we. could have you with us this hour live from the russian capital top stories now a diplomatic dust up between russia and france moscow reportedly hit south of the french arms dropped to libyan rebels saying it was a violation of the un resolution on the conflict. and the euro's woes takes a turn for the worse as portugal's death gets downgraded to junk status will turn it spreading over where it will lead. to japan approves a second disaster recovery budget devastated communities call for more psychological support fears grow over radiation levels in the area around for the

sheen. and germany is reportedly planning to sell two hundred tanks the saudi arabia in a move sparking human rights concerns and condemned by opposition politicians as illegal. an hour from now next cross-talk looks to lebanon and whether the political or military group has been our it's funny his reputation bolstered by being more closely linked to murder that's heated debate next on r.t. . if you can stand. alone and welcome the cross-talk i'm peter lavelle a united nations tribunals has indicted some members of the lebanese shia movement hezbollah for the assassination of former lebanese prime minister is this special tribunal looking for justice or is it

a tool attempting to take advantage of the country's deep political divisions and is lebanon the ultimate loser in this legal process. can. live. to cross-talk lebanon struggle i'm joined by how a jogger in beirut she's a british lebanese journalist and author in jerusalem we cross all makes sharon he is a writer for commentary magazine and in cairo we have mona evades she is a professor at the american university in cairo ok folks cross talk was in effect but first let's have a show report on the tribunals findings today. days ago a united nations tribunal delivered its long awaited indictment of four has a lot of fish oils in lebanon accused of assassinating the country's former prime minister rafik hariri and a roadside bomb six years ago the indictments now risk reigniting sectarian violence in a country already rattled by decades of bloodshed these political establishment now

faces a tricky challenge it needs to find a compromise that both honors its international obligations and prevents a dangerous political split with a shiite has a belong with men currently enjoying great political clout and lebanon but that's what we are today in front of a new reality that request a wise approach and putting the supreme interest of the country should need peace our national unity and knowing the truth of a concern. ever since it was opened in two thousand and nine the u.n. tribunal has divided the country along the sectarian lines for the sunni it has represented a chance of serving justice in the murder of a prominent sunni leader meanwhile hezbollah and its constituents have e-mails the tribunal as an american israeli conspiracy to foment civil unrest and sabotage the group itself. we reject everything from the tribunals including its false indictments and false judgments we will not allow it to drag living on toward strife or civil war. and earlier this year has

a lot brought down the us backed government of prime minister son career e when several of its members withdrew from the cabinet and defiance of the investigation suspicion of involvement of these us nation has also fallen on shiite syria one of hezbollah's key allies and patrons of the syria to deny disconnection with the killing the accusation led to mass protests that ended syria's decades long military presence in the country syria like libya is part of an alliance and that bias is very wide it begins in iran some elements iraq government are part of the syrian regime hezbollah in lebanon on hamas in gaza. some experts warn that if syria becomes too embroiled in the investigation and i'll break of sectarian violence in lebanon will be almost unavoidable and the specially alarming prospect given the spike in the sunni share clashes of the arab spring presently lebanese

authorities have less than a month to execute their arrest warrants and hezbollah leader hassan nasrallah has sworn retribution for anyone who tries to do this why should try and i across our team. ok how i'd like to go to you first since here in beirut this has been going on a long time and there's a number of people the accused of this crime it happened in two thousand and five first it was being brains on the syrians a number of men were held they were lit released then we hear it's hezbollah and people say it's around and then there are others that will say it's israel i mean is it gotten down to he said she said because there's a lot of people that contest a lot of the evidence in this case and there are many people expression in lebanon on they don't trust the tribunals so who dunnit. that's the one million question dollar who who did what right from the beginning the investigation started on false grounds or wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong. it was it was amazing when i was watching

it to see for example at the time but within minutes within minutes of the of the explosion that killed former prime minister hariri the finger of accusation immediately went to syria and not just from lebanon but you know within hours the entire world followed suit and without any evidence without any proof without any anything about at the time you know syria was being a crime so syria was looked at seen as a prime suspect and was accused of such and events followed after that syria continued to be accused for many years and then suddenly out of the blue that changed and i think it was pointed at hezbollah. even in the early days you know before the tribunal was ever involved here. if you want the locals that were investigating the case i mean there were there were there was evidence tampered with removed when patients are going to from the from the scene of from the scene of crime. it was not sealed off within seconds and then dealt with properly there's

