we've got. the biggest issues debt the human voice ceased to face with the news makers. welcome back you're watching r.t. live from moscow these are the top stories the clock is ticking for colonel gadhafi and his supporters to accept and extended the deadline for surrender meanwhile artie's who visits the ousted leader is out a ground see thought to be. the state one of the hubs rather uneasy scaife route from tripoli. you want us to haitian slams a deadly israeli raid on a gaza bound aid for till last year as i accept the bill but the review science israel's blockade of the region is legal. the international war crimes tribunal

asks r.t. to hand over a unique interview with former bosnian serb general rock and wattage from nine hundred ninety five as army chief is standing trial in the hague over alleged crimes of genocide. on more news is coming your way in about thirty minutes time before the add though we bring you pitiful belle's debate show crossed up. can. you. please. logan and welcome to cross talk i'm peter lavelle reasons for optimism for more uncertainty and violence with the end of the khadafi regime what

are the possible futures of libya can the country move from civil war to stable and democratic society or would follow down the path of another afghanistan or iraq pledge. to take the stand. to cross-talk libya after gadhafi i'm joined by lindsey german in london she is a national conveyor of stop the war coalition and denver we cross to daniel wagner he is c.e.o. of country wrists aleutians and in toronto we go to eric margolis he is an award winning journalist and author of war at the top of the world the struggle for afghanistan and asia all right folks this is cross talk means you can jump in anytime you want and i very much encourage it but first let's look at some of the challenges facing the new libya. following six months of iraq about all the grip the world's attention the arab spring has produced another significant outcome the toppling of libya's gadhafi may have come as

a surprise to almost everyone now the least of which were the rebels who fought the forty two year regime. but as the victory fanfare settles libyans are facing a far more trying challenge that of proving they can create an alternative to qaddafi's rule when their standard we're working a lot of me here in the look and a lot of civil society is so we are starting from. only your point. here. in the situation the country is transitional council has been lobbying foreign governments to unfreeze billions of dollars and cut off his assets to jumpstart the country's economy and the international community has afforded libya the benefit of the doubt while there will be huge challenges ahead one of the positive aspects here is that the libyans are the ones who are undertaking the regime change and the ones leading the transition. there is no sign however that nato which sustained the campaign against

gadhafi forces will be folding up its operations any time soon the mission will continue in full compliance with the united nations mandate for as long as it's needed but not to. the transitional leadership has so far rebuffed the idea of deploy u.n. military observers but did ask that the u.n. help ensure democratic elections but the fear remains the major presence money and diplomatic support notwithstanding political infighting and tribal strife could threaten their countries for their prospects miesha char and i for cross talk r.t. . ok if i can get it daniel in denver i was going to the person had to get up early as for this program we just heard in that report. the libyans don't have a lot of. let's say material to work with to start building a new society how optimistic are you that the civil strife will come to an end

because as we're all reminded it's still very much a tribal society could offer you want to keep it that way conquer and divide is what do libyans have in common except for maybe the vast majority of them are very happy that could offer you is gone. well they certainly have their language in common they have their history in common and i think the challenge is going to be and we've seen this already that all along tribal and religious and provincial lines there are divides deep divides in libyan society and one of the concerns that i have is that it's unclear exactly who is leading the charge here exactly what the composition of the new council will be how long the transitional government will be in power and what it will ultimately look like it's really nice to have a change of government after forty two years the real challenge is what comes next and i don't really think that anybody knows the answer lindsey if i go to you in london one of the things that the nato powers keep in mind if they as they met in

paris is that they realize that they didn't have a follow up plan after their invasions of afghanistan in iraq do you think that the nato allies have thought that far ahead in this case is that ok they have military control of the country or they have sarah gets there now do they know what to do next and can they build help build a nation. well no i don't think they can nato is a military operation it's a military organization the british and french in particular have played a very big role in initiating this this intervention and in backing out the fact that the libya conference the conference is chaired by france's president sarkozy and prime minister here in britain david cameron tells you exactly how much the west intervening here but they don't have any clear plan and they don't many of the people there now backing a people who who were injured after his government will work for gadhafi only a few months ago so what they wanted to do was regime change but as we've seen with

