battle of fallujah seven years ago. and up next our crosstalk debate show peter lavelle asks his guest what kind of country libya will be called post gadhafi following the nato backed rebellion do stay with us for that. wealthy british style it's time to retire the first. time. markets why not scandal. find out what's really happening to the global economy in these kinds of reports on our t.v. . if you. want to. follow in the welcome to cross talk i'm peter lavelle in our spacious beginnings libya's national transitional council has announced the

country's liberation from the gadhafi dictatorship what kind of country libya will now become is anything but clear will it be ruled under islamic law and will the rule of law prevail in the wake of khadafi is killing and is national unity an illusion with so many factions vying for power. to keep. the cross talk libya's future i'm joined by daniel serwer in washington he's a professor a real lecturer at johns hopkins school of advanced international studies also in washington we have paul coring he is a foreign correspondent for the globe and mail and in new york we go to ted rall he is a journalist political cartoonist and author of the anti-american manifesto all right gentlemen this is cross talk that means you can jump in anytime you want to me very much encouraging but first what are libya's prospects moving forward well you know as you mentioned in the beginning the road ahead of libya is anything but clear and i dare say it is all because of deployed city deployed city which has

a company at the death of moammar gadhafi as well as the entirely been campaign as the media continues to chew over the ghoulish details of the deposed leader steff were taking back the history of libya's ties with the west. which revealed that democracy and humanitarianism were really on the agenda from a time when gadhafi was branded the mad dog of the middle east to a period when his relations with the west warmed and all of the alleged sins were absolved by pricey defense and oil deals this is what senator mccain had to say about libya only two years ago times between the united states. to. turn in recent years and not long after libya had established partnerships with a whole slew of western leaders the libyans rose in defiance of gadhafi israel and the west flashed the responsibility to protect card and launched and made a mention in support of that uprising seven months later in the mission is complete the manhunt for gadhafi drawing to a close by these very rebels but the west has helped to arm we came we saw he

died there now there is much talk about the future that faces libya whether i'll be able to preserve its domestic unity elect a government that can show itself to be different from the barbarity which has marked the rebels' recent actions and finally avoid being doled out to foreign stakeholders very many competing on the t.n.c. a different political philosophies i hope those of played out in a democratic way otherwise the alternative is some golf street descent into war many say it was the hate for qaddafi which coalesced libya's fractious forces perhaps it is for the fear of seeing the country apart the. promised on sunday tonight we be under the law of sharia and we'll just have to see how conducive that plan is to democracy well let's talk about democracy first i'd like to go to ted ted what kind of democracy could you possibly make in libya that is just offered a civil war like this it hardly has any state institutions whatsoever. well

obviously anybody who claims to be able to predict the future of this new regime it would just be make telling lies and making up stories but that said you know this is going to be a for medical challenge we're not even really sure if democracy is what the t.n.c. has in mind now that they've taken power and certainly they're precut off the origins suggest that it's not necessarily in the cards but certainly even if they do they are serious about forming a coalition of all the various factions and tribes and political factions that predated the and existed during the forty two year reign of market there's no telling where this is going to go it is just so hard to cobble together such of vast country and i think a lot of people are unaware of exactly how big libya is and how fractured it is it's not going to be an exact parallel to iraq but i think we can see certain parallels ok paula how does

a country like libya that really doesn't have really many state functions i mean it's it was all based on one man and his family for forty two years i mean don't they have to work on state building before they start building democracy or can you build a democracy without us you know. no i don't think it can and i think perhaps there's a tendency in. the media and outside observers to kind of see democracy is something that gets installed or built almost overnight you know societies in transition even in the twenty first century that slow difficult arduous process and at this stage libya needs sort of civic civil society peace. the beginnings of economic renaissance democracy maybe a peace and it may be a slowly growing peace that starts early but that there is no likelihood of an immediate democracy any more than there's a likelihood of an immediately functioning economy this is going to take

a long time progress is going to be slow it will be fitful there will be set backs the nightmare scenarios exist as well ok well that doesn't sound very optimistic daniel if i can go to you what do you think about building a democratic state with respecting the rights of all with this alleged it looks very clear from the video that it's being put on the you tube and elsewhere of the murder of qaddafi i mean this is the national transition council getting off to a good footing there. i'm much more hopeful than my colleagues are i've been in libya i've talked with the libyans they're not going to accept another dictator. i don't think there's any reason why they should accept another dictator it is a long hard arduous road to democracy but they've laid out a road map in their constitutional framework document it's much clearer than what had been laid out in tunisia which just successfully held its first elections it's much clearer than what has been laid out in egypt the current leadership has made

