troops will probably start within weeks. the us—backed fighters are meeting fierce resistance from is as they clash over the last remaining is enclave in eastern syria. a chinese state media outlet has released a video appearing to show abdurehim heyit, a prominent uighur musician previously reported to have died in a detention camp. turkey had said that it had confirmation of his death and had called on china to close the camps. pressure is growing for tougher rules on new mines and dams in brazil after the collapse of a dam last month left hundreds dead or missing. the mayor of a town in which a mining dam collapsed in 2015 says the mining companies have learned nothing since then. sally bundock is coming up next with

the reefing. now on bbc news, hardtalk. —— briefing. welcome to hardtalk. i'm sarah montague. my guest is one of france's most famous authors despite having written just two novels. one of them, lullaby, about infanticide, has been translated into a0 languages. the other, and dell, has shocked people about breaking taboos about women and sex addict —— six edition. —— six addiction. what draws her to such dark visions of femininity? welcome to hardtalk. your novel,

adele, being published the first time in english, is about a woman addicted to sex. she goes in search of cold, brutal, encounters. were you setting out to shock? are not at all. when you are writing a book you're not thinking ok, i am going to shock my readers and writers that are taboo. no, you just want to explore the soul of someone and try to understand the character, someone who is mysterious, someone who fascinates you. adele was fascinating me so ijust try fascinates you. adele was fascinating me so i just try to understand her and i was hoping that maybe my reader would feel some

empathy for her. it's quite hard to feel empathy for her because she is not a particularly nice character. no, she is not nice but she is suffering and she doesn't understand herself. she tries to figure it out why she is acting like she is acting that she doesn't know. i think she is completely lost and very lonely. feeling empathy does not mean that you are going to like someone but that you are going to recognise the fa ct that you are going to recognise the fact that here is a human being and here is a suffering like you can suffer. 0k, here is a suffering like you can suffer. ok, but she is not a typical female role. you setting out to subvert stereotypes? i can know but i remember my father told me when i was a teenager, one day will people will recognise women will have as many flaws as men and that day we will be equal. when people realise that women have dark side, like men. the fact we always want women to be nice, gentle and soft. a think it is a tool to dominate them and put them

ina box. a tool to dominate them and put them in a box. i think it's very important to explore also our floors and dark sides. and she has some. she is not soft and night and gentle in any way some stock she is also a mother. it's an interesting mix of the mix that i suppose in part you set out to explore as well. yes. she isa set out to explore as well. yes. she is a mother, she is a wife, she is a journalist. in a certain way, she has it all. but she is disappointed by all that because i suppose that eve ryo ne by all that because i suppose that everyone told her, you know, you should marry and have a child and have good job and a nice apartment in paris and you will be happy. i think that she discovers that she is not. and she finds her husband boring. she finds motherhood tedious and very difficult and she finds that herjob as a journalist is not that herjob as a journalist is not that interesting. she is very lazy, too, another floor. —— that interesting. she is very lazy, too, anotherfloor. —— flaw. she wa nted too, anotherfloor. —— flaw. she wanted more. they wanted to ask this

question, a lot of women want more but they don't get to say express the fact that they want more than a husband, a child and a job. the fact that they want more than a husband, a child and a joblj the fact that they want more than a husband, a child and ajob. i have two ask you, she, like you, was a failed actress turned journalist and had a child and it is a remarkable similar journey had a child and it is a remarkable similarjourney to you. but she has a sex addiction. maybe she had a passion like i have, she would probably not be in the situation she is in. you talk about the freedom. when you give life, having a child, there is also something that dies in you. you are in grief for something in your path, you feel a certain nostalgia for the peak —— for the woman you were before. is that how you felt? yes i felt that something new was beginning, something wonderful, and of course i loved my son but i have to say the first feeling i had when i looked at my

