mine. would be soon which bryson if you knew about someone from phones to permissions. for instance on t.v. don't comb. cross talk is coming up you're an art teacher first let's check in on the top stories as a growing number of senior libyan officials are reportedly fleeing the country regime has resumed attacks on a rebel held city meanwhile seven more civilians are said to have been killed in coalition air strikes. the u.s. defense secretary and the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff are brill then congress there were the libya campaign and both israel to clear up confusion over

the aims of the operation and it's going to cost. us our prison term for investing in georgia an israeli businessman get seven years in jail for bribery but his lawyers claim he was entrapped by the country's top authorities which show the investor a hundred million dollars. coming up next more on the situation in libya and cross talk where peter the about ask his guests if nader's decision to back the opposition was a wise choice. can't . stand. alone when welcome to cross talk i'm peter lavelle arming to when the conflict in libya has reached a stalemate should western powers expand their intervention and arm the and take it off the rebels would this be tantamount to choosing sides in

a growing civil war and as time passes does an end game in libya become even more elusive. can. you discuss the ongoing stalemate in libya i'm joined by jim el-gamal he's in london he's a libyan writer and political activists he's also a british coordinator for the rebel interim national council of libya in washington we have i've been e-mailing he's a senior fellow and director of the center on peace in liberty at the independent institute and in tucson we have hudson she is an associate professor of near east studies at the university of arizona and another member of our crosstalk team on the hunger all right this is across town that means you can jump in anytime you want. i could go to tucson should you the united states and its western allies one way or another legally or illegally or a split the difference between the law and what we want to do morally give arms to

anti kadafi rebels and i'm not going to use the word democratic rivals yet until someone can convince me they are democrats go ahead. what i believe or not is not really the issue we've already taken the first steps down this road and if you look at the last twenty four hour news cycle you'll see that there are special forces on the ground in libya right now and in afghanistan style scenario that is the first step towards ever greater an. involvement in the conflict on the ground there are two different interpretations of what's going on on the ground on the one hand these special forces these u.s. special forces are probably doing much more precise and specific targeting on behalf of the air attack the tactical phase of the air attack

but if you look at the washington post this morning the argument is in fact that intelligence on the ground is actually trying to figure out who the rebels are in order to better position the united states politically so again whether one is pro or anti intervention the first steps down the slippery slope have already been taken in london if i can go to you do you support having the western powers arm be and could offer your forces it without make a difference in the stalemate that these two are we can see on the ground right now a stalemate will that make a difference will it make your side when. but first of all we have to remember that the security council there is a consecutive council resolution banning export of weapons to libya however on the other hand we can see now it is not is not only in even situation gaddafi has very have have the army three armory he has tanks he has multiple rocket launchers he

has artillery he's shelling cities and towns and residential areas whereas the fighters of the revolution or the freedom fighters are very very lightly armed so did they with that there comes a point where we'll ask the question well you know just because there is an empowered group or because we should not arm one side can we just sustain this. mass killing can we just turned a blind eye and say well you know it's tough you know we can shell and you know launch all these rockets and kill all these civilians but we cannot get out of the other side this other i think there is a very strong moral issue there on the other hand also we libyans have frozen assets outside libya in tens of billions we have also oil which we are we can now export through an agreement with qatar so why not be allowed to buy buy weapons to defend ourselves against a mad that's what who has who is insisting on gay and going on killing his killing

the libyan people on mass i mean they're trying to you in washington we've already chosen sides the west already chosen a sign it's going to be it's incumbent upon the west now because it has chosen this site to start making sure its guys on the ground women mean this is the slippery slope we were all worried about and it seems to be playing out right in front of our eyes. yes and it's happened time and again we haven't been too successful in the past of. arming rebel movements remembering goa remember nicaragua remember the worst case was when it seemed like a great idea that you are in the mujahideen against the soviet union during the cold war and look what we got that was the only threat to the u.s. homeland since the war of eight hundred twelve so i think we really have to be careful about unintended consequences and certainly i risk i wish the rebels well but i think your other guest made a good point if they have the money to buy the weapons i don't mind them buying

them but i don't want the u.s. getting in too involved in on the ground training and that sort of thing because i just don't and of course there's a doubt about whether the rebels are competent enough to use these weapons they don't have very good leadership they don't have very good tactics and they don't even really know how to use simple weaponry so i'm not sure you know how they get the training but they can purchase training. overseas from countries that are willing to sell them the weapons but i don't really want to see the united states can evolve because i don't think u.s. vital interest is involved here and i think we need to be careful and as far as humanitarian goes in kosovo we started bombing for humanitarian reasons there was limited and ethnic cleansing and of course afterwards after we started bombing the regime had nothing to lose so it just went whole hog and i think that same thing could happen here and we may face a stalemate all khadafi has to do is keep tanks in the major cities how are these rebels going to get them out of there that's. a fail safe last resort.

