welcome back to washing our t. here's a recap of the main stories we're covering today the u.s. seems powerless to prevent the threat of violence on the service border where the breakaway kossovo has some security council members refused to support russia's call for talks possibles prime minister has announced that the self declared republic asuna customs control on the border while local serbs try to stop them by blocking roads leading to the checkpoints. fierce fighting is underway in libya where former rebels claim that they are advancing on two of the few remaining gadhafi strongholds in france yvonne cigarettes and bani walid are backed by tanks

and heavy weapons as well as a nato air she'll. also the much anticipated south stream gas pipeline moves a step closer to reality as russia signs landmark agreements with top european energy giants the project is aimed at delivering russian gas directly to european consumers bypassing other transit countries. now the dangers of a dramatic escalation in the syrian conflict are up for discussion and cross that sex or an artsy. wealthy british science. sometimes it's because. markets weiner scandal. find out what's really happening to the global economy is

a report on our team. to keep the. story . below and welcome to crossfire crime peter lavelle series growing cycle of violence is this country to stage a cause the civil war or about to start a civil war is this current regime falls from power what could replace it and how should the international community at. kick. start. to cross-talk syria's future i'm joined by mark levine in washington he's a senior fellow with the truman national security project and a talk radio host in cambridge we crossed to george joffe he's a research fellow at king's college london and in detroit we go to me i think you are he is a journalist and political analyst all right folks crosstalk rules in effect that means that you can jump in anytime you want and i really encourage it but first

let's see how the world has been reacting to events in syria. as protests in syria continue unabated up to three thousand people most of whom are civilians who are already thought to have died in the government's crackdown despite this the international community has in effect ignored the bloodshed opting instead for sanctions and rhetorical operations i think that increasingly are saying president . luiz legitimacy in the eyes of his people and that's why we've been working and international to make sure that. we keep the pressure up to see if we can bring some real change in syria but i like made us aerial campaign in libya syrian protesters have been largely left to fend for themselves and that despite syrian protesters calls on the international community to interfere the syrian people cool on the united nations resolution to set up a permanent mission in syria and yet there's been no u.n.

resolution of sorts experts say one of the reasons for the lack of action is president bashar assad's military arsenal which far outweighs that of low market fees some politicians such as france's foreign minister have also pointed the finger at russia which of course foreign intervention in libya and there's likely to be a un resolution of condemnation against the syrian government. resolution the security council condemning the use of violence against civilians and organizing your regime of sanctions it's a hard struggle we cannot give up but most importantly the syrian question seems to be about a clash of competing interests over syria is that person i think and religious make up so far the struggle for reform in the embattled country has resembled the playing field for regional powers like saudi arabia turkey and iran with few in the west willing to provoke the latter russia china for across our team.

ok first i'd like to start with george in cambridge the mainstream media is looking at syria is just the slaughter of innocent civilians innocent protesters but a little bit deeper description would probably be this is an armed insurrection because we have members of the security forces and presumably the military that are taking casualties why is the you think it's being reported is simply is just. assad's government attacking protesters when they see some of these protesters obviously appear to be armed. well i think the short answer is that at the moment the majority of people demonstrating are unarmed ok and so you can argue that it's a peaceful demonstration but the problem is that you're quite right the amounts the demonstrators in some parts of the country the demonstrations have really been on the massacres and security forces as well so the problem is whether or not the demonstrations overall do become to an armed insurrection and should that occur

then i think the outcome in syria is going to be very bloody indeed ok mark if i can go to you if you would you call this a civil war and it's beginning it may be a civil war now in its war the could just continue to develop over time because it looks like the assad government is not going to give up very easily it's shown that while it's true that the government represents a tiny minority the alawite population in syria and to that extent the majority sunni is one have a voice in their country it could become a civil war right now although it's a bunch of innocent pacifist people vast majority of them have no arms who are trying to fight to have a voice in there and i'll have to do is look at today's washington post is a picture of our this is a cassopolis this is a young man not twenty five years old he's the head of roses to the soldiers who were moaning down protestors trying to get them to stop here of course she was just murdered tortured brutalized along with three thousand six hundred innocent people in syria right now it's just people fighting to have

a voice in their country and being brutalized by their own government could be i mean in detroit how would you describe the events playing out in detroit you know in syria right now would you call it a civil war an armed insurrection i think it is. i believe it is the beginning of the civil war there are elements there that are on the syrian government has pointed out there the opposition certainly elements within the opposition have been armed by outside forces particularly the united states as well as israel they claim that they have a confession from a former general from syria who defected and that he's going to be featured on syrian television are very soon to talk about the involvement of the united states and israel and this overall unrest that's been taking place in syria now for the last several months we have to keep in mind that syria is one of the countries that has been targeted for several years now the u.s. and by other western powers for regime change and the people who are calling for