it clear that it will not run for future office and frankly libya has vast resources not only the oil and gas in the ground but the money in western banks khadafi is going to finance the next regime in libya so there are no guarantees here let me be clear this is a long and arduous road but i think there's a good chance that libya can go down that road it should do it carefully it should do it slowly it shouldn't rush anything but you know the killing of coffee from westernised was extremely brutal and murderous and legal as well probably a drink i should walk by you want to jump in there law it is well you understand billy joel is well i don't think that you can i don't think you can hold your

transitional council responsible for what was brutal. murder and may in fact be a war crime but i mean let's let's be clear here this is this is the end of a conflict and it's pretty clear that. that lots of the fighting factions were only barely within a chain of command so i mean i think to focus on without defending what. seems to be a murder and a war crime but how to paint the entire transitional effort with that it's unfortunate it's terrible. the murder of a child just one would think that also is probably quite convenient isn't it if i go to you ted i mean i guess we won't hear a lot about lockerbie we won't hear a lot about rendition and we won't hear about other things that the bush administration and obama administration had to do with the war on terror with the passage of it's apples and oranges it mainly is going to go to this is going to really it's going to start forget the role of the united states in this in what

essentially was the murder of khadafi after all this was a drug american drone plane that attacked his convoy alongside a french wall warplane and these two so really this was a joint french nato u.s. murder khadafi the fact that he was technically alive as he got out as he scrambled out of his convoy hardly negates the role of the united states in his murder and he would not have been murdered had that airstrike not occurred so this is this is a this goes part and parcel to the assassination of osama bin laden in pakistan you know the obama administration's enemies have a way of just being disappeared and dumped into anonymous graves and obviously you can't help but ask yourself if there are not a bunch of inconvenient questions that would be asked at a war crimes trial at the hague that perhaps the big powers would rather not see

asked what do you think about that you could probably. just trial ok paul first and then you can follow the first and then you were tara cleo you one you posed that sort of thing were to all you want you could say you know could actually it still be in power if there hadn't been a united nations security council mandate i mean but but what you're trying to do what you're trying to do is hang on what you're trying to do is. the entire process by stringing together a bunch of things and saying you know error go there go. on the straight is somehow responsible for the deaths of all these people and you can make that argument but you're not going to find any support from me on it daniel you want to jump in there i mean a drone plane is not a so i think i think this argument about this calling of the killing of qaddafi the. the military action against his convoy is murder is just

nonsense it's not murder in any body's terms i be glad to see you don't but don't drones because you know these are designed you know drones are designed to kill the nation there was no to clear are designed to limit people and they are military was not at war with libya and we can assassination the u.n. is against a foreign leader who could have been captured alive. if you want to respond to that and you. i beg to differ i'll beg to differ on that subject i just don't think there's any sign that there is a war crime involved here i don't think it's murder i think it's it's part of an ugly process that we call war the murder was in the ambulance so far as i can tell by young libyan and you know maybe he should be he should be held responsible for that but i just don't think that the attack on the convoy of the

selfish never the big time and i i don't believe anybody will ever prosecuted that way. all right gentlemen we're going to go to a short break and after that short break we'll continue our discussion on libya and stay with our team. and. we'll come to the joining us on a trip to a magical land where pesticides are just troubled anymore for school children to live and learn without ever opening the paper book. and the laws of physics no longer apply and where big can always be bigger don't be afraid to take my hand and enjoy the ride on technology update here on r.g.p.

