i have a million pounds of hardware and humans taking aim on the international space station . forty seconds into the flight and three liquid fuel main engines traveling back to seventy two percent of rate of aforementioned in the budget reducing stress on the shuttle as it goes trans sonic for the final time of. the engines now revving up standing by for the trouble of call. the watching live pictures of the space shuttle atlantis lifting off for a final time thirty years and one hundred thirty five missions after the space shuttle program started this is the end of it as an launches off into history bringing a final flight manual interior and equipment up to the international space station action required. in our headlines this hour thousands of protesters are filling cairo's tahrir square and what's being dubbed a un million man march there demanding faster reforms in the prosecution of the

former president's top officials are trying to keep the pressure up on the country's military will. tell of a of on high alert ahead of the expected arrival of pro palestinian activists on a mission to ease the gaza blockade and majority of the campaigners were blocking european airports at israel's request while two americans who made it through were to court. and we bring you back to these live pictures of the space shuttle atlantis on its last ever known mission into space ending the u.s. space shuttle program and the end of an era potentially leaving tens of thousands out of work again these are live pictures as the shuttle liftoff into work. crosstalk coming your way next but you know about stay with us here on our team.

live. in. a low in welcome to cross talk i'm hearing all about after decades of conflict in war south sudan is set to become an independent state on july ninth as the world intice a paid for this event there are lingering questions surrounding the viability of this new oil rich country as south sudan failed even before the start which. can. start. to cross the future of south sudan i'm joined by my guests in washington jonathan temin he is the director of the sudan program at the united states institute of peace john campbell he's the ralph bunche senior fellow for african policy studies at the

council on foreign relations and he is an african political analyst all right gentlemen this is cross talk that means cross talk rules in effect i mean you can jump in anytime you want to me i'd like to go to you first in washington and looking at the future of south sudan and will have its independence in a few hours is it mission impossible or is it already mission failed. oh it's neither of those those i don't think those are the possible outcomes of course everything is in the air it depends on what happens more than you do prince on what important act is do the leadership in saudi in sudan and the people in government or not want to become known they in sudan the southern sudan the international community and of course they need three are for countries so there are a lot of this i actually think the future down while while it is not problem free is is much more positive than i had seen in the media do you have

a number of important a sense go in for them but a lot of their reporting has been on the difficulties which is right but we mustn't forget that you have important things going for them international goodwill they have a lot overall you know they're not on the small fair target and they're not on and most important or for if you look at the referendum the people voted this is something that people really want and where there is a will there is there is a weak ok mr ambassador john campbell if i go to you i'll repeat my question is it mission impossible or mission failed already because as we already heard there's a lot of ifs out there and i'd like to point out this is seems to be a very important foreign policy objective of the united states a lot of money has been poured into this endeavor what are your thoughts on it. it is certainly not mission impossible. it is however a challenging mission. a number of the very important issues between south sudan and sudan and the khartoum government still need to be worked

through for example only about eighty percent of the water has been delineated then there is the question of how the oil revenue is going to be shared what arrangements are going to be for export in the oil most of which goes out through port sudan which is in the north and then there is the nationality question what do you do about people problem the south who live in the north and vice versa these are important issues leftover from the comprehensive peace agreement that have not yet been resolved and then there is the question of the south sudan's own institutional development one of the things we have seen is that in countries which have enormous amounts of oil there are is heavy institutional stress how in other words do you make best use of the oil revenue and prevent it

from a sensually going into the pockets of a few corrupt individuals ok i don't really like to bring in jonathan here i mean we've heard a lot it looks like this is a new state built on a lot of hope is that is that. a point too much cold water on the future of this new country. it is built on a lot of hope ninety eight percent or more of south sudanese voted to secede and that was a legitimate ninety eight percent that's almost unanimous which is really a remarkable thing it will be a state born week but i don't think it will be a state war and failed i think that's unfair to the south sudanese but the challenge is that a massive campbell talks about are real and i will add one more which is that there are real ethnic divides within the south and there are perceptions that the southern governments and the southern leadership are dominated by a few ethnic groups and that's something that the southern people will have to deal