son for the first time was not loved it was fear. fear that something could happen to him and fair of the fa ct could happen to him and fair of the fact that someone was depending on me and that i would never be alone again. —— fear. and that i would never be able to be completely selfish again, someone who was counting on me and it was terrifying. when adele came out, the response in morocco, i think surprised you. because of the conversations it opened up with women. yemen, a lot of women came to meet and talk to me about their sexual life. —— yeah. they talked about their intimacy. they said that they identified with adele because she lives all the time. in morocco, sexual intercourse is forbidden, homosexually is forbidden, abortion is forbidden so a lot of women have to lie when it comes to sexual

topics. and your family are from morocco? yes, and i was born and raised there. were you surprised by the things they were saying? yes, i was surprised by the things they we re was surprised by the things they were saying and i was surprised by the fact that they wanted so much to speak out and i was surprised by the fa ct speak out and i was surprised by the fact that the more that you speak and the more you conquer your dignity. in the beginning, the middle —— women were speaking like this and the more they spoke to me and the more they were standing up and the more they were standing up and looking at me in the eyes and i felt like they were saying their story and it was helping them to heel and to feel that maybe their story counts. which has prompted you to put an sa together. jelena exactly. of what had been said to you and what your response was. ——an essay. what you talk about torture,

not a tragedy. those are the effects ofa not a tragedy. those are the effects of a woman who chooses to be free? not a tragedy. those are the effects of a woman who chooses to be free ?|j thought that everyone and every human being wants to be free and for me it was like obvious. it is not. actually, a lot of people prefer security to freedom or money to freedom and it's very difficult to choose to be free because you must be able to sacrifice a lot if you choose to be free. i think it is difficult for women because you are educated as a woman to be a giver and to take care of others, your children, your parents, and to be able to sacrifice herself as a motherfor able to sacrifice herself as a mother for your children so when you choose to be free you have two also choose to be free you have two also choose to be free you have two also choose to disappoint people and sometimes to be selfish to do just what you want to do and it's very difficult i think. there is another layer in morocco you have explored which is this idea that actually, if

you choose to be free, for example, in your sexual relations, you are then outcast from your society. yes, you are a pariah, you are marginalised. that is for sure. what was very, very sad is that for women who chose to be free and at the end isaidi who chose to be free and at the end i said i admire you so much, you are so i said i admire you so much, you are so brave and they set no, i am not parade and —— i am not brave and they wouldn't choose to be free. it didn't worth it. do you blame islamic society for that or what other reasons for that? is there a connection to his lamp, can you have that freedom for women in an islamic society? i wouldn't say with islam i would say with religion. any religious society is very hard towards individual rights. it's the same in some regions of the us, it is the same in ireland, you saw it

with abortion and things like this. it is not only islam, it is religion. any form of religion is incompatible with freedom for women? i think, yes. which says what about the arabic world? we have to debate and evolve, of course. there are questions but i think there is an abolition. if you seek the abolition of my mother and her mother, they have much more rights than my grandmother had. but you are living in france? yes, but it doesn't mean i don't like what it means for life in morocco. my mother lives there. let's turn to your other book lulla by. let's turn to your other book lullaby. it was a publishing sensation and one that front is's most prestigious literary prize. —— france. you were inspired by a story in new york of a nanny who killed the two children in her care. why

ta ke the two children in her care. why take that on? actually, i was not inspired by this story, i was writing the book when i discovered the story. writing the book about a nanny coming into the family. i had written 100 pages and sent it to my publisher and he said yes, i like the idea that the book is a little bit boring. it's always the same. you have to find something to put some tension in the narrative so the reader wants to read the book. one day i was reading the newspaper and i read about this crime in new york. i began to research about this kind of crimes and it was at crime in —— there was also a crime in strasberg. i also read about the british nanny that went to the us so i had the idea to go to the book about the murder of the children. what it has been praised for is, in a sense, depicting modern mothering and an examination of what it is doing to society. the idea that in a sense you are outsourcing something that

