definitely a huge bill that is a fine mark when united nations tribunals is indicted some members of the lebanese shia movement has belonged to the assassination of the former lebanese prime minister. not.

stop stories a diplomacy grab the un security council between russia and france over libya with mosco saying french on the rebels breaches of e.u. on this resolution on the country's. new eurozone crisis that is portugal has created stages of downgraded to junk by moody's rating agency which says lisbon may need a new bailout just two months after getting a nation build enduro one shock waves have been felt across europe with forming and the cost of government boring surging into debt countries for the islands to eat and eat. and despite a new disaster recovery budget of twenty five billion dollars japanese people remain in desperate need not only of financial assistance but also emotional support in areas devastated by the catastrophic us quake and tsunami. there's the headlines up next crosstalk lukes to melbourne and and if international warrants

will be a rest of his beloved figures over the s.s. nation of the country's prime minister are an attempt to just it's a simple effort student to fit in the country's politics. hello and welcome to cross talk i'm peter lavelle the 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. to cross-talk lebanon's trial i'm joined by howard job or in beirut she's

a british lebanese journalist and author in jerusalem we cross all make seran 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 crosstalk rules in effect but first let's have a show report on the tribunals findings to date. days ago a united nations tribunal delivered its long awaited indictment of four hezbollah officials in lebanon accused of assassinating the country's former prime minister rafik hariri and a roadside bomb six years ago they indictments now risk reigniting sectarian violence in a country already rattled by decades of bloodshed. 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 lebannon about this and we are today in front of a new reality that requests

a wise approach putting the supreme interest of the country civil peace our national unity and knowing the truth above all concerns. ever since it was opened in two thousand and nine the un tribe you know 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 denounced the tribunal as an american israeli conspiracy to foment civil unrest and sabotage the group itself. we reject everything from the tribunals including its faults indictments and false judgments we will not allow it to drag lebanon toward strife or civil war. and earlier this year hezbollah brought down the us backed government of late prime minister's son so hariri 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 the key allies and

patrons on 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 the violence is very wide it begins in iran some elements in iraq government are part of a syrian regime has one law in lebanon on how mosques in gaza. some experts warn that if syria becomes too embroiled in the investigation and the break of sectarian violence in lebanon will be almost unavoidable and especially alarming prospect given the spike in the sunni shake 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. for cross talk. ok hala i'd like to go to you first since you're in beirut this is been going on

a long time and there's a number of people that i think used of this crime it happened in two thousand and five first it was being brain down the syrians a number of men were held they were late released then we hear it's hezbollah then people say it's iran 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 can test a lot of the evidence in this case and there are many people expression in lebanon but 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 on wrong grounds it was it was amazing when i was watching it to see for example at the time that 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 a time you know syria was being primes syria was looked at seen as the prime suspect and was accused as such and events followed after that and continued to be accused for many years and then suddenly out of the blue that changed and the finger 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 was evidence tampering. removed when they should have been ruled 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. that have not been looked into proper properly that were. you know missed investigated at the time and then and then looked at again so

that the whole thing about the. form of promise that. assassination has been mired with problems right from right from the minute. he died all right i'm referring to you in jerusalem is this a legal farsi speakers i've heard these arguments before that the evidence is tainted now in fingers were pointed you know early i mean is this really just a different agenda play i guess really what i'm trying to say go ahead. well i mean we 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 ate 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 job of 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 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 hallmarks of the kinds of hits that we know syrian security officials have committed against lebanon lebanese officials that 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 and i think one of them i think we all need is i don't want to lose a lot of mood rumormongering about this moment if i'm going to you trust this tribunals. do i trust this tribunal. not really 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 juggled this whole thing in a balanced way because he might just you know not 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 dense so while it is gun in lebanon today this i've been finding is going to easily be exploited in

