just an hour to go before voting begins in kurdistan historic parliamentary elections with security forces and to ensure peaceful polling the political tug humans and into i think. all candidates and now in the running to be part of most good amongst the names of a few surprises. why entrepreneur is that claiming that president bush really is regime is forcing them to give up their business it's.

international news live from moscow this is all she was me thanks for joining us polling stations across kurdistan and you to open and now it's time for voting which will create central asia as fast as a commenter democracy security is being stepped up across the country which saw a brutal esmie closures and political turmoil and this year but as. reports fears of violence still remain. this is truly a crucial vote because it's meant to and instability and political chaos in the country for the past half a year or so kyrgyzstan has been plagued by violence and the seldom parts of the country where we are now are among the most affected areas and there are fears that this violence could flare up once again during the election the former soviet republic has been struggling to achieve normality since former president. was overthrown from power in deadly street protests across the entire country

especially in the capital bishkek violent riots left dozens of people dead and put the entire country in a state of chaos people who were protesting like he was policies which went to people living in poverty and failed to increase the quality of life in kyrgyzstan for years the interim government held. them which voted to build a parliamentary republic which is a milestone not only for kyrgyzstan but for the central asian region since this election will be held successfully it will change the way. it's planned that the president's powers will be curbed well the prime minister will have more power than the formal head of state this is significant for central asia since traditionally countries in this region are ruled by authority leaders and this way. from such a political model for the first time in central asia twenty nine political parties are taking part in this election which is an all time record for kyrgyzstan however

there are gender or relatively similar to one another there is skepticism on ordinary people here in kyrgyzstan who say that this election won't improve their lives because simply not ready for such a transition and probably won't be as effective apart from political unrest there just and there's also been suffering from ethnic violence in june. there were deadly ethnic clashes here in the city of course where we are now which is populated both ways and was back in nationals as a result hundreds of people were killed thousands were injured and thousands more had to flee their homes and at the moment peace is we are here in the south of the country and in fact at the moment meaning people fear even going to the polling stations on sunday there have already been reports of threats sent out to the local population of mess for many people at the moment the main priority is to rebuild

their homes and businesses after june as well it's rather then to vote for any politician despite this the authorities are still calling for the people to go to the polling stations to take part in this election promising that it will provide the long awaited stability of saudis are on high alert across the entire country both police and volunteers are monitoring the streets of the city's international observers have already arrived at the region and authorities say that everything is ready for the vote on sunday the selection of moscow's next to. the final stages the united russia party has given its short list of contenders to president dmitri medvedev who now has ten days to decide who's to take charge at city hall in the russian capital sara fathers' covering the story for us. the short list. for names that have been submitted by the united russia party to the president. on that list includes the deputy prime minister. now he's considered

a strong front of full of the position by many commentators so no surprise that he's being included in the list he's also considered a very close ally of prime minister putin having worked with him extensively during his presidency and now in his role as prime minister so he's certainly a very strong hand but also on the list we have russia's transport and communications minister igor levitin and the governor of new girls valerie chats have now he actually spent ten hours the former mellish called deputy up until two thousand and five and a nine hundred ninety six when. it was running for that position and. was running for the position of vice and was wounded in an assassination attempt against him after an explosion near his home which he survived the suddenly interesting bit of background will not come to the only female of the group that mila did not she is

the current at the moment and her poll actually includes a lot of the social issues such as unemployment and health care and she is considered one of the most experienced candidate having worked in the government since ninety ninety four and also in her position at the moment perhaps one of the best place to deal with some of the issues the president the fate of his already highlighted as will be some of the main challenges facing whoever will become the new. i think all four candidates are perfectly capable of becoming mayor of moscow the city's leader and would be responsible for quality of life. issues carrying on the policies in effect and dealing with future challenges the capital demands a series of new solutions which we will discuss with the new mayor. one of the main challenged. is it going to be these social reforms now muscovites going to be taping at the some of the social programs initiated on to this cause will be.