with early on that kind of ethnic division has been very problematic in other parts of africa. that you go to you i mean when helping some south sudan develop its institutions it looks like the military and security get a lion's share of foreign aid united states nation farming is one hundred million dollars a year expensive everything else infrastructure wise and we're talking about one of the poorest places on the planet is that a wise move. well i think it's a. great sign understandable move to begin with i mean no things that in my mind called this and i are all in washington and so we hard our fingers down on how sudan policy gets me and i think people have been rightly worried about the war in their domain eighteen. of non-doing sudan and we're in for the last few days president bashir has made a lot of very worrying statements and there is a war on the border and i would be and in southern kordofan so yes you have to look

at the security of our everything that has been said i agree totally with because of the especially the challenges of oil and ethnicity we have to help the sudan southern sudanese the u.s. and others who care have to help them to build institutions and incidentally i think if you stress democrats see you will of wired world people wrongly called the oil case it is not their kids what is necessary is once you have oil you are to build strong institutions to deal with the oil the united states is well endowed with oil it doesn't corrupt their their country are smart as people assume for other places so i do think yes the focus on military security may seem skewed but that is their fair stead now the hardware begins there and once started it comes and the country's independent people who should know say everything's done and go who in particularly people like me are even stand people

in the united states who do put pressure on what the us ought to do we have our work cut out for us to pressure the u.s. government to build the i'm very institutions i think i share their concern in your question that you shouldn't be against military only well let's talk about the military here if i go to the ambassador human rights watch and amnesty international are very concerned about the funding of the military in the south because they know. soldiers have been responsible for grave human rights abuses including unlawful killings of civilians and looting and destruction of civilian property i mean again i mean is this such a is this a good time for independence if you have you have militias and security forces that are not very disciplined to be polite the security situation is extraordinarily difficult it's very easy in the euphoria leading up to the individual independence day it's very easy to simply put aside the fact that there

is active fighting going on in i'll be in south kordofan there there are claims by various ethnic groups of. north north sudan sensually trying to destroy them as independent entities in other words south sudan has to have at this stage a robust security establishment all of that said it is perfectly true that in south sudan as elsewhere in africa the behavioral and the training of the military is not necessarily what we would like it also makes the training of military all the more important and it's interesting jonathan if i go to you i mean it's an interesting mix here i mean the united states has been spending enormous money amount of money on the security situation there and as it was pointed out in this program there's a heck of a lot of oil there i think there's an estimated six billion barrels of oil on the

ground underground i mean so you have a very large security force in a lot of oil that it could make speakers why wouldn't security forces be more interested in revenues. well it's important to keep in mind that the southern army of the sudan people's liberation army is the largest employer in south sudan by far this is going to be a country with very little employment opportunity now the s.p.l. a is too large everybody recognizes that and there are a lot of soldiers in there who should probably be demobilized but it's very difficult for the sudden government to do that because there are few alternatives in terms of employment for any demobilized soldiers and there's a chance that any demobilized soldier is my revolt or join some of the current rebellions in this out so that's really a sensitive issue for the southern leadership i think the south is actually rather unified around their oil and they're certainly unified around keeping as much of the oil and keeping as much of the profits as they can but there is certainly

speculation about corruption in the oil sector and speculation that the army has been involved in that i mean trying to you if you see a possible future for south sudan light maybe like nigeria because of the oil. number one i hope not number two i don't really think it because i think of cause the l.b.o. by large they'll be they'll be similarities but i think for me the differences will be essential because if nothing else we have the example of nigeria to to to look out and to try to avoid the things that got them in trouble and so i am i must emphasize again i think the good is making sure that we build democratic institutions they challenges that michael connelly as i've mentioned are all correct in the give them the right emphasis jobs they don't mean ones of the army and the dominance of the s.p.l. and the ethnic issues but i think we do have the example of other problem areas in

africa in the south in sudan needs people in the government how congo large by the do need international help and international assistance and imus also argue that i'm on the hopeful side and not not in and i mean sense because you know we are in washington washington they're celebrating july fourth over two hundred years of the and different is if you cast your mind back it looks like a very impossible mission when windows peters be clear independence and so when people feel strongly about it it can take on the challenges i do think we must find time to talk about the rule of khartoum and president bashir here because with all of the internal challenges collinson done i do think are you with us i was actually as we as we are after we return from a break after the break we'll continue our discussion and spend state.