a much more emotive way and we already have these tensions between the sunnis and shias so i really have things that only one who could have saved the day would have been prime ministers t.v. and not minister mikati it's a heavy burden on his you know how are you going to get a 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 that what do we juggle here what's most important stability or justice because we've gotten that dichotomy today on this program a few seconds ago stability versus justice and can we find a compromise between the bow. you can't have justice you can't have justice without stability and can't have stability 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 his promise or not he was not removed his cabinet or

his government was voted out of confidence. as for the earlier guest who said you know about about the evidence that would all come through and obviously some of the toys and was being you know was being discovered over the years furthermore you know it's surprise that she says or he says that the finger you know pointed to syria meaning that because syria was in town and had other similar. incidents in lebanon that that means automatically it is it is it is the culprit but it trace to mention or he fails to mention that israel and also there are there are some there are hidden mosques 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 israeli secret services almost that's just so i mean and the fact that there is resistance will best just untrue the military isn't true that the fact that israel benefit out of this and was never even suspect is actually begs the question in

lebanon where the government is ok. let's go to jerusalem there's going to try to meet here on the result here answer go ahead let's let's let's let's deal with both of those charges very very early the first charge is that the attack or the hallmarks of them aside no we did mossad homeworks include confirmation of the kill lots of agents targeted a single person in clude specific kinds of and most when the mossad allegedly killed. mugabi in syria that was one person when they killed. when they did the here 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 attempt to make it look like syria did it ok listen if the argument is that it's them aside when it looks like them aside and it's them aside 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 an unfalsifiable conspiracy theory the

second charge which is that israel benefited is an absurd charges are all did not benefit by putting his bhalla by eliminating his ball as opposition and eliminating syria's up and eliminating syria's opposition now it could be that man with the gentleman right here always you can join you later after a short break want to assure break we'll continue our discussion on the u.n. tribunals for levanon stay with r.t. . if you. still. want.

spending the year in iraq is not a true journalist i saw some ways to go and u.s. contractors there is kind of wasting their time trying to get killed. i thought all along the length of the lead about five hundred miles. it would take me about twenty seven days and knew going to publicize the people invited the more i think the hope leads people started the bait of a dialogue let's just. changing the slowly nurse wait in the sun in some states. or am. perfect. pearls a little. bring you the latest in science and technology from around russia.

we've got the huge earth covered. if. me leave. to feed. it to the. sea. turtle and experienced still. illegal. plenty. welcome back to cross talk on peter all about to remind you we're talking about the un investigation of the killing of a former lebanese prime minister. steve.

ok mona i'd like to go to another issue that's being brought up in this program is that who benefits the most from this crime ok and there are so many different variations here some people say it's the israelis the americans out there 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. those who benefited it is those who go into one to see a stable levanon and this has been going on for twenty five years and we don't know who it is but we know at the same time that there are people who are to be held responsible there until now we don't know who are the lead people who are just bunch of it is possible that there are other indictments identifying individuals in other countries and that's what we were trying to say earlier that there has been speculation that syria could be issued with and i mean but it's not clear. that as

speculation is that israel could be indicted also so nothing is clear but what i want to say is that beyond lebanon and syria this is a global judicial process and doesn't only belong to levanon because if eleven of them does not address the four see if as well a figure if they are indicted then tensions with the international community could arise and the action could escalate on a soft trajectory and then maybe we could justify what hezbollah is saying that the tribunal is completely politicized 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 this all a subset a.b.s. seems a little ok jump in there going to move on to that seems a little bit. seems a little bit over the top to say that because lebanon doesn't meet its