option there because it's going to be very difficult to get armor out of cities and that sort of thing and. if he digs in and uses the cities as human shields against nato airstrikes so we could have a stalemate we could have. position that we don't know much about they could turn because there may be a president in that opposition there seems to be some indication of that we've got to be very careful here there are many unintended consequences that could happen from this so you know. we heard where would you like to emphasize is i was a lot of points mentioned there i mean well but would you like amplify. you know i'd actually like to go back i would like to go back to a point that jemma raised. that i haven't picked up in the context of using rebel financial resources to actually finance and coagulate

rebel command and control i've been arguing this for about two weeks now that in fact one of the key steps that would be far more seems to me beneficial and empowering to the rebel cause is the step that just happened i guess in the last couple of days namely using the resources of the eastern libyan. company to contract separate oil deals and to finance the rebel cause now interestingly it's only cutter who has taken the rebels up on this and who has begun to take on this rather risky business of doing or oil deals in a conflict environment and yet i think this is probably the most promising outcome rather than all the back and forth all the sort of half starts and fits and divided

little kid like you can i just feel it was only me ask you a question because it sounds like you know you could end up giving a partition state that's really what it looks like because if you don't know the rebels do not want that that yeah i mean i would ask that's the dilemma isn't it so the danger here yeah it's a huge dilemma actually and yet it's. seems to me that because people whether it is the transitional interim government for whom the motto is of course a unified libya of which tripoli is the capital and there's a very strong reaction against consolidating down into an eastern syria that is the best stronghold because it seems to yield the west to capacity i understand that sensitivity entirely but it seems to me that what we've seen in the last twelve days of the no fly zone is not a superior solution ok one day we see this back and forth now on the road

basically of this coastal highway back and forth between ras lanuf and all these different towns one day the rebels are advancing the next day khadafi is advancing and it doesn't seem as if the nato airstrikes are allowing the kind of quick decisive rebel advance i think that everyone would like to see interestingly of course it's qatar that is beginning to facilitate the rebel financing which would allow the rebels to pay for and finance their own weaponry and i did manage to learn this well you know now that we're. in london if i go to you are you being prepared for the long haul a long civil war are we talking about weeks or months are we talking about eventually a partition state because as has been pointed out on this program is that the the rebels whatever groups there are they're not very well armed they're very well trained are not very well disciplined and they don't have

a whole lot of communication i mean you don't get an army in a snap of a finger even though it takes a while to get yourself together to fight a civil war which essentially is what's happening where you think. yes first of all partition was not on the table we were never contemplate that we will never agree to it whatever it takes because libya will always be united with tripoli as its capital secondly if there is no civil war in libya there is the whole of the libyan people against a mad the sport who is spinning out of control waging a mass war against a population that does not want them thirdly the some people think that the whole of the east is free but the whole of the west is under the good life is controlled that is not correct and the strata is the third largest city in libya nearly half a million population is only one hundred eighty kilometers east of tripoli that's just over one hundred miles is not undercut that his control although he has been engulfing it and shelling it constantly constantly the whole of the western

mountain region from about two hundred kilometers south of tripoli all the way to the algerian border is not under gadhafi control all good that you control it is just tripoli and couple of towns south of it and now tripoli is going through a very very tough period i'll tell you just before our come to the studio either called from tripoli tripoli is run out of fuel it's running out of food the bread the bread queues are very long people are getting very very good reason that the judge here we were breaking could you be with us after that short break we'll continue our discussion on the events in libya and stay with r.t. . if you want to. it's to see cushion curtain into the country. it's the invasion by means of.