still. the close up genius to the republic of north ascension where 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 where one man's utopia turns into a real village of the shining sun welcome to gun region russia close on our cheap. wealthy british style.

markets why not. find out what's really happening to the global economy in the kinds of reports on r.t. . can be. welcoming to talk about remind you we're talking about the birth of another sudan. keep. ok mr mesereau like to go to you know when it was mentioned right before i went to the break what about the north north sudan as it will be here and their attitude towards the new country to the south can they make or break the possibility of

a sovereign state a state that can actually take care of itself with all that oil by the way but nonetheless what cards they play to make or break a new country. well. they certainly have the potential if for example you have full scale warfare breaking out between south sudan sudan and the north the emergence of south sudan will become infinitely more complicated i note that according to the press this morning bashir will be in juba for the independence day celebrations i hope that is correct because ever since the comprehensive peace agreements were signed the north has dragged its feet. on the process by shear himself openly and publicly accepts the end dependents of south sudan but bashir has an opposition he has an opposition in

khartoum and there are others in khartoum who are not happy at all about south sudan becoming independent not least because of the oil there is a kind of mantra that you can sometimes hear. to the effect that bashir has lost south sudan bashir has failed that to end the crisis in darfur and the shearers approach to the opposition in khartoum. is repressive so bashir is not a totally independent actor and or this ok jonathan when you think about i mean. that with an enormous seize all this oil and i do point out i mean right now the oil does go through the north for exports so i mean there is some kind of interdependence already built into this relationship irrespective of attitudes political attitudes about the independence of the new state. and this is why the oil is actually

a positive factor in terms of north-south relations in some ways because there is such mutual dependence between the north and the south in order for both of them to get their oil revenue the south gets about ninety eight percent of its revenue from oil almost all of their revenue comes from oil the north the numbers are a little fuzzy but probably something in the neighborhood of sixty percent of their revenue comes from oil they both need it they can't afford to live without it despite some of the heated rhetoric that we're seeing and so the fact that almost all the oil about eighty percent of it comes out of the ground in the south but then goes through pipelines in the north and refineries in the north means that they have to work out a deal on oil they can't afford to do anything else and so i think there will be a deal on oil probably not by saturday july ninth but they've agreed to keep talking and i think that mutual dependence does act as a brake on a return to full scale civil war which i don't think is likely i do think it's likely that we're going to see some of this violence around the north-south border

for some time to come near you go ahead you want to jump in there ok yes i want to i think the ambassador is very right i mean jonathan is right to buy the ambassador i mean the point of president bashir in the north. and i think that is totally true we shared flight on the five he had been. he. again when decision of the south to brick a we sat seed but then he was seen beginning last week and since he came back he's been very very. what i want to see not that far north. koreans are china's new nation by sheer also would bring in their rule of the united states i mean we all know president obama. wants an africa and he's thinking in interest in africa from could be a lot of businesses. this is obama was yes in south africa and so i hope that

behind the scenes president obama is talking to the chinese because their current influence on on. sudan's especially the north because they are larry is prone by companies from three countries the major one being a chinese company it is the law it is sold to china and order by should come from china so i hope the us is talking to china so that they'd play a constructive role because jonathan too is right they are. dealt with properly can reduce the friction between the two countries because unlike you said yes they both need is so it can be a positive factor and you think mr ambassador i'm going to you know i did during celebrations on saturday hell ring in the new country there should be a lot of dignitaries there i think colin powell is going to be there the current u.s. u.s. representative the united nations susan rice is going to be there and a lot of other dignitaries is it all about oil i mean if it were any other if there