been a lot of you know information over the years about various pieces of evidence that have appeared here and other. but have not looked into proper properly that were. you know missed investigated at the time and then looked at again so the whole thing about the. former prime minister of an. assassination has been marred with problems right front right from the minute are you hearing he died all right i'm referring to you in jerusalem is this a legal farce speakers and i've heard these arguments before the people the evidence is so tainted now in fingers were pointed you know really i mean is this really just a different agenda playing i guess really what i'm trying to say go ahead. well i mean we should we should distinguish between a couple of things the first is just because it was obvious from the start what kind of coalition was behind the murder doesn't mean that once all of the evidence

was assembled that that evidence was wrong we most crimes the vast majority of crimes we have a general sense of who done it and then the job of investigators and subsequently the tribal prosecutors is to work through the rule of law in order to demonstrate that the initial intuitions were correct so just because fingers were pointed early is no evidence that the fingers weren't pointed correctly and in fact one of the reasons that the fingers are pointed so early is because there was plenty of motive for syria and for their allies in lebanon to commit the murder and another reason is that it bore the whole marks of the kinds of hits that we know syrian security officials have committed against lebanon lebanese officials they attempted to resist syrian rule of lebanon so just because fingers were pointed early doesn't mean that they were wrong and it doesn't mean that there weren't good reasons for it now as to the substance of the investigation i think it's way too early to be talking about evidence that was tampered with evidence that was removed from the

scene all of that is until it's presented at trial rumor margaret and the international community has called upon lebanon and the new lebanese government under prime minister mikati to launch an investigation and then to serve the arrest warrants the questions of evidence are questions for trial not questions for rumor mongering and i'm confident that an international tribunal an international investigation from the netherlands which worked as long as it did has all of its ducks in a row and we'll see that the trial ever should to trial ever emerge no man i got into my think we all agreed is i don't want to listen a lot of rumor mongering about this mona feingold do you trust this tribunals do i trust this tribe you know man. not clear no but i want to say here is one of the biggest mistakes was to remove said heavy duty as a prime minister he is the only one who could have john did this whole thing in a balanced way because he might have just didn't you know enough to really pardon

the s.s. ns but at least let go of this sort of thing which is very divisive and the evidence could become a flash point down the road if things become more tense so while it is gun in lebanon today the tide bunions findings can easily be exploited in a much more emotive way and we're already have these tensions between the sunnis and shias so i really have things that only one clue could have saved the day would have been prime minister's son teddy and not mr mccarthy it's a heavy burden on his you know how are you going to go home here because it's very interesting point was brought up here and i think it's like the eight hundred pound gorilla in the corner all the time is it what do we juggle here what's most important stability or justice because we've already got an icon to me today on this program a few seconds ago stability versus justice and we find

a compromise between the both. you can't have justice you can't have justice without stability and account of that is without justice however going back a few things i mean just because saad hariri is prime minister or not you know the case is still there whether he's promised or not he was not removed his cabinet or his government was a little out of confidence. for the earlier guest who said you know about all the evidence i will come through and obviously some of the thousands and was being you know was being discovered over the years for the more you know it surprised that she says or he says that the finger you know pointed to syria meaning that because syria was in town and had other senator. incidents in lebanon that that means automatically it is it is it is the culprits but it is to mention what he fails to mention that israel also there are there are there are hidden marks that are also the same as other attacks that were carried out in assassinations that were carried

out in lebanon over the years by israel by the israeli secret service is almost that's just so i mean the fact that there is resistance is better just going through the military isn't true and the fact that israel benefit out of this and was never even suspect is actually begs the question in lebanon where whether it is ok. let's go to jerusalem there is we did you mean you don't resign head first answer go ahead and let's let's no let's let's deal with both of those charges very very early the first charge is the attack or the hallmarks of the messiah you know we didn't mossad homeworks include confirmation of the kill lots of agents targeted a single person be included specific kinds of and most when the mossad allegedly killed. mugabi in syria that was one person when they killed. when they did the almost two years in dubai that was aimed at one person it's not the case now there are people who will say that the fact that this didn't bear the hallmarks of

a messiah hit but rather than. the hallmarks of a syrian hit was them assad's attempts to make it look like syria did it ok listen if the argument is that it's the side when it looks like them aside and it's the messiah when it doesn't look like them assad then that's not an argument that can be answered that's that is the essence of the non falsifiable conspiracy theory the second charge which is that israel benefited he's an absurd charges are all did not benefit by putting his bhalla by eliminating his ball as opposition and eliminating syria's aba and eliminating syria's opposition now it could be with a gentleman right here a legend in january that's after a short break with the short break we'll continue our discussion on the u.n. tribunals for levanon state with r.t. .