tradition the language until you come to this deep bestie oh peak could be. culture. the thing is that the have agendas are still unaware of what's going on in their land still ask them have no idea about what's happening like nothing i don't know any good to alaska the great. on our cheek. if lines. would be soon which brightened a few. songs from finest impressions. who threw stones on team dot com. hungry for the full story we've got it first hand

the biggest issues get a human voice face to face with the news makers. in the czech republic all g.'s available in a hotel assayas central hotel for a movie or a. most trickle of the stuff i used to which i'm a taste in bosnia and herzegovina available in hotel bosnia and total bit of each college a big achieve a photo put you know. to my photos you have enough cold air a boutique hotel and you looked awesome. in serbia multis available in moscow and hyatt regency they are going to. pick if.

welcome back to rostock i'm peter lavelle tree mind you were talking about what many people call the civil war in libya. but first let's see what russians think about how to resolve the libyan crisis. and well when we go along the western led effort in libya is in question many wonder if the people of libya are really being helped in their hour of need the public opinion agency led by the said also persons what the internet can do to stop the bloodshed and to protect lives to one percent of those polled say they should be no intervention thirteen percent say economic sanctions against the regime as a solution to the problem quote percent believe that his asses should be frozen ten percent think a closed space can help and seven percent support a ground operation in the future of the libyan people is far from being clear.

ok is resigned on it to this program nato still is very very well it's actually very against arming any groups in libya the united states britain france other members of nato are not so separate members are not so clear on it in we've heard from the u.s. that they're getting they're entertaining the idea i mean if i hear you i mean i'm i'm the biggest cynic i know i mean by arming the rebels and with nato air support it's just a matter of time before you can polarize down the can off the regime though it may be as you pointed out earlier in the program it could take a very long time it could be very very nasty but it's a pride issue now i suppose for mr obama isn't it by arming the rebels the west particularly the united states is a major stakeholder in the future of the country's politics and economy and its oil . well that's the that's the old adage if you break it you bought it and i think.

we're breaking libya right now and i'd like to point out that even a partition country even if it's not perfectly east and west is better than what you had before with gadhafi running everything so i think if you could even hold it to that people should be happy of course the reality is that obama despite him saying that the goal is not remove gadhafi on the ground that's what's happening in of course everyone anyone will tell you behind the scenes that is the goal they're hoping by some miracle that his army will overthrow him or something like that but i think that's remote as long as he makes battlefield gains like he did yesterday i mean you can have a big name defectors and that sort of thing but i think he's going to win for a while because it takes time to train an army against him and i'm not denigrating with the rebels have done they've been surprisingly and they have a great spirit but the problem is he's got people with military training he's got

mercenaries he's got heavy armor and artillery especially and of course you know we can only do so much and that unless you are armed but the problem that we have in the united states is that it is a slippery slope and we need to send trainers if you're going to send him u.s. equipment you need to send u.s. trainers u.s. maintenance all this has to be taught in this is not done in short period of time so they better hurry up or it's going to or they're going to wipe out the rebels maybe i don't know if western airpower can probably keep them out of benghazi it already did but again you're going to have this stalemate for a long time until you can get the rebel army trained up but i think that the rebels want to buy. weapons and buy the training from some other countries that's fine but i would really not like to see the u.s. take the lead on that jim if i go back to you in london. this is a very good point here is all about logistics. really in the end. if you see you

see a regime like dar fees and we've heard about we've heard talk of the international criminal court we've talked we've heard the issues about human rights violations war crimes what what reason does khadafi and his clique have to really negotiate now or do you just fight to death i mean you do they really have no initiative now to negotiate or even to surrender i think i think you're missing other factors in the dynamics what's happening is that. gaddafi. is loosening this this revolution started with peaceful demonstrations get that close to wage a war against those people and prevent them from demonstrating peacefully we are in the state where we are today but look what's happening now yesterday and today top club gadhafi aides are jumping ship course our foreign secretary today only three x. foreign secretary you and boy does a way you now the head of the parliament are fully. dorda acts prime minister

head of the intelligence and others they're all jumping ship what's going. on can i can i ask you a quick question about these defections recently it's very interesting as we move forward do you think those members of the people who have defected very high profile for foreign minister and what not like a former head of intelligence would you be willing to work with him if he joined your side is he is he somebody that you want to work with and would he be an ally to the west if you were to join your coalition your your opposition group. well if there are people who have no blood on their hands that are not perpetrated any crimes against libyans if they are just a matter of politics who are not involved in any wrongdoings i would say as a as a person personally it is my personal opinion yes we would welcome them because obviously what they are doing is weakening at their feet but if it's somebody like mr course always got there and the tories record of blood on his hands of course we