the imposition of the no fly zone and for international intervention have to keep in mind that this is not helped the situation at all in libya we just need to take libya as a playbook we've had the bombing of libya now over six months and the situation there the conditions are deplorable for the civilian population is divided the people of libya and we do not want to see the same situation develop in syria because it's going to be the united states and these western industrialized countries and the populations within these western industrialized countries that are going to be victimized by this war that they're planning to carry out against the syrian government came in oh yes there's a larger scheme a subtle nicely mark in washington and he solution who disagrees very much marco right ahead after this program. i hardly know where to begin the syrian people would be lucky to join the libyan people internation people of the egyptian people

in freedom they would be lucky to get rid of the dictator who's murdering his already murdered three thousand six hundred eighty cents a day and his father killed tens of thousands in and if the syrian government is on the up and up and frankly i don't know anyone who believes that. in government now only the syrians now play the syrian government i don't know any nation in the world to take serious word to syria if they're in government that if they are telling the truth they will open media to syria allow the media into the squares loving myriad media to see the truth and knowing down innocent people like pacifists people and roses to soldiers if they don't allow the media in because they know they can massacre and torture and brutalize a lot more people and they don't allow the media in nobody believes the syrian government not even in fact the people the syrian government when you think about it george i mean we heard earlier that the united states and other countries in israel is mentioned have an interest in seeing syria being disable is unstable excuse me well i have to say i find confusion of truth and misunderstanding there

quite extraordinary as far as i know it's true that the united states has for many years now called for the syrian government to be overthrown or modified and it's also true that there has been some evidence that the american government has become an officially to encourage insurrection inside syria but to suggest that israel would do so i do find strange not because i believe that israel's not capable of doing so but because actually it doesn't serve israel's interest to do so if indeed it has been to the syrian government it disturbs a stable situation inside the middle east which has been to its benefits for a very long time and it's got no guarantee that what will come instead would be more acceptable to it almost certainly will be less so you only have to look at the situation that's developed in egypt that's developing in jordan and it's what's occurred in turkey to see that so i really don't think you can lump together the israeli government with the united states in that respect and then beyond that too

the idea of an external intervention of the kind that occurred in libya doesn't seem to me to be in the remotest sense possible likely or to be encourage and to suggest that in fact the. eventually libya was to the disadvantage of the libyan people when the gadhafi regime was possible more brutal and that president assad seems to me to be quite simply ludicrous what do you think it's go back to detroit what do you think about that i mean if it doesn't seem to be in everyone's interest to see the assad regime fall apart as a matter of fact there's a lot of other issues involved we have iran we have saudi arabia we have has it's extremely complicated i mean assad is the devil you know in the region in a lot of people are quite satisfied with that. well the fact of the matter is is that there is an alliance between the syrian government the government in iran hezbollah the resistance movement in lebanon as well as from us in palestine and

these are the sworn enemies of the united states as well as the western industrialized countries along with israel israel operates as the forward operating base of u.s. interests in the middle east you cannot look at the developments in egypt and tunisia and what has happened in libya and syria for the simple fact that the governments in egypt and tunisia have long had long been supported about a united states and to a certain degree are supported by them today as well we have the egyptian now special forces that operated with the m.t.c. in libya in order to topple the gadhafi government in libya also we have the situation in tunisia where the armed forces there assisted the n.t. sea and nato forces and destabilizing libya and it does not serve the interests of the syrian people or any other people in the region to have a direct u.s. and western involvement in their countries the arab league has been attempting to

mediate the situation inside of syria the secretary general of the arab league mr not bill l.r.b. i was in damascus about five days ago and this is what needs to be encouraged there needs to be encouragement of dialogue but the right problem and i'm going to jump in right here we go short break and after that short break both will continue our discussion on syrian state parties. if you. like millions of americans have lost. thousands of dollars in retirement funds and i haven't had as bad as many it's not just the balance there it's about needs to. be man brown ya gotta ship. at

sea. and land. and a bad seed o'donoghue thing. you. need. now he. says this is my film i get the last word this financial crisis will not be fair and off like a light sleep. well when one deals with war for us to realize what this tremendous amounts of damage that have done not just human damage but damage the physical environment in which the battlefield takes place tremendous amounts of damage done by aerial bomb squad napalm. coming from the city whether it's hard sonic boom safe factory marine mammals or it's the

burning oil field syria and iraq or it's destroyed release in the pacific for ramming purposes the list just goes on and on the geneva conventions of nineteen forty nine states that they are shall be taken in the war to protect. against widespread long term and severe damage the united states although it is accepted almost all of the provisions protocol one has taken exception to that. welcome back across the country to live i'll remind you we're talking about the future of syria.

