tsunami hundreds and hundreds of bodies have been found they're estimating the death toll to be at least thousands and thousands are still missing we are seeing now and there's lots to talk about but unfortunately we're out of time that's going to do it i'm christine for is out thanks so much for watching. shoes that so much given to each musician time mark let's finish the middle east in the making has the west done fast focus on security over democracy in the region and. a charmer in here broadcasting live from washington d.c. coming up today on the big picture.

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markets. find out what's really happening to the global economy with mike's concert for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune in to cause a report on our keep. hello and welcome to cross talk i'm peter lavelle the new middle east in the making has the west gotten past its focus on security over democracy in the region and has the west particularly washington learned anything about the process of change in the arab middle east over the past three months. can. you discuss the events in the arab world i'm joined by slifer in cairo he's a professor emeritus at the american university in cairo in paris we have so i had

my job he is a professor of middle east studies at the american university of paris and in washington we cross to rich galen he's a republican strategist and former press secretary to dan quayle and another member of our crosstalk team gail on the hunt all right gentlemen this is crosstalk i mean you this means you can jump in anytime you want doll i'd like to get you to cairo first we just heard that nato is still thinking about a no fly zone over libya it's going to take a little bit more time to think about it but they are thinking about it so that in mind the events that have gone on in the country that you're in right now in egypt tunisia and what's going on in the gulf has american foreign policy adjusted in western foreign policy adjusted enough to the changes that are occurring in the region well in the rhetorical level they haven't just rhetorical the president united states has spoken out very much about sympathy with the urge for. overthrowing with oratory and regimes have into office and got on the actual field

of action. you'll be doing some relief work for the. libyan is going to help the egyptian expatriate workers get out of libya but they have not been certainly are not playing a leading role in the say in standing by this new movement the french are the first who have recognized the national council of the libyan insurgents who are fighting gadhafi not the americans and the french have spoken out very clearly that they favor a no fly zone and the americans have said will sit on the table everything's on the table all the secretary of defense was very negative in his remarks about it just a few days ago so i would say rhetorical e. they've adopted it in terms of actual. terms of x. action. practice no i don't see any alteration right let's go to paris yet if you're a gator's ok i'm going to paris real quick here then i can ask you

a lot of people are looking for conspiracy theories in one night and what's going on in the peace movements in the in the greater middle east in the arab world specifically here but one could also say the americans in western capitals really don't really have much of an idea what to do and i definitely agree with the fact that what's happened in many arab countries surprised everyone there is a reversible phenomenon due to urban ization to the fact that there is a large youth population in the region aspiring for freedoms for democracy for dignity the role of communication and of social virtual connections through twitter facebook you tube and many other facilities i think there is something new now and the accumulation of years of this because i'm. just evaporated with the. with the wall of fear being destroyed by all these people in the public places in the streets in their sense of humor and mainly in their

determination to end with the last decades of this partisan and corruption in the arab world the western capital are just behaving or are reacting slowly even if hopefully they will continue a welcoming these kind of changes and trying to build the new relationships with the arab world but in what concerned the b.r. i think the reactions are slow the brutality of the qaddafi regime is not faced by very firm positions and clear messages and i think the knife no fly zone should have been discussed weeks ago as much as other things should have also been discussed and measures should be taken more and more so and with these attacks on his population which we're in washington what do you think about that is washington reacting quickly enough does it understand the processes that are going on here isabella pointed out you know this can everybody fly actually but for a lot of great regional specialists they would have said we told you so. well

everybody can say that now but i mean you know in a hundred years they that young man that said in a soft on fire in tunisia may you know go down with with the guy that shot the archduke ferdinand is this has a spark that nobody thought was going to be a spark but nobody nobody saw this oncoming anybody i want to see the writings of people who said this was going to happen six months ago or eight months ago i still believe it but the u.s. point of view there's a couple of things and i'm not speaking for all three hundred million americans i'm speaking for one. on the one hand i'm not sure what the national interest is to the u.s. in interfering in in. going on in libya the much less i mean if need or want to institute a no fly zone it be interesting to see under what authority the they do that there is we may not like the government but there is a government there on the other hand i think there is not one movement going on if

you look at what's going on across in but crane that is much i think more a sectarian issue between the shias and the sunni's than it is. a rebellion against an autocratic government which is not frankly that all that are i thought it authoritarian although there is a obviously a an economic difference so so i'm not sure this is all one movement i think there are people are taking advantage and i use that in a positive way taking a better advantage of the situation as they find it to try to effect change it to their benefit but what's going on in libya is certainly not at all the same as what's going on in say quickly and i'm going to you in cairo again i mean we just heard national interest and presumably american nationalist interest but for the last forty years america had a nap the national interest of having dictators in the arab world and now that is coming to an end so i kind of go back to my question that i mean america's never.