afghanistan and iraq they oh absolutely no good at nation building nor can they be because it isn't the nation erica thanks to you in toronto over the last few months we've seen a lot of infighting within the rebel camp expression going to commanders of those mysteriously murdered do you think that the nato allies really know who they are jeanne with here is are these people that you can be trusted because there's a lot of doubts about their backgrounds as we heard a lot of them used to work for gadhafi himself and there is the element the islamic element in its connections to terror networks. peter the nato knows some of the members of this new transitional council because it put them in in place their french intelligence played a leading role in cobbling together the transition council and putting people with whom we had or britain semi six or the us cia had

a long relationship many of them libyan exile some of the members of his government so knows them it does not as you brought up know these murky nationalists and islam as who until recently were regarded as quote terrorism quote remember george bush awarded khadafi as again i quote our valuable ally in the war against terrorism well he was speaking of about the militants in benghazi who can control a cultivator for a long time by the british so they just don't know they're hoping for the best but you know something is their way to the men with the guns make the rules and this war was not won by the libyan people as portrayed in the media was run by special forces from britain and france and by their air forces and i think they will have a very important say in the make up of the future libyan government can you do you

have any worries or said something you already are jumping. yeah i just wanted to add something to what you said and that is that my understanding is that the qatari government was actually central to the financing of the rebel movement and one has to ask oneself what role they may expect to play going forward i mean they made this investment in the rebel movement fully expecting something in return and they're in a position to be able to utilize that influence the question is how will that manifest itself and what are the expectations that nato is going to have for their own involvement in this process lindsey well then you are kind of got ahead of me there there's been a lot of investment in here into this war a lot of people would say it was illegal now there's going to be paid back and are you worried about that because we just as was mentioned the qatari government was heavily involved and nato is going to make probably some make defense military decisions security decisions on the ground even though they say they won't they

probably will because they made an investment in it i mean it doesn't just divide the libyans more than bring them together. well that's that's just one of the very pretenders. there was a tweet which went out on twitter the other week saying people might think it took a long time to get rid of that free big it can take even longer to get rid of nato and we have to remember we have some history here this isn't the first time we've had an intervention that happened in afghanistan we were told ten years ago they would field a new nation the war is at its worst now all this month we've just had was the bloodiest war for american troops in the whole bloodiest month for american troops in the whole of the war we've had in iraq where we were told there would be stability democracy virtually no iraq we will say that they live in a stable and democratic country and the danger is that nato will go in there isn't

there there are troops on the ground even though the various governments deny this they want to send in more troops so far the t.n.c. have told them they don't want u.n. troops in but this may change if there's more instability in the country that maybe more and more pressure on the libyans to accept foreign troops and i think a lesson we have to learn is a lesson we try to put very very strongly to our government is that you cannot bring democracy by balmain by invasion by foreign powers who actually as a matter of fact have a very very bad record in libya among other countries in africa for their old colonial past you cannot possibly do and when you look at what the real issues here are about they're about regime change that's what they wanted to do was to get rid of gadhafi they've got rid of cookouts free now we will see the true color of it already in britain it's been announced that there was a eventual unit set up to deal with all and we all companies the various powers

months the secret services they will all be involved in these trying to get their share of. the action over the next few months they will not play for the benefit of the libyan people ok. eric if i could go to you yes go ahead go ahead i would like to. i just wrote recently in my columns the oil is the is the ultimate aphrodisiac and oil is very big you know as we're hearing all this this guff about humanitarian missions and protecting civilians what's really happening is french companies have stolen a march on the brits and the rest of the western europe there in libya now they're trying to corner a lot of the rebuilding. from damage caused by nato bombing or by the lack of infrastructure in libya and this is a gold rush this is a new klondike there's a huge amounts of money there arms to be sold there are roads to be built so

they're rushing in the qatari. interesting story you know i was i interviewed spent an evening with gadhafi back in the late one nine hundred eighty s. and he told me he said you know he said the gulf arabs is the saudis in the gulf arabs he said they're a bunch of old ladies and skirts and if you know your mentality you know this really burn them up because after you said a number of times one of the reasons i think that the qatari qatar's very smart people that they really wanted to get revenge arab style khadafi for insulting them for insulting the arab leaders all right let me jump in here we're going to go to a short break and after that sharper what could you do or discussion on libya's future state party.

