in libya pro good after troops reverse the rebels' advance following the airstrikes the coalition because it is arming the opposition meantime but there's a warning that would breach the u.n. resolution the latest ahead. also fears of a terrorist backlash in europe with the alarm sounded over a possible plot by libyan islam it's in revenge for the bombing raids. by this radiation is the biggest concern around japan's stricken nuclear plant we visit a once prosperous town near chernobyl to see what a post crisis exclusion zone looks like a quarter of a century on. a

very good evening this is r t it's eight pm now here in moscow my name is kevin zero in on our top story starting in libya where pro-government troops of pushed rebel forces out of several recently captured territories after a heavy counter offensive this comes as some nato countries including the u.s. and france are suggesting that they could be open to arming the rebels but there's criticism that would go beyond the terms of the un resolution. has more from tripoli. rebel fighters have now been pushed back to the city of ras lanuf we are hearing that this is strategically important oil port city is firmly in the hands of gadhafi is made now there are numerous reasons being bandied about as to why the rebels are being forced to retreat and retreat so quickly part of that is because

gadhafi forces are simply base organized they better trained or they have base of leadership and this is person some real die remains to the international community in terms of what it should do next when it's becoming increasingly clear that these airstrikes are not that successful while the government here in tripoli is insisting as it has done since these coalition a strikes began that the number of civilians continues to climb and that it hovers somewhere more than one hundred now we do know that they were taken three explosions caused in the town of music which is about two hundred kilometers to the south of tripoli because at and munitions dump that was hit in those coalition air strikes we went there was a group of foreign journalists and we saw damage to the hospital as well as to several homes and residential areas the moves of some of the wounds in the hospital had been broken in we also saw some beds where there was blood stains and did we now the patients were evacuated in time but we heard from the hospital staff that some thirteen people were wounded we also met when we were there any number of

years to stop bangladeshi and also filipino and they as you can well imagine are very anxious and very scared and very desperate to get out of here which is prime minister david cameron says that he has not ruled out arming the rebels and this of course is the concern that's been expressed by critics in the international community in serbia here in tripoli since that u.n. resolution one ninety seven three was approved there is because that talks about to say we need measures and this is open to interpretation and what we're hearing from the british is that if weapons are needed to protect civilian lives when they can justify the use of weapons we'll see here in the some of the kind of lines coming out of the obama administration they have a saying that they could allow for the supply of. it is and that they are looking at all options on the table now if indeed there is going to be the supply of weapons to the rebel fighters this poses a whole host of the members and a whole host of very critical questions number one people do not know who the rebels are there are those amongst their ranks with i'll cry the meanings extremist

meanings moby's with the us land in the hands and indeed if they do what does that mean the source of the people possibility that the weapons could end up in the hands of gadhafi soldiers and then even more than that if we're going to have hand over weapons to find who's on the ground who are going to need to give them some kind of practical assistance and training which begs the next concern particularly here in tripoli and that is the question of whether or not the international community is preparing the ground to stand ground forces here now the russian foreign minister sergei lavrov has reiterated just how critical and just how important is so norio going to space should be stage of when we all heard the statements that he's only good as yours regime is to protect civilians as according to the u.n. resolution we also heard the coalition wouldn't let anyone in the conflict at the same time sharansky has recently stated it's ready to supply the libyan rebels with weapons the nato secretary general has immediately objectives seen the operation is to protect the talk you should not amish and we feel you agree with his positions

russia's ambassador to nato has warned that when you talk about an arms embargo it needs to be applied across the whole field in other words it needs to be applied both to the rebels as well as to gadhafi support base now another question that is also alarming people here in tripoli is the whole question of whether or not the international community intends to target gadhafi certainly here when we hear statements from the british government as well as i leave you a camp our saying that they do not intend to target him he is not a target the stance and the mood here in tripoli is that people here do not believe that. well the policy is also reporting the latest from tripoli vajra twitter feed for you too and the latest tweet she reports that the change of tactics by gadhafi forces with the coalition pilots struggled to tell them apart from the rebels keep up the day find out the latest on twitter but asked to underscore.