been really prepared for any democratic arab world because they never thought about it are never really want to destroy it i mean if i don't think that's correct if you go back to the bush stuff and i mean he specifically and we've heard a lot about the bush doctrine in the past invasions of countries illegally have a dollar go ahead you know exactly i mean probably different we didn't talk about it and you my money and there was the start of november with this doctor who was on his mentality in sick in cairo i wish doctor who was specifically aimed at trying to promote democracy in his will that was drugs or even he was very sorry that more so ok i'll go right ahead well i wrote what you're asking for added what do you think a no fly zone is it's using force i think i mean the answer no fly zone abdullah please go ahead but look the the the difference that's what's so strange and odd about this is that we went into iraq. number one under. false pretenses right. you can argue well we didn't know

that they were also but they were false and we will mean despite the hostility of the entire arab world unlike the one nine hundred ninety one when we were part of a lot of jail ryans with syria and iraq oh egypt all contributing troops it was alliance with the arabs to save kuwait you know to liberate kuwait from saddam hussein from rule into iraq from iraq under saddam hussein in one thousand nine hundred one all right and that had a broad arab police the arab states were backing us now we in it went directly in invading iraq after nine eleven we had the whole arab population the arab street as you would want to say the arab public opinion was against us and not a single arab state sit alongside with us and yet we intervened there now here you have libya on the other hand we are arab sentiment i would say just judging from egypt and the fact that i see libyan flags being sold on the streets now as the by

libyan flags i mean the old libyan flag which has been resurrected by the insurgents as a symbol against the flag that gadhafi introduced and i see them being sold everywhere now in cairo it's funny because i've saved myself a nice to see it get a libyan flag and i have a feeling that the insurgents have massive support especially among the young people who constitute the majority of the arab world now and and yet i'm not going to be are they going over to help out are it your are young egyptians going to get in cars and fly and going over to help out where they have been running medical supplies women pervis very hard. thing outside of that's the sort of the well that's the there are many different issues that there are but what if they are so well will any of this let them let them put themselves in the sand we have another chance to do it again we have a guest in paris then if i go to you one of the reasons what i'm trying to get at this question is because. the west has a dilemma in dealing with this issue because because i can see the pros and cons of

all of this but at the same time there's the west because you could see other people in the arab world saying see they're determining outcomes again and that's why it's the legacy for that is that it creates a lot of you know especially hearings. i did not hear everything that was said because there were two i didn't know. about ok but. i think there are set of clarifications that are needed we cannot put everything together in libya egypt and saying that each is different and just simplifying issues as was done i think in but when there are definitely vertical divisions in the society between the shia and the sunni but this is not the under reason for what we are seeing today and there is a democracy deficit in russia and all serious studies show that in yemen there are also some vertical divisions that are not confessional between sunni and shia that could have some tribal aspects between the north and the south but also there is

a great democracy deficit the huge one in libya today what is happening is not a civil war or just a movement of rebellion that is using violence against the regime and there is a. very this particular and criminal regime in place since one thousand nine hundred sixty nine and that has been involved in many crimes inside libya and outside libya personally i'm not asking and i'm not interested in an american clear position or the french because we are talking about the u.n. system about the international community that has delivered the missi and has the obligation to intervene in these kind of situations and the governance of the double standards of the bush administration or of the obama administration or of the french administration of most of the other very ministrations who also though a lot of administrations also have their own double standards i'm saying that in the real politics definitely this exists but the united nations should have based

on its bylaws based on the regulations on resolutions under the international humanitarian law and geneva conventions and there are set of things that are that have been marginalized for decades i think this is a crucial moment to bring them back and we have to jump in here gentlemen we're going. sharp break and when we come back we'll go to read chapter a short break we'll continue our discussion on the uprisings in the arab world stay with arctic. place you can see. the full. wealthy british science. market finiteness. find out what's really happening to the global economy