were no oil there do you think a lot of dignitaries would be showing up. yes yes i think there would be a lot of dignitaries showing up because yes oil is important but what is also important is that this marks the aaron of a conflict which has gone on for almost a generation. i mean the warfare between between the north and the south has marred africa for for more than twenty years i want to take this opportunity though to jump in with respect to the mutual dependence of the south and the north on each other and with the particular focus on oil it's perfectly true yes indeed there are mutually dependent the question becomes whether the leadership of the two and here i would particularly focus on

courage and whether the leadership of the two recognize that fact and are willing to take that reality into account as they develop their policies that's what we're going to have to watch over the over the next several weeks. to share concern about the belligerence of comments that shear has been making over over the past week or so i will be watching with a great deal of interest about what he actually sell is on independence day and the day after when you think about that jonathan i mean if there if we have my share is not so secure is a lot of people mate that might think he is i mean he could have a lot of trouble he's going to have to start saying the right things are respected it's against his own country's best interest as we've been talking about this interdependence i mean if it no one gets any money if they'll put oil isn't pumped out of a country so i mean what kind of wood what kind of variables is he could have to

deal with to get to maintain his power base but you still accept that a new country has come into being. well when we talk about him saying the right things it depends what audience he's talking to and the right things for the international audience can be very different than the right things for the domestic northern sudanese audience the message that president bush here in the n.c.p. leadership are trying to send right now within the north is that we are in control and that there aren't going to be any more breakaways like what we're seeing in southern sudan and this i think explains to some extent the violence that we're currently seeing in southern kordofan state and the efforts to disarm some troops in southern kordofan state in the north who are aligned with the south and that of course has been a rather violent process to go back to oil as well i think it's important not to overemphasize the importance of oil in sudan it's a medium level producer about four hundred ninety thousand barrels a day doesn't make a big for a global producer and for the u.s.

oil is actually not that important because the u.s. doesn't consume any sudanese oil because of the sanctions that the u.s. has on sudan so this has as much to do with the history and the bloodshed that ambassador campbell was talking about as the oil it's not just an oil story i mean if i go to you what kind of precedent is being said here could we see even regions within south sudan start breaking apart or even the north seeing seeing the state of the north start collapsing if once received by sheer whatever moves he makes one way or another it could destabilize the north as well we've been focusing a lot on the south what about the north yes that is absolutely true and it's yeah i hope it doesn't happen i mean the ambassador is right there was. for a long time but i will take you through being further you know i'm from don i'm going to depend in one thousand nine hundred seven so there are.

tensions. and also fighting actually you can see this. signs of it in one nine hundred fifty six so the conflict has actually been there for more than fifty years so this is the brick of the south and the end in ninety eight percent for the referendum to me tells me that this was a special case and that i hope it doesn't spread to other parts of sudan and only in sudan trying to break up i mean there's even some talk among some of the other need groups that well in southern sudan i don't want to put too much of a fine point on it back people always talk about breaking away i think you should be the i said cian rather than the rule and i hope it doesn't happen in other parts of sudan but beyond whom he did plans on how the government governs the country if people feel that their wishes and grievances are taking into account in the i'll listen to even in the problems are not solved it will still be which we are now

says in the short time left to give some thought to places like darfur and off because there sanctions the u.s. as it is known in sudan was mentioned but again i think washington if it is creative this special. lymon if it is creative those pressure points can actually be used not just on by sheer but also on the oprah zisha and also rebels in other areas like darfur to mention that there are no more bricks because i think that's a general rule i don't like to see bring tribes in africa for that matter it benefits political ambitions political people more than the ordinary citizens but in the case of southern sudan i think it's the section that proves the rule ok jonathan i'm going to give you the last word in the program what is the future of south sudan in three seconds. i think the biggest challenge in south

sudan is for the south sudanese to define themselves and to define what it means to be south sudanese for a long time what has held southerners together is getting to this referendum getting to this end dependence and also the common enemy that they see in the north it's now time to get beyond that and to define what it means to be a member of this new brand new country of south sudan ok that's a very good point in the program are many thanks to my guest today in washington thanks to our viewers for watching us here arche see you next time and remember rostov. hungry for the food we've got it's. the biggest issues get a human voice ceased to face with the news makers.

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