hello and welcome to cross talk i'm peter a little you know spacious beginnings libya's national transitional council has announced the country's liberation from the good daffy dictatorship what kind of country libya will now become is anything but clear we will be ruled under islamic law and will the rule of law prevail in the wake of gadhafi is killing and his national unity illusion with so many factions vying for power. to cross the globe is 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 crossfire 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 deploy a city deployed city which has a company of 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 is death we're taking back to the history of libya's ties with the west which revealed the 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 ties 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 their responsibility to protect card and launched a major. mission 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 that 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 there are very many competing on the moves within the t.n.c. and differing political philosophies i hope those of played out in a democratic way otherwise the alternative is some go off screen 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 but then to see. a promise on sunday to nightly be under the law of sharia and we'll just have to see how conducive 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 the libya that is just offered a civil war like this and 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 more 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 if 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's a. 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 it's been put on the you tube and elsewhere of the murder of qaddafi i mean this is a 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 a 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 illegal as well probably a drink traditional law by you want to jump in there law it is all you want to

spend nearly as 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. there's 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 this time how to paint the entire transitional effort with that it's unfortunate it's terrible. and the murder of. 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 are mainly going going going well is going to really it's great ok let's not forget the role of the united states in this in what essentially was the murder of could alfie after all this was a drug american drone plane that attacked his convoy alongside a french one war plane 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 that 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 put. trial ok paul first and then you call 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 through 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. 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 going on it daniel you want to jump in there i mean a drone plane it's not a so i think i think this argument about this calling of the killing of

khadafi the. the military action against his convoy is murder is just nonsense it's not murder in any way by these terms i be glad to see you don't but don't try 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 spawn that. i beg to differ i'll beg to differ on that subject i just don't think there's any sign that there's 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 a 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 always go after the selfish never the big problem and i i don't believe anybody will ever prosecuted that way. all right gentlemen we're going to go to a short break i'm out of that short break we'll continue our discussion on libya stay with r.t. . and if you. still. want. an issue free cretaceous free in-store charges free. range month free risk free. free. download free broadcast quality video for your media projects

a free medio dog party dot com. a very warm welcome to you this is your news today protesters on the. streets they are. ladies and gentlemen your chance of a chance to set a good mood for example the status of the human experiment. with. this in this rap music or was it goes to the movies allegedly trying to make sense of global economy and it's all changed things as financial templates the research scrambling to maintain our confidence in long kids and taking on the critics wants to be seen trade imbalances recession looks the nation's close to collapsing a sub prime loans foreclosed homes. to fail so we play banks again sealevel cycling is a us crash sentiment. seeming to inflame just like ultimate in

a transition in st the i.m.f. constructionism just programs increase the total economy. ok. welcome back across town parallel to imagine we're talking about libya after gadhafi. ok. 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 than let it go and plus with being so much with so many people disenfranchised for so many decades they have power right now and they power in numbers and weapons this is 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's 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. daffy's 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 being guys see 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 a good record on that the question of. his release then using the chief 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 the basic need for law and order is job one for the new libyan government and 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 the political civil society and maybe some form of representative democracy later comes later but you know afghanistan people are still waiting for a 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 shows a side in the civil war the national transitional council do you think that if the national transition council in its current form gets in trouble that nato will

continue to support it against the 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 would 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 libya is going to need a 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. and civil society well you know there well you know women for house 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 it 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 outside countries bail out every five years and leave another mass and i agree. if there was nobody there is any of it it would be no twenty rigs and it word 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 place to me as work i should be pessimistic there's so much oil there go ahead ted i mean it's worth fighting for hard. 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 that 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 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 that members i mean how long will that last economically ok well i was i'd like to look at really the 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's 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. says in a revolution or in a revolution there is no there is no election whoever strongest and manage to kills their opponents 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 who have most of the concessions and got involved is actually as a quid pro quo in this conflict so that's where the count 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 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 what do you what do you put so far. you know i mean. you know so far the libyan people with plenty of mistakes in plenty of difficulties to a very long summer is this sort of a 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 to show 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 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 look at the northern alliance in afghanistan they took that tajik 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 and we've run out of here and there's literally just starting to be as 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 crosstalk rules.

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if you're. going to take three. three. three. three. three. videos for your media project three medio gargi dot com. great to have you with us a quick check of the had an. adopted son saif is reportedly ready to surrender to

the war crimes court weighs wanted on war crimes charges meanwhile the dead when he does relatives are looking to the hague to bring killed the charges against nato accusing it of breaking the un mandate and firing of. europe's banks would have to raise more capital to survive the region's financial turmoil while the eurozone leaders in the run go from home as an emergency summit in brussels this comes as german chancellor angela merkel said europe is going through the one crisis as the end of the second. place in oakland california used tear gas and baton rounds to ban it they just passed peaceful and to wall street protests and detaining need am good activists and one of the protests is to turn a blogger but transport also is a critical condition to being hit by something like. the top top story this hour right ahead for you part two our special report on why body has become the number one destination for female sex.