just telling. you. the latest news on the week's top stories here on r.t. asia pacific specific at the apec summit the region's key powers agreed to start working on a free trade zone that could revolutionize relations but that's not all. the russian and american presidents hold talks on the sidelines of the apec summit in hawaii the focus missile defense and russia's future. we'll bring you all the latest from honolulu just ahead in the program. rewriting history in europe new government being formed and prime ministers being replaced in debt ridden greece and italy as both nations race to pull back from the financial abyss. plus a un report claims iran a might be seeking to obtain

a nuclear weapon but. the allegations as a u.s. backed smear campaign. well the headlines of today and all of this week you're watching the weekly with me will receive shite the creation of a landmark free trade zone dominated talks that they see as apec summit brings together the leaders of asian pacific rim countries barack obama hosted the get together in a hawaii i met up with dmitri medvedev to try and over some pretty hot topics. are going to report. the apec summit of course as we know gathers twenty one economies that make up the asia pacific riza region and this is where leaders take the opportunity to focus on all sorts of ways to boost trade between the countries they work out ways to make investments easier to improve the investment climate to make

the economic ties more productive and this is certainly been the focus this time around as well but of course it's been hard this year for leaders to avoid the european financial crisis because this is something that's looming over the world economy something that's been very hard to avoid because it impacts all of the countries that are certainly not just europe there have been dozens of protesters here in honolulu gathering for their own i am talking like a comedian if you will and you have been protesting everything from open and free trade to globalization for the protesters have been seen as sort of a continuation of protests going on in fact throughout the united states of the world the so-called occupy wall street movements and the similar issues were addressed at those rallies here in honolulu earlier today in terms of agreements one of the highlights of the day has been of course the bilateral meeting between the russian president dmitry medvedev and u.s. president barack obama during these talks they discussed very important issues that are not relevant just to russia in the united states but really most of the

international community one of those issues of course of the missile defense plans of the united states as we know russia and nato agreed to work jointly on the european missile defense project in lisbon in two thousand and ten those talks however did come through sort of stalled because the united states was refusing to provide russia with legal guarantees that those projects would not cause a threat to security to russia and this is a fundamental issue for russia and at these talks the two presidents today did say again that those are issues still exist but they're going to continue working on missile defense together and try to work those issues out now another important aspect of course of today's talks was russia's future of the world trade organization because of me. no russia has been interested then part of the group since ninety three and it has plans and it looks like russia will be joining the job becoming a full fledged member of the world trade organization by the summer of twenty two

all but a very important element such a place today the us president barack obama said that he would start working with the u.s. congress to try to call off the jackson veronica amendment this is something that's been a major issue between russia and the u.s. because this is a clause that was put in place by the u.s. congress back in one thousand nine hundred three and even though it has been under moratorium it's definitely been causing a little friction between russia and the u.s. when it comes to trade between the two countries now getting rid of this amendment is something that certainly could really improve trade relations not just for russia in the united states but the international community working with the countries. it was an associate you're going to reporting it right while i still come for you here on the program ethnic tensions on the rise as fierce so resistance and for the both of them fresh clashes resulted in death and injury. that you would see live from moscow in italy the race is on to form

a new caretaker government pull the country back from a financial abyss but this follows the resignation of silvio berlusconi who stepped down on saturday i think ruled the country as a prime minister for seventeen years now former e.u. commissioner mario monti it's considered a top contender to replace discone details on that still to come here on c let's go now cross over live to charles crawford and get more details on this mr crawford are joining us live from oxford thank you for coming on the program today president . holding meetings now with senior politicians to form a caretaker government but is this really the solution that italy needs to avert financial crisis. well i think italy needs to do a lot of things to avoid the crisis the problem is there's a lot of the factors affecting italy aren't really under italy's control anymore and that's because it's in the euro zone one of the things they have to do i think is to satisfy certain so to speak objective targets namely finding

a plan to pay back the money they owe to investors around the planet and the other thing they have to do is to come up with what you might call subjective factors namely to have people in charge of italy who are convincing incredible i think it's fair to say that mr berlusconi had stopped being convincing incredible mr monti looks like a good choice. as you say looks like a good choice for coming from the european central bank here ultimately some might say handpicked by the elite groups in brussels where the democracy in that. well i think it's up to the italian parliament in parliament a druze in this quite a lot of democracy but the the substantive question isn't so much how he gets appointed it's whether or not he is convincing as far as the italian people are concerned it's one thing having a clever technocrat in charge of a government and that happens in different countries that main thing is for that person to be able to persuade the italian people to make the difficult choices and

really hard sacrifices they need to make to to get out of the hole they're in so it's not just an issue of italy though let's turn our attention to another country or that of greece has a new government and a new prime minister but you know what that really change anything for greece now can you draw comparisons between italy and greece in possibly similar situations. absolutely because all the countries in the eurozone which are getting into these debt difficulties have the same problem which is that because they're in the euro zone they cannot devalue their currencies and in effect use that route to get out of the problem so they're left with borrowing money from international markets or from other eurozone members they're left with reducing government spending which is sucking people basically which isn't popular with the people who are sacked and they're reduced to putting up taxes which isn't popular with everyone else so that once you've got into these very strong difficult situations the ways out are all very painful so in both greece and italy and perhaps some other europe eurozone countries the choices available to the leaders but ultimately to the populations of