more and talk they were profession it was grief is director of legal studies of britain's university of kent professor very good evening to you have a good evening as you talk about supplying the opposition in libya with weapons now the night now some of the british prime minister said he didn't see breaching the arms embargo i was about is the work that out how do you see it well i see it rather differently and the fact that. you have to work very hard to find this possibility in resolution one thousand nine hundred eighty three suggests to me that it's impossible we have to interpret that resolution very strictly very tightly because it's an exception to the u.n. charter prohibition of the use of force we also have to interpret the resolution strictly in accordance with its own aims and of course the primary aim of the resolution is to protect civilians now. it's true that the operative paragraph four of the resolution which is the paragraph. authorizing

military action to protect civilians it's true that that paragraph says notwithstanding paragraph nine of resolution nine hundred seventy which is the paragraph in the earlier resolution that imposed the arms embargo but the fact is that the primary purpose of resolution one thousand seventy three is to protect civilians in libya and i don't see how arming the rebels would be consistent with the purpose. it certainly wouldn't be consistent with protecting pro gadhafi civilians for example but the feeling is that the u.s. . maybe france want to go ahead and do this is there anything to stop them can they go it alone under this un mandate well they in my view they can't go it alone under the un mandate but i suppose as we've seen in other situations in the last few years they might be tempted to go it alone outside the terms of the mandate. you mentioned just now this is all set up initially wasn't to protect civilians how do

you think that is going. well and it's difficult to tell. because i'm not on the ground and i'm not i don't like very much on what i read. but i always worry that if this started it would be difficult to keep it in check and to keep it in control. and it seems to me that arming rebels arming the rebels would simply escalate the situation and make it very much more difficult to achieve a peaceful and sustainable solution to the libyan crisis. people in libya say much of the riches from the oil contracts that was always the big complaint was in it but now if a western backed opposition claims the power will they fairly better do you think will they see any more of that wealth in the future i really don't know i don't feel competent to talk about that. but i think the only thing i can repeat it

starts this action has to be within the terms of resolution one hundred seventy three and anything outside its terms it is strictly legal or i present it was great thanks being with us no expressions thank you very much indeed. as the allied forces push for more military action in libya experts on arab affairs warn that the intervention may soon backfire on europe the fear is the libyan islamic groups of plotting terrorist attacks in britain in revenge for allied airstrikes i think then you push them explains. e.u. countries have taken the lead role in forcing the u.n. resolution but their efforts all the way over in libya now threaten to bring conflict right to their very own back doors i list claim colonel gadhafi now has little other weapons left in his armory that oversees terror he's faced repeated accusations that he ordered look at the bombing that killed two hundred seventy mostly westerners experts say some countries are particularly in the firing line

three leading countries of the offensive operation that means for you in the united states of course the only option the us really is to use terror so i think. it's a clear i could in prison venture today in the coming days maybe in the coming weeks but you backing for anti could f.-u. rubles could backfire further rebel leaders include the libyan islamic fighting group and associates of al qaida and the casualties mounting every day from allied bombing make fertile recruiting ground for anti western forces there are. bertie now. that must feel chaos and are i am sure. e.u. muslims protest against nato bombing of libya the organizer says people should

prepare for the worst though certainly there is a very strong likelihood but i think what we do not have the ability to. track everybody. at the invasion of iraq live to a surge in terror attacks in the e.u. almost two hundred people died in the madrid train bombings in two thousand and four while suicide bombers killed fifty two people in london in two thousand and five officials now dread similar results in the wake of this campaign western intelligence reports chris activity among suspected terrorist cells indicating the threat of attack is high one officer told of the e.u. terrorist strike is now just a question of time the new bush will see brussels. a bit later today this channel people hold cross-talk panel question whether nato really knows which direction it is heading in libya. this ambiguity make this mission creep even worse because we don't even really know what we want actually

