in broadcasting live from our studios in central moscow this is with us let's take a look at your top headlines poland and russia hold a memorial service is one year on from the polish presidential plane crash in a small units which killed president lech kaczynski as ninety five others a tragedy which has however brought both countries closer together. he has agreed to an african union plan to end eight weeks of conflict in libya allowing two

mandatory and then political talks with rebels are expected to reject proposals which keep him in power. also this week a finnish priest is charged with inciting racial hatred and faces expulsion from the church after an interview with our team in which he spoke out against one of the world's most wanted terrorists local market coming up in about thirty minutes my colleague carrie johnson will be in with a full look at your news but first as the turmoil in libya continues peter lavelle . how can exploit the current chaos in the country are coming up next. for the we've got. the biggest issues get the human voice face to face with the news makers.

can stand. alone and welcome to cross talk i'm peter lavelle opening the door to tear the al qaeda franchise has been largely absent from the arab awakening in north africa people appear to be embracing democracy and not radical islam however this may change the military intervention in libya and the violence in yemen could be an opportunity for al qaida. can. still see. just guess al-qaeda in the arab world today i'm joined by an old abbas he's in washington he's a senior political scientist at the rand corporation also in washington we have

been rami he is a human and civil rights program director at the muslim american society freedom and in austin we go to derrick crow he is a political director at the brave new foundation and another member of our cross talking you know on the hunger right derrick in austin you got up early as for this program so i'm going to go you first. is we've we've faced you know during the day we look at the. transformation of the arab world the him the embrace of democracy and getting rid of these vicious dictators have been around for for decades the dictators and some of people on the right wing of said be careful al qaeda is out there to take advantage of it but we've seen successful growing successes in the arab middle east and now we have the intervention in libya and we're hearing al qaeda again do you feel that there is a strong enough evidence to believe that al qaeda is trying to infiltrate itself into the ranks of this civil war is what's happening right now in libya because we haven't heard a lot about al qaeda lately and all sudden we while we get the word from the cia there's

a flicker of activity how do you reflect on that. well i'll i think al qaeda is always looking for ways to insinuate itself into situations where there's chaos or a lack of law and order like we're seeing in afghanistan right now we're hearing that even though we've got thousands and thousands of more u.s. troops into there somehow we still have al qaeda cells popping up and that that really shows i think the brokenness of the u.s. strategy there for on one hand but i do think that there's always the danger that when there's these areas of instability like this that al qaeda tries to insinuate itself but. i think you should always take with a grain of salt sometimes the united states intelligence community you know off the record pronouncements that outside is insinuating itself into a situation because they're kind of the bogeyman that we've set up when we want to intervene somewhere and you know if i go if i go to you in washington it was that cache of documents that came out cache of documents in two thousand and seven and it was revealed in iraq that a number of volunteers to be suicide bombers came from libya from

eastern libya now again is this going is this just the boogeyman coming out and and this is just to try to convince people for against intervention because again they'd be. pure coincidence that a lot of these people came from eastern libya apparently our new ally in the region as this civil war goes on what do you think about that is how true is it. well there used to a a group in libya the libyan islamic fighting group and this was a one of the many groups in north africa that they had some degree of association with i would tell you that what happened is that they get their feet government was successful in essentially crushing this group most of the of the leaders ones up in jail and the ones that survived migrated to other places of.

of conflict so this is this is why you find libyans for example in high positions with the al qaeda core in pakistan afghanistan area is because of the defeat of the levy and islamic fighting group in libya and now what happened in libya is very very before this latest crisis is very very interesting because the they got their free government enter into. into these questions with the recently there is leaders of alevi and islamic fighting group and somehow the leadership of the group went through a process of assessing the examining their ideology and they ended up really now in seeing violence and as a result of these a number of them were let out of prison so basically al qaeda the not have a strong presence in libya when the revolve against gaddafi develop this is what i

don't think that there is a great danger that islamist groups will take over the early eighty's or again it is very interesting libya but it's very interesting irrespective of the numbers here i mean and it in and all kind is always changing it's like you know him if i go to you in washington i mean it's it's kind of an interesting irony right here i mean maybe formal i'll kind of it be there are calls to arm these rebels i mean it . there is a great out historical irony there isn't there i mean these people that were. sworn to destroy western influence and their allies in the region or could be armed by the united states and nato it's a i mean it's kind of like the mujahideen and possibly if it works out. well that's a possibility i think we have to understand that al qaeda is not a political organization in the conventional sense of the word it's not structured around an ideology it's really a terrorist group. whose primary purpose is to create situations that destroy