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say. welcome back to crossfire i'm going to come to mind you were talking about the changes going on in the arab world. can see. but first let's see how russians view the events in the arab world. and the political crisis in the arab world had been shaking the world for almost three months people in the streets of arab capitals protest calling for democracy is ation of their societies still many believe demonstrators mostly express public this content rather than clear political goals the russian public opinion research center all citizens what drives the rest in the region forty five percent see partitive unemployment and hunger and the root fourteen percent believe people are dissatisfied with long ruling leaders thirteen

percent say rigidity are authoritarian regimes in flames the people and eight percent think it is all because of corruption however the political implications of the protests should not be underestimated as it is not clear what role extremist forces played in this terrible and reacher peter. ok richard codey you and we before the break you want to jump in there so you have an opportunity to do it right now go ahead where i want to talk a little bit about that my friend in paris is the love for the u.n. if they could i think the khadafi regime has been so horrible for so long and i agree it has been horrible for a long time then we're we're have the other arab states been we're of the other the across the magreb and through the middle east the african union know everybody wants somebody else to do it they're not only there but the u.n. is allowed libya libya to have a seat on the on the un human rights council for lo these many years just the other

day they probably got around to suspending them from it but the u.n. is is is it's fine to have it we pay a lot you pay a lot everybody pays a lot of people here i think it's fine to have it but anybody who thinks that the u.n. can somehow solve these kinds of fast these kinds of brushfires let spring up around the world that have any kind of impact is reading a different history than i've read vilifying to you in cairo maybe reacted. it reaches there well where was the consensus against the side to regimes where most of the regimes were paid off by washington so i guess that's why there wasn't much of a consensus there maybe now we have an opportunity for a new government a new peoples to be able to speak the will of their own people on the ground and things might be a bit different i think we all hope it will be go ahead well i think what you can say is that when he did not. protest against and that is our outrages prior to this or regimes that she had something in common with them

and i don't think it's us funding because some of those regimes didn't have us funding when needed and it's egypt that was is the one that's been drawing tremendous money from the united states but certainly not other countries like nigeria you know but they all shared together was authoritarian systems and a demographic problem with young people for whom is no work because this is not been the great concern and you know all those issues that the russian public mentioned are interesting because they're all true and they all intersect there's a connection between corruption and the fact that you don't have a viable economy is going and the lack of north korean system which makes the corruption that much easier and sold a all of the reasons they mention including the first reason which is power we forget that that this all started as a protest of a combination of poverty and police brutality the poverty that crosses university graduate high school graduate whatever into his. and then his in his trust ration

with the police not letting him make a simple living selling lettuce and tomatoes in the street hours and the same here what preceded the time here the tough year square and we've lost sight of this because so much attention has been focused on the political but what preceded after your square revolution if you want to call it was the fact that there's been tremendous unrest in the industrial cities of egypt outside of cairo which have been broken up brutally strikes were broken up brutally and the youth movements that may touch here the most important one and it will six will was precisely in alliance with that working class movement against social injustice of the lack of a decent minimum wage. the fact that social services under the neoliberal economy will have been undercut ferment. this lead in the last five years so the russian public has a very very good understanding of what's going on here so if i go back to you in

paris here where do we move forward because i mentioned something i think is very very important here because the media is limited resources are limited people are obviously focusing in on libya but all through the region things continue to boil think things continue to change and where do you think it's going i mean because again we like to call people these people are democratic forces and all that and we saw that in in egypt because it was very well televised but i mean they can say it's really right now against oppression what is the next step as they continue. yeah two things first one if i think the argument that we heard from our friend in washington about the fact that you and system is another history is similar to what out of this particular genes used to say when we're talking about human rights about universal values they would say if you believe in this you are in another track of history i think international law you and. you and resort you shuns are the only legitimate to make an isms that article denies universally