a friend of mine who's not an international ation specialist recently sold me he said well as far as i can see it. with the other interventions like iraq they didn't have an exit strategy but with this one they don't seem to have an entry strategy either. more crosstalk later the saving to japan now though there radiation levels in the seawater near the fukushima plant continue to rise there now more than three and a half thousand times higher than normal radioactive materials also been detected in soil at the facility to pan's governments describe the situation is serious and unpredictable workers have been unsuccessfully trying to restore the plant's cooling system and what's now the worst atomic crisis since to nobble there's been some debate over whether there are any similarities between the two events that discuss the valve i'm joined by professor christopher busby of the european community or gradation risk sir thanks for being with us tonight initially when this disaster started we were told were according to most media reports that it was

all very unlike a terrible event we witnessed in chernobyl you're saying different why. well i said right from the beginning that this was a normal level disaster because it was quite clear to me at that time having looked at the explosions that there were major problems with those reactor pressure vessels and it now turns out that there are and that at least one of them is cracked and there's fuel all over the place. the similarities with chernobyl are quite quite real and in fact in the in a way this is a much worse accident than to a novel and the reason is that there are a lot of people living nearby the population of the hundred kilometer zone is about three million and to two hundred kilometers there's another seven million people and the and the contamination to those distances according to the i.a.e.a. is opposed one make a. need to know that's an awful lot of radiation that's one million disintegrations per second per square meter of land which is about twice as high as the normal exclusion zone so they're going to be an awful lot of an awful lot of cancers

professor can you just clarify for me the reason that most people of most of the officials said in the first place is wasn't like chernobyl is because i'd like to noble their words containment over the reactor is here and all of these we think they're still intact most of them anyway are those reactors so that's why people were saying it's nowhere near as bad as chernobyl it was no huge large scale explosion you're saying this is different just to clarify it well anyway anyone who looked at those video footage of those explosions wouldn't have said that there was no large scale explosion that this was on high and join us later not a nuclear explosion. well it was a hard turn explosion international as well actually so it was the same thing although there have been some questions about whether it was a hydrogen explosion no but the other point that you missed or the people missed is that there were a huge number of spent fuel rods sitting right on top of the reactor so when it exploded and everybody saw exploding all of those fuel rods went up in the air and anyway as we now know it has melted down so i don't think it suddenly melted down

yesterday this is a worse but thing was right from the beginning is this a worst case scenario then as as you see it really could it get worse than this and what about the poor people that have to clean this up they were called liquidators in chernobyl even to this day twenty five years old missing at japanese human beings risking their lives to think anything could have been learned i don't think anything could be done the problem is that under those very high radiation fields robots don't work and they certainly found a novel a chernobyl they hire they paid huge amounts of money to the germans to provide robots to go in and remove the pieces of fuel and the robots just packed up they didn't work because under those radiation fields electrons the electronics that don't work so you have to use people unfortunately i don't think that even with the people is not that they can do the thing is out of control and we have a sort of science fiction scenario no i think it's going to be very very bad for japan but at the moment i don't think it's going to be quite as bad for the rest of the world luckily because there's

a very large pacific ocean between japan and the next major landmass although i have to say there are increases in radioactivity occurring now in california just in the last information in the last few. years saying is we're not being told maybe the full picture is it's developing what about tokyo what fate lies ahead for tokyo with its huge population. well i have got dates and it shows that there are increases in radioactivity even to the south of tokyo so given the large population of tokyo and the population in the next section close to the to the site there have been exposures to radio euclid's the main problem of course is not the radio new cars that show up on the gamma radiation monitoring systems but the outer emitting radionuclides like plutonium and uranium because these are invisible they they're not being detected and i have to say that we're not being told everything and right from the beginning we weren't being told everything and this is one thing that happened which a novel as well the there's another parallel between these two situations is that