is an intimate relationship, commodified in it. , but in a certain way you wouldn't ask this question for a man because it is very natural that a man would outsource it. either to his wife or a nanny. —— yeah. but to a woman, you always feel guilty to outsource it as though it was your duty to ta ke it as though it was your duty to take her of your children and you don't see the same, the thing in the same way for men. so no, i wanted to ask the question, is it possible to haveit ask the question, is it possible to have it all? i belong to a generation of women to have our mothers said you can have it all, you can have a job, you can have children, marry or not marry, you can do whatever you want, you are free women. today we have everything, we get contrast that it is very, very difficult to be at the same time apple to mother, a good professional, a good individual. ——to be a good mother. professional, a good individual. --to be a good mother. but the

children are murdered. literature is not there to give a message, it is just a story. sir ken you have it all? yu, i think so. --so can you haveit all? yu, i think so. --so can you have it all. —— yeah, i have it all. it is just have it all. —— yeah, i have it all. it isjust a have it all. —— yeah, i have it all. it is just a story for the bid is not that every nanny is quoted killed children because one nanny killed children because one nanny killed two children. in real life, the maturity of nannies are wonderful women who help you to be at the same time a mother and a professional. it is not because of that that every nannies are killers. and so, the outsourcing is necessary if you want. i think everybody needs help and it is not ashamed to ask for help. and also in this book, again, it is the subverting of stereotypes which i imagine you deliberately set out to do. the mother is actually north african, the nanny is white. have you even thought about that? acra won, it was ironic, of course. —— yeah. it is a

shame that in all books and films, white victims are the dominant. it is not true. actually right now in france you have a lot of immigrants especially from north africa who are dominantand especially from north africa who are dominant and employees and who have a nanny and maids. ithought dominant and employees and who have a nanny and maids. i thought it was interesting and although for the weeds, she is white and she is the only white nanny. she is doing the job ofan only white nanny. she is doing the job of an immigrant when she goes to the park. —— louise. all the other nannies come from the philippines or africa so she feels very lonely and she feels humiliated, i think, by the fact that she is doing the job ofan immigrant the fact that she is doing the job of an immigrant because louise is a little bit racist. it was interesting to me to build a character who is very, very lonely. your editor said under the simplicity of her writing the efficiency of her narration, there

is something dark and this darkness is something dark and this darkness is the enormous in face of all injustice which was faced to her father which i believe she now dedicate every day and every moment of her life. yeah, i suppose he is right, but not in a sad way. i think it gave me a lot of strength. i want my father, wherever he is, to be proud of me. we should explain what happened to your father. he was morocco's economy minister in the late 1970s and then chief executive ofa late 1970s and then chief executive of a moroccan bank. then there was a financial scandal and he was indicted for embezzlement and misappropriation. he was imprisoned. and it was only after he died that he was posthumously acquitted of all charges. yeah, exactly. do you feel that you still need to right that wrong? you mean to write about this story? well, perhaps. iwill, i

will, of course. and it would probably be the most important book of my life. but you know, i never investigated this case, i never tried to understand, i never asked questions about that, because it was so questions about that, because it was so hard just two weeks variance that. —— to experience that. and i don't want to bother my mother with that. but our thinking some years i will work on it and try to write something about my father, yeah. you said "it was the end of my childhood, all of a sudden i realise this wonderful little world, this well oiled mechanism, was in the miss of falling apart". yeah, but at the same time, in a certain way, i was lucky, because i discovered part of morocco but i probably never would have discovered if my father was not in prison. i discovered prison and injustice and the violin sound —— the violence of the government and the violence of the ticks in morocco. so i think that maybe that i felt empathy, also, for the situation of a lot of moroccan

people and i think that i am probably not the one who suffered the most in my country, that a lot of people suffered more than i did. now, you are in a situation where, asa now, you are in a situation where, as a result of the success of your books, you are approached, i think initially, to become the french minister of culture, is that true? yes. but you turned it down, and click on the role instead, of promoting french language and culture overseas, and ambassador to the french speaking world. but you ta ke the french speaking world. but you take it on at a time when the president, the man who gives you the job, says french will be the first language of africa and perhaps of the world if we know how to do it in the world if we know how to do it in the coming decades. let's take this challenge together, let us the conquerors, let's be ambitious. do you agree with him? that french should be the first language of the world ? should be the first language of the world? yeah, why not? but i don't think that it is aggressive or that we wa nt think that it is aggressive or that we want to impose french on people, thatis we want to impose french on people, that is the exact contrary, that is the opposite. what i want, what i