things such as we travel on the most the pension is a benefit to teachers but there are certainly many issues that they need that will still be a good thing to resolve issues such as police in the cool the cool to the headache muscovites which is the traffic problems that's an ongoing that would be some of the issues facing now another major key role that the new base will be to gain the public's trust the specially head of the parliamentary elections that will be happening at the end of two thousand and eleven knows this lack of trust of the cited as one of the main reasons the full the dismissal the new mayor will now have around a good to make an impact on that must get by all the controversy surrounding this because he was always very good at bringing out a united russia votes from the muscovite and the party going to be hoping that he'll have a selected will have the same store to sway with the public ahead of the elections

next year. this is also becoming the program for the oaxaca is heating up russian scientists say they have evidence to support the country's territorial claims and the reach. reaches. and look at the future of the u.s. dollar as emerging world economies seek to separate from the green behind some seem to be hedging plan or. moving towards a european style democracy is a statement saying for the georgian president whose proposed new constitution is supposed to set the country on this course however many business and. his version of people's rule is it holds we're very experienced has met entrepreneurs who claim corruption and could box are the real forces in the country. the so-called patchwork beth's and central police see is the perfect place to relax and have your

photo taken on the way out the historical building is now owned by a private company but a few years ago it was taken from its previous owner by the government getting gold has an issue really still fears for his life he says in two thousand and seven he was approached by government agents who claimed he used illegal schemes to purchase the baths allegedly through the use of threats the officials forced the man to give up his business going to court says get a goal was not an option. they said that they know where my son's school is and they could say tomorrow and bust him for drug possession he said that they will make me sell everything and still it won't be enough to pay them our future and they'll be begging for mercy i couldn't have done anything to need my business to this day. immediately after seizing the property of the government solve it off since then great goal has been trying hard to get his business back. i wrote six

complaints asking them why they made me give up my business but the authorities are silent so we have not received a single response here why is a great advance. a human rights activist says this case is not unique according to the salient have been numerous cases recently where the georgian government has illegally seized buildings wound and other property from private individuals large and small companies. when neil thirty openly use police in the prosecutor's office to take away people's property there's no other words coolant tera it's a kind of official racketeering aggressive illegal and purely criminal in its nature we can say directly to make. team is responsible for terrorizing the business sector. some georgian entrepreneurs' blame the greed and political ambitions of the country's leaders these businessmen say that in order to work

safely and believe see you have to make generous donations to the ruling party will are cheering the two powers who entrepreneurs in georgia make voluntary donations by paying off the government in june the elections all of them pay no less than fifty five thousand us dollars these are official sums we can only guess how much they have to pay on official rest of us do not. call feels betrayed by the government is still hoping to find justice for this man and many others who have seen for themselves so often president saakashvili his words differ from his deeds change can't come soon enough well georgian officials claim that they have created to corruption free to me to do also lost their businesses due to pressure from the state it's nothing but spin and even though only if you want to speak out it looks like the movement against such record tearing into police see is getting stronger does. the head of the international monetary fund is adding nations not to use

their currencies as economic weapons of self defense dominic childs can says the global financial crisis is not over with the likes of the us struggling to avoid a double dip recession and lower and mr reports some countries are already riding the wave of the dollar's downfall. financial leaders are getting together from all over the world this week to figure out how to boost the global economy at the annual i.m.f. and world bank meetings but many are talking about a break up the world is worth you know from the united states as the consumer of last resort in the financial world that's not called divorce but decoupling and everyone from a flurry of wall street analysts to nobel prize winning economist joseph stiglitz are using the word now to describe this shift in power the baton is passed from countries like the united states on to countries like china brazil russia. india

and beyond and you know growth in the global call will be much more dependent upon those countries than on the developed economies it explains how while the u.s. economy continues to look more bleak with analysts such as goldman sachs forecasting fairly to very bad scenarios of meager one to two percent growth or an all out double dip recession i would almost consider a double double bass the so-called bric countries are still on the ascent brazil's economy is estimated to grow seven point five percent this year with optimism to spare the summation with maybe a. little bit more than seven point five percent. and rounding out the r i c and that acronym russia india and china are estimated to post four point two five nine point seven and ten point five percent gains respectively china's growth as an economic power on r.g.p. and children is to be made in china isn't lost on american politicians looking for

someone to blame calls for help foreign companies create chinese jobs to make it when mills put skyrocketing unemployment nor is it lost on the obama administration we believe it's very important to see more progress by the major emerging economies to more flexible. market oriented exchange rate systems geitner has increased complaints about china under valuing its currency ahead of the i.m.f. meeting you have to pick a reason why things are going to. be because of you so it has to be because of charges of bubble politicians try to hold things together citizens are decoupling from the u.s. economy to people who once left their countries to come to the us for opportunities are heading back home the opportunities are going to be much better than what they are here they're setting up shop in countries poised to grow even as the u.s.