we don't get told anything and when and the truth slowly comes out it has been dragged out of people. how much of a blow is this pain for the nuclear industry or is it seems to difficult to say at this time well i would hope that it would mean that the nuclear industry was finished i mean we can't this is certainly going to in my opinion is going to finish the north of japan off i don't see what they can do about it they're going to have a very large exclusion zone the cost is going to be absolutely phenomenal so the nuclear industry i think is finished with i thought that after chernobyl to be honest and what happened there was that there was a massive cover up an international cover up by the nuclear lobby of all the health effects of the chernobyl accident which is only just coming out now we now know as a result of research that at least a million people have died as a result of the chernobyl accident yet we still have the nuclear industry telling us that only a few liquidators died and there really wasn't any problem except fire on cancer in a few children and that can be cured that was a pack of lies and i think we're going to get another pack of lies after this so

people should watch out professor chris of a possibly scientific secretary of the european committee on radiation risks as you are thanks going on now to tonight's pre-shared. thank you. professor mention of there we talked about the chernobyl exclusion zone it still to this day has high levels of radiation a quarter of a century of the world's first nuclear accident out his legs traveled to the nearby town which was abandoned because of the catastrophe. exactly twenty five years ago what is now an absolutely lifeless ghost town of people in ukraine was a bustling scene this was not only the pride of the soviet union in terms of construction something of a role model of a perfect town but also it was one of its biggest secrets towns like this were called or nuclear city and they were restricted only to the nuclear power plant workers and some military personnel and security service men is nowadays part of the noble exclusion zone and it is believed to be very unsafe to live here in terms

of radiation levels now this is the place where the authorities made their first fatal mistake this is called the death bridge it connects the chernobyl nuclear power station and the closest town of people when the explosion happened nobody knew what was going on in the very first hours so the authorities set up a security checkpoint in order to avoid anyone leaving the city and entering the contaminated area at the security checkpoint was at the very end of this bridge nobody knew how much radiation was emitted and most of the policemen who were working at this security checkpoint died in the first days after the explosion there's a lot of misperception and misunderstanding concerning the levels of radiation in the chernobyl area or how dangerous it is here many speculate as to whether the land is populated with mutants or the levels the radiation would be able to kill a human being within minutes or even seconds now i'm walking in the central part of people right now and my radiation meter shows the level of around

a hundred and forty my corona inspire our this is of course about five seven times more than the normal human level and it may sound scary to some but this is a radiation would not kill a human being but in some parts of the planet radiation levels go much much higher this is now around three hundred twenty micro wrong ins which is more than fifteen times more than the normal human level of radiation but if we just take a little walk to this layer of moss on the ground you'll see that there. ideation level will go dramatically higher now this layer of morse is one of the most dangerous spots and people in fact and it acts like a radioactive sponsor if we put the radiation meter on it you can see and you can even hear how frantic the radiation meter goes and the numbers are increasing rapidly some may say that this is very dangerous for for human health. specialists told me on many occasions that in order to get some kind of harm to your body to to maybe even get the first stages of radiation sickness you have to

literally just sit in the slayer for a week or so and only then you'll feel some harm to your body in the fallout period of many nuclear particles still remaining in this area amounts to several thousand years only few of them actually started their fall out period twenty five years since the chernobyl accident should anything like that happen at the fukushima nuclear reactor the fifty sixty maybe even seventy kilometer radius would be evacuated that is according to some experts but clearly this land for the exclusion zone in ukraine will images will remain until the end of times as this land will never be inhabited again alexi russia r.t. reporting from the chernobyl exclusion zone in ukraine. a couple of the top world news headlines for you this wednesday the reports that police in syria opened fire during a rally in the city of the cuts here it's not known whether the gunshots were in the protesters or into the air with them again after present assad addressed the nation but failed to lift the fifty year old state of emergency as expected he

blamed the countries on rest on foreign conspiracies and vowed to eliminate those behind it and the government protests broke out a fortnight ago causing over sixty deaths of. the time yemen's president and opposition members have resumed talks is huge crowds of protesters continue insisting the leader immediately ends his decades of rule earlier bill or sell a had offered to go after elections and install a caretaker government in the meantime wednesday as well as in the capital also denounced the deadly explosion in a weapons troops killed over a hundred south demonstrations in cities elsewhere have also been there and seen president some of his control slip further away. investigators are working to establish whether russia's most wanted man was killed in a special anti terror crackdown and security services suggest that jocko amar of could have been among seventeen militants who died during a raid in the country south of monday at his paper all of the latest from moscow.