the a. militant. islamists. is. just so pissed slaves. on. the close up team is beamed to the republic of north a situation where half the area is occupied by nature preserve. this time guard keep goes to the region where men flock from all over the world to add

a few senators to their self-confidence where young families are not hesitant about having a senior citizen in their family and where one man's utopia turns into a real village of the shining sun welcome to gun region if russia blows up on our cheap. twenty years ago the largest country in. certain places the books. if the first six months had been the and began to jerks and where did it take a. slow and kicking sisters. to a. welcome

back to crossfire. computor lavelle to mind you were talking about the un investigation of the killing of a former lebanese prime minister. ok mona i'd like to go to you again another issue that's being brought up in this program is that who benefits the most from this crime ok and there's so many different variations here some people say it's the israelis the americans others say it's syria certain factions within lebanon of course has blah you know logically in your mind who benefited from this why it was done. the actual benefit is those who don't want to see a stable levanon and this has been going on for twenty five years and we don't know who it is better we know at the same time that there are people who are to be held responsible. until now we don't know who has read people who are indispensable it is possible that there are other indictments identifying individuals in other

countries and that's what we were trying to say earlier there has been speculation that city i could be issued with men but it's not clear. that our speculation is that israel could be indicted also so nothing is clear but what i want to see is that beyond lebanon and syria this is a global judicial process and doesn't only belong to levanon because if lebanon does not address the for a hizbollah figures if they are indicted then pensions with international community could arise and action could escalate on a soft trajectory and then maybe we could justify what hezbollah is saying because the tribunal is completely pull it says instrument of the united states and israel but nobody wants to have a sectarian war in lebanon that's the main point so we should see also what is a little sense here abs it's a little ok jump in there go ahead on that seems

a little bit it seems a little bit over the top to say that because lebanon doesn't meet its international obligations because hizbollah won't let its there that's evidence that it's an american israeli clar it seems like it's a hizbollah plot to destabilize lebanon and to undermine the obligations that lebanon has been placed under by the international community there was a resolution the resolution passed there was a prosecutor there was an investigation investigation concluded it's hardly fair to blame anyone other than the people stopping the investigation and let's not forget what we heard in the introduction which is that the last government was brought. down over the government's refusal to disavow the hariri tribe you know the government was brought that hizbollah brought down the government because the government failed was meeting its international obligations it's ok for you but it seems to me please because he believes it is a lot of people would say this is part of a plan to destabilize lebanon and i think all of us would agree this is what's

going to happen why and who's behind it is totally different go ahead i'll go ahead i think i think i think as an observer as a journalist and i've been covering this country even though i mean i've been nice but i live abroad for many years and i. you know i can i can say that it has little or any other faction for that matter and i don't want to destabilize the country they can has been one of the factors in lebanon so far and i'm sorry if people disagree but that's a fact on the ground that has made sure that this state you know that this country continues to be stabilized and refuses to participate and in a sectarian war or conflict or to cause this that is a shift in lebanon. down the government's lebanon should no free you know president let the international government let alone lebanon voters vote of no confidence like any other country can because it does have some form of a democratic system and then go out and then do the government down there and it's as simple as that you know i'm not going to have one hundred families all if you

only were states army i mean it's amazing you say has my love brought down the government i mean when you look at any particular government has the lies about two members and they say doesn't even it doesn't even hearken a surety in our government and i say but also it can i just want to hear i'd like to go to mona there's there's one interesting scenario out there is that jim and i'm not going to point a finger at anyone right here but there are some people in the in the region and i'll be honest something about israel they are very pleased to see that the lebanese are among themselves because they don't want to see another. war with hezbollah because of the. has the law is been very very careful in and expanding its influence in the country and maintaining its grassroots stronghold which it has i mean it does have a lot of popularity in lebanon that something that would bother the israelis and throw in the mix what's going on in syria. yes tonight is now in her. you know in the international issues. and that's why she

it's syria is keeping a distance from the details of the indictment if you notice. so the government is obviously of has the masters clearly supporters of the current government so it is obviously president politically but it will try to be as far away from the discussion about the war on terror as possible syria says this is an internal lebanese issue and if any syrians are there will be there too as internally that's what syria says now many other countries as you said may be. better. not on happy. let me go let me go let's go back to beirut we go back to beirut i was one of the thinking given this area that we live in now called the arab spring and i'm thinking about