ok mark i want to go back to you in washington so give me your opinion should there be an intervention an armed intervention to overthrow this regime in damascus and if we should do that should if we should it is a county out then should we do with iran as well go ahead. first of all i think that's a last resort i don't think we have tried all the sanctions in fact i think contrary to what i'd be yummy with saying united states in very slow to say anything about syria the europeans have said something far before president obama finally said that president assad has to go frankly we were slow in libya as well the english and the french took the way and was until khadafi promised to find everyone in their closets in roder and massacre them that the united states finally came in to help their idea in terms of an armed intervention that for the syrian people to decide this is their revolution again in today's washington post they talk about the murder of this pacifist matar the person used to hand rose as to the soldiers

and hand them water and the people who firmly believe in nonviolence if i keep the chance peaceful peaceful as the soldiers were killing the civilians it's up to them to decide whether armed intervention is the right way to go unfortunately the more pacifists are murdered the more the syrian regime will be likely to face armed intervention if the people of syria do take up arms intervention against the government then i think the west has to seriously consider whether you have a no fly zone much as they did in libya but we haven't reached that step first i want to see harsher sanctions i want to see harsher sanctions from the europeans they have gas deals with syria they don't expire until november let's expire the now still a lot of pressure on this regime to start mastery and so on people george if i can go to you it seems like a pattern is starting now and if we look at libya as that pattern you start with a no fly zone then you have you know the resolution nine hundred seventy three and then. by any definition by any standard that resolution was very much abuse and i don't care about the outcome at this point it was look at the resolution in international institutions and international law do you perceive it the same thing

could happen with syria. well first of all i agree with you the resolution in seventy three was abused and nato in fact acted really is the vehicle by which western powers were able to demonstrate their distaste for they could have the regime and remove it there is a pattern but the. patton's quite an interesting one and then we just have first of all that i think it's most unlikely to be any intervention in syria because the syrian case is completely different and the ramifications of an intervention will be far more serious but the pattern that seems to me to be interesting is that we're doing intervention not one remove we're not actually engaging on the ground what we're doing instead is using indirect mechanisms to achieve the ends that we want and indeed inside the arab world the arab press has noted this and there's been a lot of criticism of what occurred in libya and there be a lot more should be applied to syria to have a much arab regimes and arab newspapers may dislike the assad regime if indeed we

with repeat the process they regard this as the potential for the beginning of a new round of nato imperialism inside the region and to that extent therefore the point you make is quite valid i think go back to detroit is this a pattern that we see that we see with the arab spring we've all dictators being thrown out all or supported by the united states and now this is just another western wave of neo colonialism just be put in people bit ok the old ones are out there not popular find new ones to put in and use this this liberal interventionist playbook to get what they want. i think the u.s. as well as the nato countries are very concerned about the uprisings that started in december and phoenicia and spread to egypt and other countries in january and february their intervention in libya was an attempt to stave off further revolutionary movements that may take on the anti-imperialist and i advise

zionists character and that is why they are now in libya trying to control the political direction of the country there that's why mr cycle c. and mr cameron it was announced today that they were intricately and this is indicative of the fact that this so-called revolution in libya was nothing but a effort every gene change that was hatched in washington london and london and paris and they want to do the same process carry out the same process in syria as well as iran and why have they not intervened in bahrain and in yemen where we've also had. these being committed to about the regimes there because those regimes do the bidding of the united states they do the bidding of the british and the french and of course we have to keep all these factors in consideration when we try to analyze what is going on in the region we cannot say that what happened in egypt and into these or earlier in the year is the same type of process that developed in libya and what is going on now in syria because those regimes have been targeted

for decades for destabilization down by the united states and by other western industrialized countries so we have to keep all of these variables in mind in libya they engaged in over twenty thousand sorties there was over seventy five hundred airstrikes against that country of six million people which have no air defense there was never any substantial evidence that massacres had occurred inside of libya if they had been the evidence would have been shown to us over the various cable and satellite television stations are you at the worried if i get around here if i had you been here me if i could jump in here mark again i see you did. go ahead i do i think i may gives no credit to the people of the region it's as if they're pawns in some imperialist game look the people of libya like the people of syria like the people of iran like the people of tunisia like the people of egypt like the people of yemen in bahrain all of them want freedom all of them want to voice all the of tired of corrupt dictatorships who massacre their own people in the case of gadhafi he says there's no evidence he massacred his own people listen