teeters on the edge of decline while nothing appears different from the outside of the annual world bank and i.m.f. meeting here in washington nothing sounds different about the u.s. pressing for its agenda of more fiscal stimulus and currency regulation inside changes afoot as these global governing institutions figure out how to incorporate the power of the new emerging economies showing that their economies grow far from us soil so too does their role behind these doors or lester r. t. washington d.c. . and to some other international news and grief the hunger and village of qana has been evacuated teacher the threat of a second of toxic sludge is fear of the weakened the wall of a nearby reservoir may collapse under a declared a state of emergency after thousands of tons of waste flooded several villages this week killing seven however despite the sludge reaching the river danube officials say there is little sign it has been significantly polluted.

north korean t.v. has shown a large broadcast of the country's leader kim jong il with his son the pincher moon in a massive military parade celebration the sixty fifth anniversary of the country's a ruling party it's widely speculated that the western educated recently appointed general in his twenty's will succeed his father as head of a reclusive. communist nation their parents forming an earlier televised event together is being viewed as a further sign of official confirmation of the succession and we're getting live pictures beyond young for you now. also the search of three chilean miners trapped underground for over two months have been reached by a drill digging a rescue tunnel trade and government engineers must now decide if the shaft is to be lined with steel to avoid the risk of collapse before the operation to bring them out one by one commences the country's mining minister says the rescue process is likely to begin by once died they had been thought was the men might not be

reached until christmas. russia norway denmark the u.s. and canada the five hours a race to claim the ice caps a vast untapped resource says russian scientists are literally going to the end of the earth's on a mission to support that nation's claims oh geez you could join them on that icy and. there is a perception that it's hard to find a living soul in the arctic but not today this is how members of russia's north pole expedition with their colleagues on board the academics break up the fir drip is the flagship of the northern fleet if you chill floating laborde tree around a hundred scientists have spent seventy days and beyond gathering evidence to support the claim that the man also week is part of russia's continental shelf the head of the expedition looks more than pleased with the results almost a year but due to d.m. due today we are fully confirm the geological ally in our relief at the bottom of

the loss of ridge we have recovered quality material that corresponds to international standards so immutable that russia's biggest evidence gathering weapon is a multi beam eco sound known as quantock spec it's hard to see and impossible to touch but it's talking to scientists from the bottom of the coldest ocean in the world. they can go as deep as twelve kilometers so it practically covers the whole spectrum of the ocean's depth there are no depths if you cannot measure. the principal competitors are using the similar equipment the american icebreaker healy for example works with the same sound it is convenient to analyze and compared to collected by the same standards. russia is in a hurry to collect evidence for its appeal occasion to the un sheffield for twenty thirteen the same year another applicant canada comes up with the clays the russian

president in war to both poles says he's people are ready to work around the clock to fulfill the mission. where you dismissed me some saying what are the russians doing in the arctic on apollo night we're not going to ask anybody water when we should do the arctic belongs to russia they want. in accordance with international treaties and we will work day and night if necessary. another deepwater equal sound will do its part of the job within the north pole expedition it will be used on a movie. and guess information on the reach nonstop for the next year the arctic may be of ostend empty in popular image elation but it is that stimulated that it contains a quarter of the world's untapped falso fuels flotsam gold diamonds and other precious metals iran sixty percent of total shock to gas lies in the russian exclusive economic zone so even without the models of reach being divided it seems

that russia has already won becoming grace it's in the r t from the island of visa in the arctic. to modernize digital so you spacecraft carrying a new russian american crew successfully docks would be international space station so nasa astronaut scott kelly and cosmonauts alexander kaleri and oleg scroope are traveling will spend the next six months as members of expedition twenty five on board the station the new comers will join another three space men who are presently manning the station since arriving in june and they will remain together until late november there is to be a remarkable reunion to four in february scott kelly will be joined at the space station by his identical twin brother mark another nasa astronaut who will fly a shuttle mission it will be the first time ever brothers have met in space. and i'll back with the headlines in ten minutes time now more than

a third of exported are going to drugs the agreement of five billion heroin doses and up in russia every year and that's according to the head of russia's. agency and he spoke to also about the war on drugs and why under current circumstances it can be one that's coming up in just a moment. today we're talking to the head of service and mr pena thank you very much for joining us today first let's talk about afghanistan afghanistan is the number one producer all