security services and investigators are being cautious about announcing a confirmed death toll of the al qaeda linked terror leader doku model has been announced around eight times in the past that they killed him in operations and that's turned out not to be true so they're waiting on the thorough investigation is taking place in the aftermath of a major terror operation that took place on monday in the shade to in the north caucuses now once the d.n.a. testing is being carried out on those seventeen people who were killed while resisting arrest from security services a not operation won't start investigation is being fully carried out then they will give an announcement whether was among those seventeen who were killed on monday in a machete and now this is a huge huge operation the largest we've seen in town ten years from security services in the area that used the full force of the russian security services we

saw it types from the sky using aerial bombings as well as helicopter gunships being used to suspects who are arrested on the scene model certainly the most wanted in the country he has links to al qaida and his his terror cells have carried out a slew of deadly attacks across russia and just on tuesday he was the fish really charged with being the mastermind behind the january suicide attack on the quality end of airports here in moscow now hold course tuesday a court of which well was the anniversary the one year anniversary of another terror attack claimed by your model that took so many lives that was the double suicide bombing on the moscow metro so a very very much public enemy number one here in the country but it's not just inside russia's borders that he is it was announced that the united states had placed him on their wanted list also the unite. nations looking out wanting to see

him being brought to justice. parties paid all over with the latest on that story for you we've got the winners that i support head in twenty minutes tonight discovering who is leading the way in europe twenty twelve qualifying with you know what let's get across those business developments next on r.t. . that's right time to get the latest from the world of business a very warm welcome new rules for russian state companies have been spelled out by presidents would have heard of such as their regulation needs to be significantly improved to help the country's investment climate you're pretty much still it in order to reduce the influence of state companies on the investment climate we need to do three things first of all to publicize the show jewel of state companies privatisation of the next three years then to eliminate practices where government ministers hold positions on the board of directors in competitive companies and

thirdly state companies need to establish a procedure for publicizing planned procurement including prices and information about contract. and we won't have long to wait until the changes take place. we should look at presidential proposals our priorities that improving the information which you think is very prominent experience these measures to be implemented for each year ready to go. look at the markets now you're struck so high off to some relatively good news about jobs a.d.p. national employment report says about two hundred thousand private sector jobs have been added to the small that's roughly in line with that in the sense of patience it's raised optimism before friday's government of the payrolls report. and european stocks today is twenty eight session and the black tracking gains in asia and see which was backed by strong gains from the mining sector slightly narrowed its early gains at the close it was about to quarter of

a cent of that supposed one point eight percent. and here in russia there are two yes and the most it's finished was day session and the like recovering from tuesday's losses the us is gaining more than one and a hopeless and and the r.t.s. was up point one percent at the clubs let's have a look now at some of the individual moves that you may just say who are enjoying some gains gazprom was up more than two point three percent which world was not far behind it was up just under two percent thank you stuart also on the rise was her bond up around point six percent. russian national nation of all of this still has posted a six fold increase in its annual net profit total of women portugal and almost coming in slightly and the small cost increase in profit is lined with i'll still make as a role in the world the company food costs a ten percent increase in this year. now if european central bank well raise

rates gradually frost speaking exclusively to business archie e.c.v. board member. confirms the bank is ready to move its policy meeting next thursday you also said help isn't place for vulnerable countries that may be pushed to the edge i have high interest rate environment. interest rates were. basically becoming more and more expansionary which are not appropriate we're raising interest rates aggressively first we have been only one interest free so it's course that's cool for everybody but we have also always provided the key to the system their interest. in the system we have access to that financing while. without he's got a box of some banks will get out of the market still. going to. be more difficult. that's the business news for this hour remember you. can

keep up to date online at archie dot com slash. time. sure is that so much maybe you should be sitting on the market really is the so-called humanitarian intervention there so noble and straight forward.