. the mission to free could you take three times for charges three. arrangement three. three stooges free. download free broadcast video for your media projects c.e.o. don carty dot com. take it. welcome back across town parallel to imagine we're talking about libya after gadhafi. take it. right i'm going to go to go back to paula in washington on the country's awash with arms right now is this

a major concern for you as we see some kind of civil society state building going on because you know it's a lot easier to pick up a gun then let it go and plus with so much to so many people disenfranchised for so many decades they have power right now and then power in numbers and weapons this is could going to take a long time to disarm this country if it's ever going to happen at all yeah you know i think that's very true and i think there's two elements to. this sort of fact that everybody in libya is armed. the first one is as you say there's a you know unless people are are satisfied quickly and that's hard to do then it's very easy to bring dissatisfaction people put up with you know shortages of food and water and electricity and all the rest of it in the middle of the uprising in the rebellion but very very quickly there will be demands for normality and in the absence of normality in the absence of power in the absence of salaries in the absence of that sort of thing it will be very very easy to have sort of armed

factions taking. on each other trying to see saying that that's aspect one and that's dangerous enough the second one is a far more difficult. danger to measure and that is. arsenals included some very modern very sophisticated weaponry in particular thousands maybe as many as twenty thousand surface to air shoulder fired missiles and that of course is the is the. weapon of choice for any radical group anywhere any terrorist organization the ability to take down civilian airliners and or military aircraft with these shoulder fired weapons is very dangerous. and nobody knows where they are already do you want to jump in there daniel. yes i did

a i think it's very important to look at the record here and the record of the national transitional council is that it successfully made arms disappear from benghazi within a couple of months of the revolution there and the way it did that was to was to ensure people security i was in tripoli last month there were a lot of guns on the street but there were also some policeman and the situation was really settling down and went to a big celebration of martyrs square lots of women and children out in the evening for that celebration the way you get rid of the guns in the hands of the public is to ensure security and i think the m.t.c. has there are a good record on that the question of this. is there and using the if daniels right on that all right ted i want to jump in there just because we saw the same exact situation in afghan. we saw the same exact situation in afghanistan where. everybody has weaponry certainly it's possible to build a civil society out of

a heavily armed society the united states has eight guns for every man woman and child in it and yet you know the streets are not are not running with blood so clearly it's possible but that said we are talking about. the basic need first that law in order is job one for the new libyan government and that if they can provide that then they're going to be able to move on to the next step which is rebuilding the economy and really building up a political civil society and maybe some form of representative democracy later comes later but you know afghanistan people are still waiting for law and order ten years after the invasion that's the kind of thing that they don't want to see in libya when do you think nato still has a role here i mean as a result of the united nations security council nine hundred seventy three it chose a side in the civil war the national transitional council do you think that if there is a national transition council in its current form gets in trouble that nato will continue to support it against that say factions that could rise up in the next two

weeks or months in libya because like we've all agreed this country is awash with weapons and there's a lot to fight for and one of them is oil. well you know i don't think so i don't actually think there's a nato role there and i think it'd be a mistake of nato thought there was one but i do think there's a role for libya's neighbors and for nations in the area i live is going to need lots of help there's no question that this country is rich and it has the resources to provide. excellent living in a fine economy for its people but that's not going to happen overnight and it's going to be fundamentally important for other arab nations and european nations and america frankly to be there and be able to provide the kind of everything from technical support as you get oil fields running again to. to perhaps aid in setting up. in civil society well you know there well you know women for houses and

you know the safety and trying to build nations around the world and can you give me one example where it works why would work in libya well you know there are places where it works and i'm not just talking about if you look at places like east timor where frankly the australians took the lead it's slow it takes a long time people need to sort of dig in for a generation they need not to be seen is interfering they need to help you need to not do the kind of things like we've seen in haiti where i outside countries bail out every five years and leave another mass and i agree there if there was nobody there to me it is it would be no twenty rigs in the words doesn't work there are plenty of examples where it doesn't work but there's no point being just sort of miserably pessimistic either you can look at the black hole to me as work i should be pessimistic there's so much oil there go ahead ted i mean it's worth fighting hard to. it's it's well it's hard to go run being pessimistic you're usually right

when you are so it's worked out for me for a long time. unfortunately you know i think that you know going back to the original question i think that the nato coalition would not hold together for the for a mission that would involve siding with one faction in a civil war it's one thing to to do what they did at this point to try to see to let the t.n.c. seize power essentially replaying what happened in the fall of two thousand and one in afghanistan when the when the nato essentially served as the de facto air force for the northern alliance which allowed the northern alliance to seize kabul and take over the country this is exactly what they did in two in two thousand and eleven in libya but we're not going to see it that seems easy that's linear that's something that the french and the and the italians and the americans can get behind but once the spoil for the oil starts it's going to be a whole different matter ok let's bring up another issue that a lot of people talk about is not. actually you can answer that i want to talk