opiates in the world when we talk about the transfer of the drugs what kind of amounts of drugs are we talking about. afghanistan produced about seven thousand tons of opium last year which is equivalent to seven hundred tons of heroin we believe that about thirty six of these tons end up in russia that's a lot about five billion doses and it's about thirty five percent of all drugs exported from afghanistan because in fact afghanistan exports less than half of the drugs it produces as drug addicts throughout the world are unable to consume everything that comes out of afghanistan so afghanistan stores a huge amount of drugs russia and other countries estimate it's about thirteen to fifteen thousand tonnes of old so even if drug production stops in afghanistan the country will still be able to supply the international market with heroin for another twenty or even thirty years. what about the main mode of transportation of

the drugs could you talk about the roads or the countries to which the drug trade flows into russia. there is the northern route which is sometimes called the northern silk route after the seventeenth century trade route the reason the silk route is popular is because after the collapse of the soviet union munitions are merged and while. borders exist on paper in reality they're not even probably guarded so essentially there are no effective borders between afghanistan and russia with such pours orders it's very easy for traffickers to transport drugs the biggest part of drugs flows through chad you can stand and kazakstan and onward to russia another part goes through iran across the caspian sea and the caucasus ridge and ends up in the north caucasus or deeper in russia's territory by the way this provides a source of financing for terrorists and extremists in russia's caucasus because the. americans that have got this don't say that they cannot eradicate most of the

puppy fields because a lot of afghanis depend on their livelihood on these fields by producing the opiates what can be done about this is their solution to the problem. when the u.s. says you cannot deprive farmers of their livelihood it actually sends a message to the afghan leadership as well saying they shouldn't do it because first this will destroy people's livelihood and second you push farmers into the hands of the taliban i think this is merely an excuse furthermore since u.s. special representative for central asia richard holbrooke first suggested this idea that instead of eradicating drug crops the u.s. should target drug labs and traffickers which was almost a year ago the number of laps producing drugs for russia has tripled a year ago we knew about one hundred seventy labs in afghanistan today we know of more than four hundred laps of producing drugs for russia but this is not seem to be a paradox that when afghanistan was under the control of the taliban the production

was significantly lower than it is now and it has risen dramatically after the u.s. invasion nine years ago what what is the problem how is this fitting into the picture and the statements that nato is trying to fight the drug trade in afghanistan in your opinion. your. right i had a meeting with my pakistani colleagues here in islamabad and they too were amazed at this phenomenon there's only one way to explain it when the taliban sought official recognition for its kabul regime they took on president in measures to eradicate oppy and poppy crops they consistently took serious steps in one nine hundred ninety eight nine hundred ninety nine and two thousand when they introduced capital punishment for poppy cultivation as a result they succeeded in a radical drug crop on ninety percent of afghanistan's territory all the provinces they controlled the only place they couldn't do it was a northern afghanistan which was controlled by the so-called northern alliance but

then operation enduring freedom began and the situation changed drastically only a competent government that has the support of the people can really control the country and take serious steps to destroy drug production how can we talk about the military solution to the problem when most of the poppy fields in afghanistan are located in areas of the most intense fighting or where foreign military personnel are stationed where where is this listen to that. the nine years of the military operation in afghanistan have demonstrated that the more fighting there is in the country the small of the chances are of destroying drug production there growing alternative crops is a risky proposition the risks are immense you can lose your crop at any stage opium on the other hand does not require any effort poppy grows all by itself and buyers come straight to the field and purchase the crop so it's obvious that you can destroy drug production this way the russian federation has developed a plan which is called rainbow two because it consists of seven points we presented

this plan to the european commission the european parliament nato our partners in the us in afghanistan and here in pakistan the plan calls for a comprehensive approach first of all this huge problem should be officially recognized as a threat to international peace and security at all. other words this is a separate problem that kills more than one hundred thousand people each year hundreds of millions of people suffer from this problem which everyone has been talking about for almost a decade second as i just said we need to eradicate opium poppy and the international security assistance force which is in afghanistan today under the u.n. mandate and therefore has assumed responsibility for the future of afghanistan should play very active role in already getting the crockery and then of course afghanistan needs economic aid we need to rebuild its infrastructure by the way the legal afghan economy today operates mostly thanks to the.