human life and that insinuate themselves and political situations that will ultimately lead in some attack perhaps on the united states of america or other western countries the sense that i have right now is that civil society in libya and a civil society that emerges from the civil war is going to have to be very good visual and also very much aware of the fact that tolerating that kind of violent extremism is not a benefit to either the evolution of democracy in libya or to live in coexistence with the rest of the world so my sense is further that those of us who really reject violence and reject violence as a means of moving the arab world forward and specifically libya forward will ultimately have to be not only aware of that potential danger but also build up civil society to the point where those kinds of attitudes and those kinds of

extremist ideologies are not are not tolerated or supported ok if i if i can go back. to you it's very interesting and we feel look at the. how the intervention is changing the kind of the discourse that is going on here i mean only a few weeks ago we were talking about the great rise of democracy now more of the focus is on civil war is an opening for al qaeda to say look i mean the the americans are nato allies they're going to protect some of their dictator friends are going to let some of them go it's a lot more ambiguous than this narrative it's the freedom of nations in north africa they can take advantage of that. it and they could i'm going to tell you that could the first speaker remains show oh. it is always looking for opportunities to take advantage of chaos let me mention one thing i see a great deal of of similarity between what is happening in libya today and what happened in boston the in the mid ninety's because usually

called the during the the war in bosnia the bosnian muslims were beleaguered and day thirty two for assistance you know iranians were the main supporters of the of it was in muslims in the early stages of the war there was a danger of infiltration by extremist elements there was a whole brigade fighting in bosnia on the side of the muslims out of mujahideen in this war extremists. many of them were affiliated with al qaeda so so you had these this situation in bosnia in the mid ninety's who were it look as if extremist elements were going to gain great influence and they did know what the united states and its associates partners and allies in bosnia is they engaged with the boston for the nation comprising both the

a muslim and croatian sites and they put in place a program to train and equip the armed forces of the boston for the nation so there was this direct engagement and what that did is it provided the united states with the leverage that it needed to drive out the influence over there any and very has a very interesting i've never heard this comparison is likely to derek an answer here the comparison between bosnia intervention in bosnia and intervention here in libya because france is a can da faecal is still a very powerful figure he he does have resources to hit back and i mean hit back at the west of boston. didn't in that situation there it wasn't going to get more it was going to corrupt the entire regional much further in this case it's still there ok maybe khadafi didn't get rid of all of those nasty weapons ok maybe there's a few hanging around still so big that compare comparison is not very good in that

sense how do you feel about that i mean you know this intervention is giving a message that you know it looks could be critical for many people in the region. sample saudi arabia it's like i said earlier it's not it's not the same narrative all the way through go ahead i think there's a real ambiguity here there's not clear lines between good guys and bad guys in our media like to trade here in the united states like you mentioned earlier at the top of the program the region in which the united states is backing armed forces inside libya is a region that is sent numerous people to fight americans in iraq and afghanistan and they're actually members of the libyan resistance movement that if admitted they have actually been in iraq and afghanistan fighting against the americans and these are the same folks that we're trying to arm with with expensive united states weapons and and trying to back with airstrikes you know back to the topic of a kind of first second we had mentioned that they want to take advantage of chaos i mean al qaeda is in a brand crisis right now like there's these democratic uprisings in egypt and other

places have really kind of shown how how impotent their. ideology is in speaking for the aspirations of the people across the muslim world and it's a real threat to them when people without weapons stand up and try to take control their own destiny rather than going through al qaeda is broken ideology but you're right that the overall point that you're making here is that there's some real moral ambiguity here and for the united states to charge in like we're defending quote unquote freedom fighters versus an evil dictator there's no no real indication that that's how it's going to come out watch. me but i'm a fine go to you i mean again we just got a real quickly before we go to the break here is america helping or hurting its image with this intervention into libya. i think it's doing both actually mad is the irony i do agree with the the assessment that there is moral ambiguity there is

no very clear game plan or exit strategy that we can discern on the part of the route on that point there gentlemen i'm going to jump in here we're going to one short break and after that short break we'll continue our discussion of stay with. kate snow. one. chosen from among many. he was given a clear cut mission. a mission he successfully accomplished. became the first ever man in outer space. of the

soviet union one of the best known persons in the whole world. all his thoughts were focused on flight. could he ever think that his life's work would cost him his life. what happened in those few seconds. and what sequence the sealed barrels still hold. your regarding. plates on our team. we'll. bring you the latest in science and technology from around the world. we've done the future of coverage. listen.