to the words of gadhafi himself when he said we will find you in your closets we will show no mercy this is a man who was threatening to massacre virtually everyone in benghazi and he says it's all about a new imperial design look whatever games the western powers or russia are playing with i'm happy to discuss with you but no one should doubt this is an indigenous movement of people who are seeking their own freedom this pilot makes a very different from the war in iraq which i was very much opposed to the united states imposed its will on the ground these are people who are asking for their own freedoms and the west has been very late to support their cause i'm glad we are george if i can ask you i mean there is an element of hypocrisy here we've already heard it i mean why not yemen why not bahrain because these are just western allies or or or very friendly to western powers but syria isn't and i'd like to point out i mean it is a sure europe has more trade connections with syria but we know that states talks about sanctions that ended any kind of trade relationship years ago so i mean what

kind of leverage is there to george at the start to stay with a double standard in the region it is a patent double standard isn't it. well you know i'm afraid international relations is characterized by hypocrisy anyway states do what they can not war they might like to do or they may claim they would like to do so norms don't really apply protocol it is true and in this case it was easy to intervene in libya it was easy because the primitive nobody would object and it was easy to because it didn't have any direct ramifications on other countries that's simply not true in the case of syria and therefore it was late in the day that we began to hear condemnations of the assad regime and despite the huff and puff from washington we haven't yet heard anything to suggest this made me military intervention no european state to suggest that either nor will they they can simply fold it will become engaged in it and the result is that the only mechanism is available sanctions against the regime which

is quite frankly massacring its own people let me just add in libya the regime said he did massacres and population and there is evidence of it and it is known a series of mass graves have been uncovered particularly in tripoli that demonstrate that quite clearly so to that extent i think we need to be very careful of the way in which we value way the interactions and the reactions of the states in the developed world to these two different crises and then make another point to actually nobody really wants assad to go in iraq exactly he will go exactly as he did a very interesting point if i could ask mark here don't you we have to be careful what we wish for because what is going what could replace assad ok are we going to have ethnic strife we're going to have religious strife i mean it's it's it's you can never it's easy to start peace things but it's very very rarely do you get the outcome that you hope for i think we've seen that over the last decade. well i

agree with you peter anytime a dictatorship goes it's unclear what's going to happen next i think tunisia is likely to be the most successful egypt is already showing signs of and even in libya they're showing signs of some secular islamised battles back and forth i think that any time you have a dictatorship you're always going to have three parties you're going to have a dictator in place you're going to have the people who promote religious intolerance or ethnic hatred and you're going to have the liberal democrats and of course i'm on the side the liberal democrats i want to see them succeed you're absolutely right there's no guarantee of success but it's far as i'm concerned assad may be the devil you know but he is a devil and he's an awful devil and i think that we're better off without him come what may although i must admit i don't know what will come i just know that assad is a terrible horrible leader of syria and you know me if i go back even to try what do you think we could come after this regime if it falls and i think these are so many different opinions out there it could probably stand for a very long time. well we don't know what would come after but we do know in regard

to diplomatic opposition to the u.s. and nato bombing of libya the african union fifty three to fifty four member of that organization opposed the intervention in libya from march to tenth when they issued the initial communique that the peace and security council this was totally disregarded by the united states and by the nato countries as well as the n.p.c. which is supported by the united states and the nato countries so to say that there was no diplomatic opposition to the war against libya is just purely false and it's very we're all centric heinous approach and in regard to the attacks on civilians in libya nobody is talking about the attacks against black libyans against africa and some other parts of the continent who have been rounded up who have been imprisoned who have been beaten and tortured who have been let's baddies in t c rebels who are backed up by the united states and nato and where is the outrage about the cable and satellite television networks in the so-called international

humanitarian organizations in regard to the treatment are out i would be and can i could have been a gentleman here and you can sense i think i love you and i think i could give george what do you think eat the regional but ok i could deal with this and this problem in syria itself without having to have to have western powers and intervene . western cars are not going to intervene it's as simple as that and at the moment the outside regime will prevail whether we like it or not simply because the majority populations in damascus and aleppo still support it because of their own economic interests and because of their fears of instability if they don't so until that changes there's going to be no change in syria not initial term in the longer term that's another matter so we really cannot forward to any question of intervention and i'm not certain we can look forward to regime change either all right general see how the story unfolds many thanks to my guest today in washington cambridge and in detroit and thanks for viewers for watching us here are see you next time and remember cross talk rules. became.

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