there are fair points on those lines. but history will look back and say theresa may had an easier run over the brexit period, because labour was led by corbyn as that of anyone else. —— instead of anyone else. we're not going back to brexit. the thing is i haven't read or been in touch with anyone who thinks that regime change is imminent. what i worry about, what i was saying earlier, is that the point people, the trump administration has

on this, make me very nervous. i understand. john bolton, men who like to swagger around. but i think there is reality and there is no appetite for any kind of military intervention maduro is more likely to implode than anything else. respecting calendars and expecting a new free and fair elections, organised very soon. i think next maduro does not resign, what are the next steps? the position of the international community has to be cautious. letting the venezuelans also try to find their own domestic solution. i agree with that but what you said was, why are we talking about corbyn? from my position, and in our country, he is the closest we get to an apologist for that regime which explains... he is the leader of the opposition,

has no power in this particular. we are not going to get... we're not going to descend into a discussion at this point about uk policy on venezuela, because we actually need to move on to another country which i suppose is a cautionary tale on what can happen when outside powers line up behind competing presidents, because last year... last year the world's worst man—made humanitarian disaster was yemen and this year it's still yemen. according to a new us intelligence assessment, the war there has lefti million people with cholera and 16 million with no reliable access to drinking water and food. the us congress is increasingly uneasy about supporting a saudi led bombing campaign which costs civilian lives. but who will do what to end yemen's misery? i'm going to let you start on this one. referring to brexit as a catastrophe is accurate, some people describe it as a catastrophe, venezuela is of course an absolute disaster but the horrors that are still going on in yemen really are something else.

this has been highlighted in a recent documentary by your correspondent — effectively some 90% of the country's population are now an urgent need of humanitarian aid. this savage war is still ongoing alongside famine and disease, at least 10,000 civilians have died since the conflict started in 2015 and as you said, a million people have cholera in the country and despite all this, you have countries like britain who have been pouring arms into the area for years and they are quite content to see a coalition led by their allies, saudi arabia tearing yemen apart, trump america is also supporting this saudi—led coalition, despite attempts by opposition senators to change american policy, but is an example of how much cynicism is involved, after thousands of mines that

are killing and maiming children around the red sea port of hodeida, and mines were a major issue in britain a few years ago. the uk and the us should be trying to help but instead they are making things worse? we have a responsibility, south yemen was a british protectorate, and one might argue that attempts to solve the conflict are admirable but we have learned the hard way in recent years, you generally can't bomb your way to peace. that's the approach the saudis, who i imagine they are trying to end this conflict and reinstate the government which was being challenged by the rebels, who after all, hold the capital. that's how theyjustify their actions. but my point would be, there is no real good guy, here. salah, until his overthrow, wanted to be president for life, tried to have the constitution suspended. his deputy for many years, then basically led to the same kind

of regime that he had been in before and now, wants to break up the region come into far more autonomous arrangements so that effectively, he can control your money a great deal better. there is no good guy. you could argue, from raw politics perspective, put all your forces behind one side in that and try to finish the conflict. that's as good as it can get for defending the current actions. just one quick one on the us, it's interesting to see another move in congress to call out president trump on his support of the saudi bombing and that coalition which he could argue he has picked a side. where do you see that going? i'm not sure i see it going anywhere, because in the end, it gets completely pegged down by domestic politics. republicans in the senate, we saw this throughout the whole syria thing. yes, they want to either go in and be the good guys

or they want to pull back and be whatever but when there is a republican president or republican dominated senate, majority will not contradict donald trump. he has a whole range of different relationships with which we don't have time to go into in terms of saudi arabia because of business things, and we will see what happens there. i do think when i was listening to nabila, there is something she said, the focus seems to be on the uk and the us... we have seen germany has said that we are not going to sell any more weapons into that region. two days later, the leading arms exporter in germany said, hold on a second, it's business, don't go there. but what i really think we need to focus on is saudi arabia and what it's playing out in dismembering this country, which sits just on its southern border and we haven't mentioned the iranian

dynamic which has been alleged. last words, we are running out of time. we have 20 seconds i'm afraid. this is essentially yemen is yet another proxy war. as michael said, conflict between war for domination of the middle is between saudi arabia and iran and then the outside players who are subsidising those two are the big players. in the end it is the people who are the real victims, the raw sufferers and there is no end in sight, because the un is trying to do its best to keep a very fragile ceasefire but no one, no one seems to be interested in doing something to make it a reality to make sure that at the very least humanitarian aid starts to flow into the country much needed humanitarian aid. i'm afraid, we are going to have to leave it. that's all we have time for this week. do join us again next week same time same place. but for now thank you for watching, and goodbye. hello, it's been a very wintry start to february, hello.

snow has been the most prominent feature of the weather over much of the last week. but at least on saturday, the sunshine came back. but that's going to be harder to find through much of sunday. as cloud increases, some of us will see a bit more wet weather. but that comes after quite a hard frost to start the day. in fact, some places could well be into minus double figures, where the snow is deepest. you can see the extent of the frost as well, even in town and city centres, it's a cold start to the day. but for many of us, there will be some sunshine, but from the word go, northern ireland and western scotland, more cloud around here and some rain, sleet and snow, courtesy of these weather fronts coming in from the atlantic. and slowly pushing their way a bit

further east as we go through the day. now, the early wet weather should be fairly soon out of the way in northern ireland. a damp start here. but again, the rain preceded by a bit of sleet and snow in places, and in that process, moves across scotland. into northern england, mayjust fringe north wales. but south of that, it should stay mainly dry. cloud increasing, but still some sunny spells towards east anglia and south—east england. behind the wet weather, it brightens up again in scotland. but it stays cloudy in northern ireland. further outbreaks of rain coming back going into the evening. and temperatures, they‘ re a little bit higher. parts of south—west england could be up to around 10 celsius, for example. and a freshening south—westerly wind. it gets stronger through sunday night and into monday morning, as it feeds in more wet weather, and while most of us will see rain out of this, a bit of snow falling into the pennines and southern uplands, but especially into the higher ground north of the central belt in scotland, where we could see around 5—10 centimetres building up as we go through monday as well. it will be quite slow to clear, on what will be a much less cold start to the day on monday. some rainjust affecting parts

of south—east england as monday starts. it may not clear the far south—east. it looks like we'll hold onto an area of cloud here in east anglia. the snowy weather slowly pulling away from northern scotland, and many other areas will see things brightening up on monday. and temperatures again are a little bit higher, and some of us in south—west england getting into double figures. they will drop again on monday night and this ridge of high pressure with clear skies, there'll be another frost going into tuesday morning. low pressure gathering to the west, though, sets the scene for quite an unsettled week to come. now, there will be some sunnier days, but there will also be some wetter days. it will often be windy, but if you take one thing. from this chart, it is those temperatures will head upwards. more of us at times will see temperatures into double figures, and of course, that's going to feel very different compared to what we've had over much of the past week or two. so a change for the milder

in the week ahead. you are watching bbc news. our top stories: tens of thousands take to the streets of venezuela in rival mass rallies for and against president nicolas maduro. russia says it will follow the us, pulling out of a key nuclear the mood is relaxed here but the intent is serious, to send a message to nicolas maduro that time is up. russia says it will follow the us, pulling out of a key nuclear treaty, and also developing a new range of missiles. virginia governor ralph northam refuses to quit and insists he is not the person in a racist photo. in the hour was sent and made my statement yesterday, i reflected with my family and classmates from the time and affirmed my conclusion