welcome back to cross talk i'm peter lavelle to remind you we're talking about al qaeda in the arab world lead. slim. but first let's see what russians think about this organization and. with democracy in the air many in the arab world now have hope and expectation of change to the people's power appears to have marginalized radical fundamentalists and other groups though in libya and yemen this may not be the case and there is growing evidence that al qaeda is on the move in both countries the public opinion problem dacian asked russians what is the target of al qaeda thirty nine percent of the respondents say it's the entire non muslim world and another two percent actions targeted only against some particular countries he too remains

to be seen if civil war and foreign military intervention will play into the hands of al qaeda and other groups. right you know in in washington if i go to you and we were talking this brand issue that al qaeda has it's a really big problem as pointed out earlier part of the program but they are resilient and it isn't going to go away i mean expression we see events unfolding in yemen which again you see a lot of help from event people on the ground seeing western hypocrisy there they will go in and take out one person but not another ok but this is where al qaeda does have some traction in some sense ok now again rebranding how do they will use what is an effective strategy for them to rebrand if they can embrace democracy but they can still point out the hypocrisy of the west well i think that the awakening as you call it and the response of the west the lease police awakening those very send some very very serious challenges to i would tell you that. i think

ok that would had been afraid that if the west had supported the troops because. the one thing i would tell you the fiends from the very beginning is that they were struggling against the west because it was war and the care. states as they call them up are state governments in place that was the whole theory that they had to strike against the west in order to weaken western support of these upper state play games that if the west were forced to we throw in support they would fall with the democrats who say shit on that we are seeing. the mark of the ascension process that we have seen in keep on things like egypt. in tunisia the levy of course returning to an armed conflict you know i would carry

this argument is we can't because if they see these. masses i sing again i guess the paper sheep and so far there is no indication that these are islamist rebels lucian's their democratic revolutions as far as we can see them there are human lives to spar work if they see their west soup or think that the station process makes it very hard for them to blame the west for the ills of the arab world the muslim world i should say so it is a pretty difficult problem for them and i don't see. very good of putting. itself in the way that would be convincing to the muslim population of the middle east when derek if i go back to you i mean that's a very interesting point here but i suppose maybe we're all getting ahead of ourselves too because we have to see where this to democratic process is going to go in the region it's still very very early days i mean anyone that's going to say it's democracy failed in the in the in or in north africa is just really it's

a street premature we haven't seen where it's going to go to the events in tunisia are still being played out in egypt and unfortunately middle is this awful civil war being played out in libya how much it can it you think can in this if it does events in libya depending on how long it can take will slow down the democratic process because you know even the countries on both sides living in tunisia to start getting worried about this is going to grow and we see al qaeda using potentially using libya's a base because of the chaos that's going to worry a lot of people it's going to be hard liners and the people the security hardliners are going to fuel in bolton again. well i think there are a couple of points i'd like to make to that first is that to the earlier point you were asking the previous guest about what's the opportunity for al-qaeda here what the worst thing that could happen is that in the united states conduct of the war we screw up and there are a lot of civilian casualties right like how we conduct our support of these rebels

if it goes badly that's probably outside his best opportunity in the region and that's unfortunate and related to that is how the rebels conduct themselves and how the revolutionaries conduct themselves if they retake power or in the areas where they have power if if we're seen to be backing a regime that's going on a spree of revenge killings or unjust imprisonment and there's been some indications of that with that with the revolutionaries then that really hurts us in those areas and we're seen as propping up a corrupt regime the same we were seen as propping up a corrupt regime in afghanistan now as far as the instability goes you know one of the excuses the united states used to get into this situation was that if we left if we let this situation get out of control then the instability there would affect what's going on in egypt and around the region but what i think that analysis fails to take into account is that what's going on in libya is in a large part a result of the instability around it with the democratic uprisings in the countries nearby and you had that enthusiasm reach the libyan street and they