will not welcome them so what no my point is yeah who's left with him and his sons and close aides and cousins from his own tribe how long can you sustain this soon the military brass those who are out of work controlling the the security brigades and doing the fighting for him the top generals and officers will realize that they are fighting a hopeless battle that they will die so soon they will start attacking as well soon his his machinery and his and his net and his hierarchy is going to start to be great and disseminate and just wither away he cannot sustain it tripoli is suffering now people are fighting today we have stories of people killing each other over fuel and bread and food there is no cash in the pants he'll run out of cash i wouldn't always figured out where the strange the gray haired irish national question is going to jump in. but i was going to say you know i hope i hope. other guest just said is true because i like to get rid of gadhafi myself that iran is

all these things were said about saddam hussein that they were going to be to factors after the first gulf war that and that's the u.s. plan seems to be get it get in partially into these things and then hope for a coup well it didn't is that it happens in some countries it doesn't happen in other countries but it didn't happen with saddam after the first gulf war so i think we have to be a little skeptical that that's a u.s. good u.s. strategy to go in and then hope for it is the i dassent he of hope i guess to quote the president's own saying to to run a strategy like this or we're going to get in do some bombing and that sort of thing and hope for the best and i just don't see going to war in that way is responsible and i can't believe the us foreign policy establishment is supporting that type of a half baked option in line and it can be just as something that is. but this isn't it but what this is not the u.s. against gadhafi in fact the u.s. is taking a back a backseat role this is a forty three countries internationally on the u.n.

to get there but i'm leaving the country it is the u.s. again as it were providing those who can i talk to you guys this is my point please can i finish my point please can i finish my point out of countries five out of countries two of them are engaged in the military action thirty norway the canada. another land sort of denmark for three countries france britain you know if this is not the u.s. against gadhafi and we have not invited to you as you come in we have asked the security council the legal entity who is the responsible for protecting people around the world to intervene and protect libyan civilians while being killed don't much nobody is looking at i haven't heard from about it from your sort of from you guessed the gentleman did anything about this but but it must killing i guess the whole population what's happening in libya is another one day not a tough. where is your guest the gentleman we're quite happy to i love that to happen even if they are since they can part i mean please keep to keep your

ideology of the american administration out of our well i mean we are doing the things i used to say to his and i haven't provided up to the very beginning of the program and i don't think it's as would be pro or anti american issues that being pro practical and seeing what has happened in the last no no no i mean it's always very easy with all due respect sir it's always very easy these days they have the americans bombed them for us ok the americans will support us here they'll give us this is a good idea but that's the point i just want to play this is. what is has to samsung a lot of people hide behind it it's all i'm saying doesn't look good americans nobody mum but it was the french who saved one guy's he's the second biggest city not democrats we're not asking the americans to come back at that he's got it right ok but at the end of the day the u.s. is you are in the middle at the end of the day it's footing the bill and if things don't change you know yes it is obviously and i think it's not as i had going in washington go ahead is that. it is that benefit to quote you look at this as he was

still providing those to the strikes and they're also providing intelligence tanking aircraft aircraft you know logistics and that sort of thing that no other air force has when you have or you have a coalition air strike so now that you are as well and it has such a turn for whatever thing is on the podium i give the briefing it's u.s. driven and it's us behind the scenes u.s. is letting the french is not take the lead is not preserved you know there are a number of french and british aircraft is that you know and the strikes they have are is not going to ask the seller drives that goes willy mays and they turn into afghanistan and it may turn into iraq and i think that's the major concern is. that is the europeans and the americans got the chance to look at going down the slippery slope of intervention for a group of people with a. all due respect sir we really don't know who you are yet we hear that feels there's an element of i don't i don't find it is there a very stairs there are

a skull there are other people there so your other agenda is where we are who we are it's very much described as it is if you want to live the way our society we'd like to know the for which he or i think that's fair isn't it and its conception it is not a tribal society that is wrong that's a misconception ask me and i'll tell you what we are and we are not a tribal society ok well can you tell us what you're going to say she's well we've got twenty seconds go ahead ok then time constant is a national grossly based councillor presenting all cities and towns in libya they have lawyers judges human rights activists academics women liberals generals it is we are not a private society to produce two million gazans one million muslims does have a range and only the journey has to jump in here many thanks to my guest today in london tucson and in washington and thanks to our viewers for watching us here r.t. see you next time and remember cross talk rules.

keep it. straight.