about the islamic card that everyone likes to bring up. in connection to al qaeda and except maybe you'll go ahead. i think the interesting thing about the state building process in libya is that it's being led by libyans who haven't asked for nato help who have will accept some help from the europeans store american countries from the united states but they are the ones designing and is they're pushing the program and to me this makes an enormous difference it seems to me with libyans in the lead you have a much better chance for success than if this were an external intervention ok i mean well how do you feel about the members i mean how long will that last economically ok well i was i'd like to look at really they the transition council itself because i mean there's still a lot of really murky figures there i mean people there don't have very good attitudes towards the american cia because of rendition i mean ties alleged ties to

al qaeda and what you know what will be the flavoring of islam in the country it moves forward i mean we heard on sunday they know there are going to be a lot of peppering of that maybe that's just to keep people on board but i mean is this building a democracy or you know these people going to be elected i mean where is the vetting process here i mean khadafi is gone fine but where do we go from here ted what do you think about that. the vetting process is called the election in a revolution you don't want the valley to take on he's. in a revolution in a revolution there is no there is no election whoever strongest and manage to kills their opponent is the de facto leader so whether if these people are ruffins or not worst the libyan people are stuck with them the real question is going to happen in the next stage economically you know libya is a rich country if and when it can extract its high valued crude oil out but if it doesn't have the capital to do it themselves which it doesn't seem like they will

they are going to need to rely on foreign oil concerns the french and the italians to have most of the concessions and got involved essentially as a quid pro quo in this conflict so that's where the comp where the problem of its foreign exploitation influence comments comes into play as we saw in iraq going back to the one nine hundred twenty s. and that if the thing is that as long as the libyans are in charge things might be ok but libyans aren't going to be in charge if they can't control their own resources but he knew what he would so far do. you know i mean. you know so far the libyan people with plenty of mistakes him plenty of difficulties to a very long summer as this sort of ragtag bunch of fighters got themselves organized and got themselves together and you're quite correct with a lot of data to support right exe well as well apt absolutely absolutely and

and just as the american revolution had a lot of outside support too you can try and smear the libyan air first before it gets under way but the reality. of the libyan effort. so far the libyan people have handled this very well i think they've got an even chance of continuing to handle it well. it's premature to prejudge the i think i think history is a very i think that i think there's history shows a lot of reason to be worried i mean you can't really take over another country with foreign assistance and then claim that you have full power and look at the northern alliance in afghanistan they to taji dominated factions took over but they've never been able to close the deal the same thing happened now with she had dominated iraq installed by the united states you know history shows that really in civil war you have to let the factions the the indigenous factions fight things out

to a conclusion and that did not happen here there was a lot of foreign interference and so we don't know if the benghazi based rebels can govern this country and bring in and form some form of coalition that will be able to govern it gentlemen we've run out of here there's little example just starting to be many thanks my guest today in washington and in new york and thanks to our viewers for watching us here r.t. so you next time remember cross-talk rules.

he's available in the. peak the how it pulls ahead be sure to twenty hotels hotels will show his the groom who took the show with who turned. the hotel to the show to overturn slim hotel resort evergreens the old hotel twenty grand victorian hotel the glory of prince hotel called springs resort

and spa tied to a hotel royal cheap and posted a photo. the evergreen closer in time to tell you london hotel to an ambassador to the hotel points and how would prince churchill the splendid hotel in touch with the hotel we touch your room the photo a good goal how would. flood to change every green told. has winds of heartache chairs and over a gruesome death for the western media for reporting of gadhafi is death his family wants nato to answer for war crimes charges also.

fresh cautious as he answered wall street protests spread to police in oakland in california detained nearly a hundred activists and chased arrests off with tear gas and rubble rounds. in the balance as the leaders try to stop squabbling it serve up a solution instead which could see the biggest yet to topple its runaway finances. just after four pm here in the russian capital and you're watching r t thanks for joining us relatives of the slain libyan leader moammar gadhafi are reportedly looking to the hague with a war crimes lawsuit against nato they accuse the alliance of deliberately targeting gadhafi his convoy which they say poses no threat to. nato was only allowed into libya by the u.n. solely to protect civilian citizens.