expect, is that so many people will fall in love with this wonderful language and will want to learn french and will want to speak french, you know, when you go to africa, the french language is very different, of course, in rabat, in tunis, in bamako or dhaka. —— dakar. people speaking different languages with that expressions in metaphor and poetry. it is wonderful to hear that and now new artist in those countries try to promote this french language, and i think it is wonderful. you will know that immediately, this was some —— there was some suspicion, some irritation, some anger at this idea. the congolese writer said "i think francophone be operates as a form of colonial control", and he talks about how the organisation never challenges african dictators who rigged elections or manipulative situations. france still welcomes these dictators. the organisation

never criticises systems that date to our so—called independence. he criticises it has annual colonial situation and says it is time to expose it. he is totally right, i com pletely expose it. he is totally right, i completely agree with him. what, the controlled by france? yeah, and i think that is exactly why emmanuel macron chose me. because i com pletely macron chose me. because i completely agree with him, he is a great friend of mine and he helps me a lot in my work, because i think that we have to change that, this organisation is too old and it has to renew itself, the french language should not now be imposed to populations, it is exactly the contrary. it is now the national population who should embrace this french language and make it out and possess it. so, yeah, ithink french language and make it out and possess it. so, yeah, i think that he is completely right. so there is not a conflict between the president macron is saying on the one hand, about conquering the world with french and the culture and use saying, no,... no, because emmanuel macron, for instance, he said, the

french language is not french, the french language is not french, the french languages moroccan, the french languages moroccan, the french languages moroccan, the french languages senegalese, it is cambodian, so that is what is interesting. it is not ours, it is not french. that is more recently this is from italy's deputy prime minister, who has said france has never stop colonising tens of african states. —— stopped. he said the eu should sanction france and all countries like france that impoverish africa and make these people leave, because africa should be in africa, not at the bottom of the mediterranean.” be in africa, not at the bottom of the mediterranean. i wouldn't comment on this man, what he is saying, because i think that what he saysis saying, because i think that what he says is completely stupid and in releva nt says is completely stupid and in relevant in general. —— irrelevant. he is not a man relevant in general. —— irrelevant. he is nota man i relevant in general. —— irrelevant. he is not a man i want to comment on. because he is wrong? he is wrong in so many ways, so many ways, not only in what he says about france but in everything, i think. only in what he says about france but in everything, ithink. but only in what he says about france but in everything, i think. but he is not alone in criticising france over its approach to africa. we have

had, there are a number of people, that caught africa. despite the rhetoric, . .. but that caught africa. despite the rhetoric,... but you know that i am not involved in macron's politics in africa. you are asking as though i we re africa. you are asking as though i were involved in this politics. that is quite interesting, because i know as well, you are not involved in his politics, and you are critical, you have been openly critical of his approach to a comment about immigration, because you said he could have defended it with more force and coldness, when somebody was saying that people should be sent out of france. so you are quite critical of the president's policies? no, just, i say whatl think. i don't belong to a court. i am not here just to say that i am ok with everything, when i am outraged scandalised about something i think it is very important to speak out. and i think also that now in europe, the way that we treat immigrants is

so the way that we treat immigrants is so outrageous and so terrible that we as intellectuals, and human beings, should speak out, because one day we will regret that we hadn't. because what? because of the violence, in hungary, even in germany, in poland, everywhere with the extreme right against immigrants, ithink the extreme right against immigrants, i think it is very important to defend our dignity and the right to be respected. do you see that as part of your role? something you can do in your role as ambassador? no, in my role as a human being. that's it. i don't think it longs to my role as an ambassador. it is just me as a citizen. i think it is important. to do what? to say, look... to write, because i am a writer. that is my onlyjob, iam because i am a writer. that is my onlyjob, i am a writer. so i use my pen and a piece of paper and i tried to write when i think that something is wrong. right. now, the, one of the things that france has seen over