international obligations because his by law won't let it that that's evidence that it's an american israeli plot 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 the 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 to hizbullah brought down the government because the government failed was meeting its international obligations it's a. lot of people would say this is part of the plan to destabilize lebanon and i think all of us would agree that this is what's going to happen why and who is 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 if hezbollah or any other faction for that matter and i don't want to destabilize the country they can has been one of the factors and i've been on so far and i'm sorry if people disagree but that's a fact on the ground that has made sure that this that the state you know that this country continues to be stabilized and refuses to participate and i sectarian war or conflict or to cause this that is ation and been on hold down the government lebanon should not treat you know how is it that lebanon just another government learned lebanon lebanon voters a vote of no confidence like any other country can because it does have some form of a democratic system and then booted and then brought the government down and it's as simple as that you know and one who hadn't run and said he's the worst texter meaning it's you say has. brought down the government i mean when you look at any

particular government has my lies about two members and that's not what i'm saying doesn't even does it not how can a surety and a government i thought of so it can i just go to mono here 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 are very pleased to see that the lebanese are squabbling among themselves because they don't want to see another war with hezbollah because they hezbollah has been very very careful in 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. city has to hire as. you know in the international issues. and that's why it's just it's serious keeping a distance from the details of the indictment if you notice. so

the government is obviously. damascus clearly supports as well learn the current government so it is obviously present politically but it will try to be as far away from the discussion about the war on terrorists as possible syria says this is an internal lebanese issue and if any syrians out and i did they would be dealt with internally that's what syria says now many other countries as you said may be. better. not under head he. has let me go let me go let me go back to beirut let me go back to the would i want one of the thinking given this area that we live in now called the arab spring and i'm talking about libya and things like that yeah. are you worried about that 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 in trying to isolate the current political elite in lebanon i mean that seems to be the flavor of the moment now in dealing with political change in the greater middle east what do you think 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 a one man one party scenario lebanon 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 they vote no confidence now the new government is his government down the line i mean there is an attempt as we speak in the next . 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 governments 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 a dart on this round but they could do that you know maybe another time. the fact of the matter is you know there won't be as. you know a typical i mean spring revolutions that are happening around the world we must we must be very careful not to stereotype them all as the same you know each country is different you know with its own with its own characteristics and its own systems and they apply accordingly you cannot take one and apply to the rest of the region it doesn't work as well as we've seen when we find go to 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 is that send in i'm not asking you to speak for israel but how do you think media will react to it. sure i mean how 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 hizbullah government which before they controlled the government when they were merely the opposition and when they were merely

a coat coalition partner said 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 that on this issue probably is the only issue that the panelists agree which is that the lead but there is no taste in lebanon for sectarian conflict and if there was a case for sectarian conflict and this is what the other panelist won't say but is the fact that the march fourteenth movement would get would lose to his ball as would the u.s. trained lebanese armed forces would lose to hizbullah hizbullah's 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 way of mana when i when 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 have i personally think that there could be tensions with the international community. as this as i said is a global tradition brosius it's not only limited to lebanon 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 developed 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 an important role to play and i think it was although it was very unhappy when they heard it a government was failed 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 spread it's a very good point. however i can if i can ask you i mean it's quite interesting here and we're in this program we've seen that how lebanon remains just a pawn of so many other countries and we can name them on quite a few of them it would have been mentioned here i mean is lebanon strong enough politically its political establishment 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 you know what during the civil war and before the civil war that was the case and 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 from those days of you know when they went on the street and took and took to the gun it's a different generation and love and you just have to go around them realize that this kind of generation and 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 scream and demonstrate and then my books if you know kick kick kick kick 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 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 that hezbollah for example does not want for this for this you know prosecution took to go ahead now there's a slide the first your confusion right from the beginning while i was part and parcel of this and it was part of the government i'm sorry we've run out of time and i'd like to thank the rest of our panel is here many thanks to my guest today in jerusalem cairo and in beirut and thanks to our viewers for watching us here r.t. remember crosstalk. twenty

years ago in the largest country in the world. two cases. if. one had been trying. to teach began a journey. where did it take them. close up jeanne has been to the republic of north ascension where half of the area is occupied by nature preserve. this time our team goes to the region where men flock from all over the world to add a few centimeters to their self-confidence where young families are not hesitant about having a senior citizen in their family.