i got no knowledge areas on the night in sixty six i got out because of the things i saw the things i was doing and that's the reason he said we were given for doing nothing it was a personal protest. during the vietnam war and two war movement in march that altered the course of history this movement didn't take place on college campuses but in berets and on ships penetrated elite military colleges like west point and it spread throughout the battlefields of vietnam. today few people know about the g.i. movement against the war in vietnam. ask the army we always said free the army or fun travel and adventure but it really meant the farm.

nature and discover s.p.c. . communicate with the wild under. test yourself and become free. to. see what nature can give you on the. welcome back to cross talk i'm curious about to remind you we're talking about libya in the post gadhafi era. ok. ok let's see if i can go back to you in london. you mentioned nato earlier on in

the program and nato isn't just gloating right now. they actually did something thinks it's actually going something successful after the quagmire of afghanistan. does this worry you that or give it gives it gives itself a feather in the hand saying look we actually can do things or efficiently we can work together when of course the americans were very critical of their dragging their feet most of the members of nato didn't really want to participate in this well of course nato is a u.s. led operation there's absolutely no question about this you have to ask why the north atlantic treaty organization intervenes in south asia and north africa various other places which have nothing to do with the north atlantic this was set up after the second world war in opposition to the warsaw pact countries the warsaw pact was dissolved some years ago but nato is becoming more militaristic it's getting more and more money from particularly countries like the u.s. and britain in order to carry out its operations i think it's very worrying they're

all saying this is a great success this rehabilitates the whole notion of humanitarian intervention it does nothing of the saw many thousands of people have been killed in libya including many primates obama and also we should remember we heard exactly this before in two thousand and one and two thousand and three when again afghanistan and iraq were said to be success stories very few people now claim either of those was a success you look at what has happened in this country something that actually ok you can read people have got no better off ok here you go right ahead. now i have to take a couple of issues with what lindsey said there's no question that this campaign would not have been successful without the participation of the united states in terms of drone activity intelligence activity etc cruise missiles that nato didn't have and didn't contribute i would also make

a comparison in terms of what nato accomplished in kosovo in seventy eight days versus what nato has accomplished in around one hundred fifty days in libya in kosovo there was an intervention force that followed there so far has been no intervention force on the part of nato the question is will there be and you know ultimately there were far fewer casualties nato casualties there were about ten in this conflict versus about five hundred in nato and the question of whether it is she did same's i would have to say you did ultimately achieve its aims but it only achieved its aims as a result of the contribution of money to the rebels from a variety of sources in conjunction with what the military was able to achieve through nato ok ok lazy writing and you were real i know here i mean you know lindsay if you're a sugar was made simply was made to be protecting civilians it was not meant to be regime change it was absolutely clear from the very beginning that that was that

was actually what was at me and you compare it to kosovo so kosovo again something that story is simply simply not the case is one of the same one of the poorest areas of europe with senses of prostitution drug running down running i mean this is holding the kind of stable wait a minute. and you actually well i'm sorry if you look at me because i. was lazy as i'm saying you are you're right he's deciding selling coffee pots ok erica in toronto. you know please enough with the sort of propaganda from you lindsay kosovo there was a risk there were eight hundred thousand all brainy and civilians who were being driven out of their homes in the dead of winter many of them would have died from exposure this is not about body parts probably which doesn't mean there are very much let me finish let me finish. nato did the right thing the united states did

the right thing by intervening in this real humanitarian crisis libya is something entirely different and what we're seeing is a return of the old colonial powers in north africa france i think totally and spain. and they are and they are rivals they are notating against each other already to see who gets control the french are ahead the italians are very dismayed now that the french may be gobbling up only golden eggs in libya so we can compare the two things together ok daniel benito i think i hear some one more thing on the right are jumping ahead. no i said i simply want to do let's not you know delude ourselves as to what this is and what it is i'm sure it started out with humanitarian objectives in libya there can be no doubt given what's going on in the neighborhood what it was going to end up being and i don't