unfortunately however the other guns of some super powers and at the same time the refusal of many arab states and third world states and european states and everywhere to accept them and put expect all the time and marginalize the un system it is a moment now a crucial moment to bring back to international relations the legitimate and legal mention that it should have especially in a world where more and more powers are emerging and it needs some new equilibrium to be said as for the region i think i said are you getting any result lay in libya how do you explain libya being a member of the un human rights how can you say how can you excuse that i mean that that's just beyond you a living definitely this is absolutely there are other states as well like levy are who are a dictatorship. and system is for everyone and i'd like. a ferrari if i can ask richard question why should you know if i can answer your question sorry and then our ally israel finish in the region that the violence. there are also

states that violates you and result you should. through occupation and colonization like israel in the region most arab regimes are also ships and have in the past their seats in the u. and these are problems that should be now then within this new historical moment where more and more countries are joining democracy and universal values in libya today what should be done and in the arab region in general is in order to allow for a political democratic process to happen. it is to look at it see this need to support all those who are involved and that's to give it some time to be tolerant towards it and not to classify it from the beginning whether it will become an islamist or not these are serious challenges of course but we can with lots of opportunities now we can open new doors and allow a new voices to emerge and to play a crucial role and i think if this is not the will of the legislators and big i will go away i'll give you that a big bad united states the big bad united states is still sold the sole supporter

of the military in egypt i believe that's correct to one point three billion u.s. dollars a year it has been forever if we stop that funding what do you think happens in egypt you know we're not asking for something about another one goes out because the militants who support it is supporting the popular movement this is a double speaking from cairo nobody's asking americans stop that funding i think let me strike a no no no here was a miracle if you're in paris. go ahead of where i didn't say that so you know it's understood what i said it's a valid i had no i'm talking about rick saying nobody about egypt military being the beneficiary of united states funding and yet they are and no one would ask them to stop it now because and particularly now because the military is supporting the revolution and is in line with this democratic revolution but the point i want to make is this i think both the regearing relevant remarks from both paris and

washington in the sense that in a ideal world yes definitely it should be the united nations that should be acting . in this crisis but the fact remains that you have a security council which is the the body that it would have to authorize no flight and that's what we're talking about no flight we're not talking about boots on the ground the libyans want a new light zone because the prison no fly zone they can get food delivered they can get there they can keep a libyan air force from attacking them and you can get medical supplies truck is they've now declared a government which means it can even be recognized planes can probably even land they're not asking for boots on the ground in the woods and not asking for american european arab troops on the ground they want to level playing field that they have a living level playing field i think we're going to see a new regime in tripoli but getting back to this so on one hand yes it be great if the u.n. would act but we know we've got

a security council with their two countries china and russia who more or less indicated they oppose the free flight zone and they have vetoes so it has to be some other international body or an arab like it could be the arab league i wrote an op ed that was published here in cairo just three days ago telling anita mattering how viable is that idea because i've heard that too and it would make sense because it's the region looking after itself maybe for the first time the arab league could make sense. yes i agree now what you need is a country to play a leading role in demanding that the arab league acts like that and obviously that country should be egypt by all means egypt has just had a revolution of its own the army is is is he is acting sympathetically towards it it would seem to me that it's egypt that should be demanding now at the arab league immediate arab outlook and of course egypt would be the country that could best facilitate it because egypt has a very good air force that if i'm going to inherit if i were almost every time if i

go to paris or what about that idea instead of looking to the great powers to solve the problems of the region because a lot of people say they were the fall to the root of some of the problems in supporting dictators and you could you could you have a lot of if you have the region itself start policing itself yeah. first and i'm not i don't blame the others on the problems of the region i've always said and i've always it turned out that most of our problems are also a product of the dysfunctioning of many aspects of our societies to which were added to the interventions and the fight and it was about to go back to that the problem is that as in the. before even in the region there are many non democratic governments in the arab region who would not see. a rationale or who would not justify the no fly zone because they consider that it is not that bad if the graphic and stay for a while so that this movement would start in the yard would not reach countries

like syria or like other places that fetus is very very expensive machines are probably running out of time gentlemen here international community thanks to my guest today in cairo terrace and in washington and thanks to our viewers for watching us here r.t. see you next time and remember across top. stories. you can. rachel martin here broadcasting live from washington d.c. coming up today on the big picture.

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