libya and things like that yeah you think. hollowing are you worried about are you worried that if the current government in in lebanon doesn't. fulfill the execution of these these warrants here it will be used as a pretext for regime change or pressure on the regime and try to isolate the current political elite in lebanon i mean that seems to be the flavor of the moment now in dealing with dealing with political change in the greater middle east what do you think it's it's difficult to say regime change in lebanon because lebanon contra you know in contrast to say syria and egypt and libya you know where they were ruled by one man one party scenario lebanon is not is not that case so it's very hard to apply regime change in lebanon as such you know you have governments governments going governments come live with no confidence now the new government is because these governments down the line i mean there is an attempt as we speak and then that. three days and they declared it the march fourteenth if you want the opposition at the moment said that it aims to bring down this particular government

and they're in session for the next three days starting today. in parliament to see whether they would vote for or against now the likelihood is that they will not be able to bring it out on this round but they could do that you know maybe another time. track of the matter is you know there won't be as. you know it's a pickle i mean spring revolutions that are happening around the world we must we must be very careful not to stereotype them all as the saying you know each country is different you know with its own with its own characteristics and its own systems and they apply accordingly you can take one and apply to the rest of the region it doesn't work as well as we've seen i mean frankly you it looks very likely that the lebanese government isn't going to give up these four people who've been indicted what do you think the result should be is that i mean what kind of message does that send in a man asking you to speak for israel but how do you think media will react to it. sure i mean. i think that israel will take it in stride the same way that lebanon

will take it in stride the same way that the region will take it in stride nobody expects the government which before they controlled the government when they were merely the opposition and they were merely a coalition partner so that they would cut off the hands of anybody who tried to arrest anybody indicted by the internationally sanctioned prosecutor investigation so the question is not whether or not they're going to hand him over but what in lebanon will do for now i think on this issue probably is the only issue that the panelists agree which is that there is no taste in lebanon for sectarian conflict and if there was a taste for sectarian conflict and this is what the other panelist won't say but is the fact that the march fourteenth movement would get that would lose his ball as would the u.s. trained lebanese armed forces would lose to his ball his boat was just the most powerful militia the most powerful military force if you will in lebanon and so the country is going to roll with it because nobody can do anything else and it's an interesting one of my own i want to what do you think about that i mean he gets

a lot of media coverage there's a lot of hype but i mean everybody wants to keep the peace go ahead. absolutely and you know we already as it can have i personally think that there could be tensions with the international community. as this as i said is a global tradition of process it's not only limited to living on and syria and we already saw the movement last week i think in the u.s. congress which wanted to stop military aid to lebanon so this is development that will impact on the many steps the other thing is i'm wondering why you didn't ask about the role of saudi arabia i think saudi arabia has quite a bit an important role to play and i think it was although it was very unhappy when they heard it a government was felt this earlier this year. it's clearly started to lead in on its allies in lebanon not to escalate the situation against

syria because so did a b a is one of the countries that certainly doesn't want the arabs the arab spring to spreads that's a very good point. oh my can if i can ask you i mean it's quite interesting here and we're in this program we've seen how lebanon remains just a pawn of so many other countries and we can name them on quite a few of them it would be mentioned here i mean it is lebanon strong enough politically its political establishment to to make sure it doesn't become victim of outside forces to stir up these troubles that we've seen over the last few decades i think many years ago before during you know during the civil war and before the civil war that was the case and yes many factions in lebanon have various if you want support from from from from other countries or allies in other countries however i think lebanon also has come a long way from the from those days of you know when they went on the street and took and took to the gun it's a different generation of you just have to go around and realize that this kind of

generation of the moment is not interested. and taking up arms and fighting each other now yes every now and then they go on the street and then shot them in screamin and demonstrates and in my books if you know people keep kicking each other a little bit but that's about as far as it goes there's no intention by anybody to let you know to allow lebanon you're into a war but more important more importantly he's just one more thought as you know everyone is going and again you know these these are not things one you know not not everyone says. hezbollah for example does not want for this for this you know prosecution to go ahead now there's a slight difference your confusion right from the beginning has well i was part of the party of this and it was part of the government i'm sorry we. don't like to think the rest of our panel is here many thanks to my guest today in jerusalem cairo and indeed in thanks more viewers for watching us here are keep to next time and remember. to keep.

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