the things that france has seen over the last six months as the rise of the last six months as the rise of the yellow vest movement. there is a suggestion that actually, those are people who are putting on yellow vest, effectively saying, you cannot ignore me, this is the effect of a difference between those who would wear the yellow vest and the elite. do you think, do you agree with that? do you have simply with that position? in france we call them the invisibles. even as a writer i have a lwa ys invisibles. even as a writer i have always been very interested in the invisibles, people that we do not look at, people that we do not respect, people that we ignore. and i think that not only in france, but in many countries of the western world, a lot of people feel that they are ignored and they can't live with dignity, and of course it is very important that they can speak out and they can, ask for help, and asked the change. so when the mp from swire resigned, who is one of the few political figures of the movement says that anger is going to

derail the pride of the president, his obstinacy and his lack of concessions are a machine of hatred, he says he must leave before making our country crazy. do you have anything to be with that view? no, i don't. because i don't have sympathy with the violence. and i don't have sympathy with political manipulation, the fact that they try to use a movement to win elections and to be in the front of the spectacle, i don't like that. i think we should alljust try to understand the situation in its complexity without violence and without trying to be the star of this thing. thank you to coming on hardtalk. thank you. hello.

well, the end of last week was pretty stormy. gale—force winds across the uk. this week, steady waters around the uk. high pressure is building. the winds will be light for most of us. we've got some sunshine and some frosty mornings on the way as well, and monday will be no different. very decent weather on the way. this is the big picture across the continent right now. this high pressure is starting to build across spain, portugal, and into france, and you can see it's nudging into the uk, and soon it'll engulf the whole of europe. now, at the moment, it's still pretty chilly because the winds are blowing out of the north—north—west. however, the milder air you can see here, that will be reaching our shores by about wednesday. so nthis is what it looks like early hours of monday morning — a couple of showers maybe affecting north—eastern parts of england and scotland, but on the whole, it's looking clear across most of the uk, and there will be a frost. the coldest of the weather, as you might expect, will be across scotland — minus two in edinburgh, but outside of town, colder than that. and a touch of frost further south expected, as well, but not an awful lot. so monday starts off sunny. many of us will have a sunny day all day long. however, western areas

of the country will turn a little bit more hazy. weather fronts are trying to get in, maybe even a few light spots of rain, but this is pretty much where they grind to a halt because of that high pressure building across many western parts of europe. and here is the high pressure across western parts of europe, as it builds a little bit further towards the east. but notice it's displaced further south away from us. that means that these weather fronts just about nibbling into the north—west of the british isles, so maybe again a bit of cloud, a few spots of rain, increasing breeze here. but really, in the western isles, the vast majority of the country, 99% of us having dry weather through the course of tuesday. and those temperatures are starting to rise, because we have those south—westerly winds. in fact, we're already expecting double figures there in aberdeen, edinburgh, newcastle, and also in belfast. so that's tuesday. by the time we get to wednesday, the mild air has well and truly arrived on our shores. in fact, it's also seeping into parts of scandinavia and western as well as eastern parts of europe. and in fact, by thursday and friday, those winds turn to a southerly, so that means one thing — those temperatures will continue to rise. by thursday it could be around 13 or 1a degrees, notjust in the south of the country, but even in one or two spots across scotland.

so the weather this week is looking absolutely fine. bye— bye. this is the briefing. i'm sally bundock. our top stories: as mainly kurdish forces clash with islamic state fighters in syria, america's top military commander says us troops will probably start withdrawing within weeks. the world's two biggest economies head back to the negotiating table, but can they stop the trade war from stepping up a gear? britain's acting royalty meets the royal family — for the baftas — the british film industry's biggest night. why russia's wild — and hungry —

polar bears are getting a little too close for comfort with their human neighbours. and in business briefing: and when the daily grind gets too extreme —