think there are very many people who are going to cry about cut off leaving the scene and i should point out he hasn't yet left the scene and there are still some important battles that must be won for the rebels to rightly claim that this this game is over when see i do want to stay with this nato theme you think that syria is next to me maybe we just need to feel emboldened now i mean if you look at bahrain i mean there's so many other humanitarian issues in the region but it's all based on geopolitical interests ok and i think certainly everyone it's obvious oil was stake here in libya there's no denying that we'll see where it goes but you know there is the crackdown in syria is you know then nato should go in there or or maybe it should go live maybe it should liberate bahrain from the south from saudi control ok i mean we're trying to look as if. that isn't going to happen of course but happen in a hurry i don't say they won't go into do anything to criticize the saudis or

bahrain the american fleet is in power and they could have intervened if they wanted to any time they had no interest in doing so clearly now people who will say they should intervene in syria i think many of the nato powers it will still be very wary about this but that can change very quickly i think if we understand libya i don't agree it was about just simply revenge on the part of the gulf states against gadhafi although they didn't they obviously didn't like him but i think it was much more that if you look at the timing of libya it coincided with the crackdown by the saudis and the bahraini role family in bahrain and it was an attempt by the western powers to retake control after the chin this is a. overthrow may take taters and they will do everything they can to maintain that including if they think they can get away with that intervention in syria however the big problem i think that is that this would then lead to

a much bigger war there's already tensions between israel and egypt in recent weeks about age it and i think that even the french and the americans are nervous about a direct intervention in syria while i have no doubt they are already into you know you directed a i'm sorry for you to try to overthrow us out. here in your first like you first said ok i simply wanted to add that you know it's very clear that the various powers in the west are extremely stretch militarily economically financially i don't think anyone really thinks that these are going to be wars of liberation and led by the west waving the flag these you know the solutions to these problems have to come indigenously they have to come from the locals and the people to the extent that the west may be able to have something valuable along those lines that's consistent with what they're trying to achieve fine but you know living in the

united states right now and in many other places in the west you know we don't really have the resources to continue to do this and there isn't the political will on the part of a lot of voters in the west certainly in the united states to do it either so well anything to do you think i mean i don't think anybody in the western united states and in the nato countries were ever asked if they wanted to go into this war or not i mean i seem to remember we got into this war over the weekend at one point ok eric you wanted to say something go ahead. yes i first of all regarding syria look the u.s. the saudis and the israelis have been trying to overthrow the syrian government since the days of the bush administration money was voted for this by congress and there are steady reports that some of the armed groups going into syria are coming out of lebanon and they were trained by western intelligence services and there's a fight going on i'm not sure the vs the us will intervene or the west will

intervene in a full scale war in syria because the syrians unlike the libyans unlike the iraqis unlike the afghans can shoot back they have been obsolete but it's still fairly tough army and it will not be a cakewalk and there is everybody is worried that will happen what if syria does call absolutely go over the government it may be like libya with the islamists taking over but look the west is using humanitarian intervention that's its new banner for getting involved abroad counterterrorism is passe humanitarianism is rules and will see other humanitarian interventions when and where it suits the interests of the west or other power blocs lynsey if i go to you or when the soviets left afghanistan. which we had been funded by the united states the cia they came back to haunt the united states with the taliban regime do you worry about something like that happening with libya. that's already happening in libya where there are actually people fighting there who were trained by al qaida who've

been in afghanistan and this is of course very close about but this is something which is already going on of course it is one of the very likely things that would happen. i had absolutely no chance we could. recognize that many many libyans are so pleased to see him go and i think he is afraid to take on but the truth of the matter is that you cannot just go into countries overthrow the regime this has to be a process which the people of those countries themselves undertake as they have done in egypt as they have done in china syria and as they want to do in a number of other countries which are being prevented from doing such as in power right now and if you don't do it like that if you think you can dictate these things in the value of the british empire used to do in the way that the americans now talk about with their imperial overstretch then you are creating a situation where you will not have real democracy will not have real freedom you

won't have exactly the kind of chaos and disasters cost you will have the same people running these countries you know the old song from here today is you're the on meet the old boss the same as the new meet the new boss same as the old boss that's what's going on ok peter i'm going to really question thank you for your hand eric ten seconds. libya has never known the knockers seasons the days of the roman empire there's nothing in their lives like dog or sea and i know they will be seen at any time all right thank you very much all right many thanks to my guest today in london denver and in toronto and thanks to the viewers for watching us here arche see you next time never crossed offals. can. be.

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