decided in some areas that it was their turn for an uprising and in some cases it's gone much worse than it has in the places in egypt and in the region but you know to the larger point you brought up about western hypocrisy the other opportunity for all kind is what's going on in bahrain quite frankly i mean there's a there's a very serious crackdown on people who want reform and that's been tacitly supported by the united states by a lack of condemnation there so i mean there are a lot of traps here for the united states if we're not careful to get boxed into a situation where we actually empower al qaeda as. ideology and message what am i going to is the united states empowering i'll kind of by accident or through the law of unintended consequences why exactly it's intervention there because a lot of people would say it least in the in the inside the beltway they'll say look this is our opportunity regain momentum in the north africa because well the americans in the western capitals have been pretty red faced all their buddies are

leaving power one way or another and they probably will continue to with this demonstration effect but the united states jumps in there and being humanitarian and has derek pointed out and these types of situations you inevitably kill civilians americans are very good at killing civilians in afghanistan and on the pakistani border ok there's no reason we believe it's not going to happen continue to happen in libya. well i think inevitably it happens all the time in war and it does create a very real question about the motives for the intervention and i mean just yesterday we heard the american secretary of state state that the only way the bombing is going to stop is for the gadhafi forces to pull back and ultimately to relinquish power and ultimately for gadhafi to go into exile no that's not humanitarian intervention that's regime change the other question that really is very pressing is what is the real character of the so-called revolution going on right now is that a real democratic revolution or is it simply hatred of gadhafi being replaced by

possibly something that is non-democratic and not necessarily friendly to the west so i think that the nature of military intervention in a complex situation is such that we really don't know how it's going to turn out and how it's going to play out so i would say that the best strategy is to do what's necessary to protect life but to let the political dynamics of the situation sort themselves out and to be ready to support civil society in its reconstruction mind you the the real growth of extremism happens primarily because people have no real options in terms of food clothing and shelter in a society that is highly stratified and it has a high concentration of wealth in the hands of very few people i understand and that is very much the situation in libya so the question becomes can we can the world in the muslim world in the muslim american world support a transition that is really democratic and support those elements in civil society

in libya that want to see reconstruction without an ongoing armed conflict i think that is the question and that's what's in front of us and we'll find out here in washington and it's interesting i mean we all agree here that democracy is not a favor card al-qaeda likes to play it's rejects democracy but it is territory out a's that you know if this goes on. for a long enough though you know you could have a stream is a group saying look what democracy does these people want democracy it tears up countries it creates civil wars and you still have western intervention the west is still calling the shots here so is it really just a matter of time and intensity before this would go either way before people say look you know embracing this always democratic idea is it's the west trying to manipulate what's who's going to be in power and if this goes on longer and longer you know we're supporting people we really don't know very well. you know it's very interesting that you know there is a great deal of criticism of the west in the in the arab world in the arab media

for its interventions i have never i have not heard the argument made in the context of the democratic liberal lucia on that these are going on in the in north africa and other parts of the arab world too late that is not what people are saying the people in the other countries want democracy i mean that's that's that's a sense that you get from looking at the egyptian media for example no one he said you see in the west of money relating. to establish some sort of control over the arab world i think the danger is the opposite then your is that if the market the station feels the arab world will go back to the type of autocratic this particular genes that it has had for the last fifty years and he's in fact the representatives' representative for this or this regimes the fact is there aren't police on the scene to the needs of the population that has generated at least some

of the extremists on the loose i would tell you that so if you look at the long term picture and not just what's happening today in libya yemen or in other places you see that there is if this source to survive the collision are less eliminated the arab world needs to go through the same type of the evolution that latin america east asia and eastern europe have gone through originally to give you a lot for the way you're nodding your head. yeah yeah i want to be clear that i don't think the united states' support of democratization is at all of threat to the united states or in dangers our image around the world what i think is the danger is the support of the united states militarily for faction. that we're not sure about yet i think if the terrorists will strike down which i have to give you more time to do that it's a very interesting point many thanks my guess

a day in washington and austin and thanks to our viewers for watching us here are t. see you next time and remember cross talk rules. from . home.