these countries concerned are very limited and that's why the euro zone is coming under stress because the. political pressures if you like the psychological pressures are coming up against the way the thing was set up in the first place where as you say the eurozone is coming under stress that you think the block can even continue its existence and survive so by this crisis two thousand and eleven has been a devastating year per a few members now of the eurozone. well the point about the eurozone is it's like it's like out impressive house where the foundations it turns out were not built very well and when you're in a house it's quite difficult to repair the foundations as it were without moving out somewhere else and the members of europe can't go somewhere else the eurozone is coming under stress you can you can see from the sort of questions you're asking that this would have been happening two or three years ago it's going to be very difficult i don't think there are any easy options the option which most people seem to favor who understand the very high technical issues at stake is that the european central bank should prints

a lot of money but there are no clear policy problems with doing that on the scale required so ultimately europe's got to find a way of becoming a lot more credible and maybe in the end the pain which is coming to europe and also right as your introduction said to the rest of the planet because it's not just europe which will suffer from this the pain which is coming to europe is a lesson from the global markets that it has to have a much more rational system and europe alone have to decide whether it wants to have the sort of rational system that a single euro zone for many big countries involves if only to stop interest for a moment here we are running low on time i apologize for that but when it comes to you when it comes to bailing out eurozone members that are flailing certainly germany and france are quite a fair amount of the of the money hand out how much more can they be expected to in some ways prop up their flailing members of the euro zone. well this is the issue is they can be expected to prop up the members of the euro zone for as long as they think they can afford to do it without affecting their own credit ratings that's

the problem once any given country starts to take on another country's obligations people start saying what i want to be where you can look for that form are you going to be a credible person for us to lend that money to basically all these countries are having to borrow money and the chinese the russians the americans the africans the brazilians and indeed other europeans are saying hang on a minute there's too much money being required here something has to give all right across a private consultant life from oxford many thanks andy. all right let's get some more details on the sort of living situation with the euro zone here because if you thought of italy let's cross over live now if you want to surf. in rome and she can give us the latest on what's going on so hello to you it's been quite a weekend for a tali and politics policy go to his resignation on saturday after seventeen years manning the helm what's what's the latest where you are no. well president nicolas that standing out politically here in the country about the possible people they

should have because he got that off it was he saw the resignation and still get jealous gainey yesterday that the man here that a lot of people think they can't be in line for that top spot is the only economist that naive would say. he is a very well respected economist here in the country he's also he said only commissioner year he days assistant inside and out and he's got the nickname here it's the primary and certainly if he's going to be the man to get the top spot is going to be paid by many that he's going to be able to live up to that nickname because of the cost that we face and it's cool unseeingly lodged up of course we've seen the situation develop it very very quickly that we can but nothing yet that's in the talks all still going on and italian politics can certainly be unpredictable to give us a bit more clarity on the situation my god joins but if you're on such a political journalist now marry him and say if he does take the top spot he's

going to have to influence of extremely tough all searching that is is he going to have the political support sufficient very. serious hopefully yes. i think so because first of all the president probably georgian a pretty tunnel has been building he's building around him a sort of coalition. of the willing but i would say a collision that all people who represent a country who doesn't know. much of a choice right now so i would say probably yes he would support. the members of the party down to yes to the used to be berlusconi's party and officially stupors going to party by as a matter of fact is leaving now support on wanting. most of them feel that if they don't support this government they going to go to an early elections that will be absolutely detrimental for the country but also for themselves because given

their way they're just going to resign very likely they will lose those elections status to list political divisions about whether the monkey should take that's helpful yes absolutely there is division between the people of liberty which is going to party. because that there is a part of the party which is a minority actually basic quite a bit one that doesn't want to support the government but there's also sleep between the opposition parties we have to talk in plural here because actually there are many of them and some of them are chosen against it but the main party which is the democratic party is. in general he's a he's a favorite. part of the party doesn't because they don't want to be in a state government so we want you to be so far the majority i mean berlusconi's party but as another fed they don't have a political choice so these makes it very lightly support for

a month this government are you talking about choice i mean this is going to be an unelected government if there is a catch they can government that it takes another lets it leader if it's very able to say there is a question of democratic legitimacy yet there is but it wouldn't be the first time we had this very situation more last fifteen years ago in the run up to the euro currency were eataly was seen at very dire situation right now. very very much similar to these and we had three known elected government in a row. in order to bring the country into the resume and the so called first republican mean before ninety ninety two were all the seats in the former political system for the party following the fall of the u.s.s.r. we had many governments there were non elected but because we have a parliamentarian system even the recent majority in the parliament we don't actually need new election in order to form a government so it wouldn't be the first time there is the. legitimacy issue here

but there is also a huge economic issue east italy doesn't manage to make ordinary n.z. its own house and the euro could fall apart anything you are a falls apart you could be a huge. setback for de recovery also other parts of the world light united states is a matter of fact yes the reason legitimacy. issue but there is also a huge economic issue that at this very moment shah there was the on the other one and that's the think that they should do it that's really what a lot of people are concerned about because of course this is really being considered a test case so whether or not the euro you can survive and certainly at this point today we've seen a lot of decisions being made this still a lot of questions being thrown out no one thinks that the filmation that they can take the government holding these decisions are going to be a quick fix of the very serious problems the not only its leader the entire year is a still faces. for us and right many things.

in. the past week two russian billionaires have been going head to head xcel the tycoon. and chelsea football club promoter locked in what sets a be the most expensive private court case britain has ever seen a course called talk about it has been monitoring the hearing. it's been dubbed the battle of the oligarchs in one corner his mistake is to make it well he claimed billionaire assets for your chelsea football club and a french chateau never corner mr p. estimated fortune five hundred million he had to sell his yacht but he does still have his trusty stretch my back and he never fails to show off a man abramovich is rise to riches is a story precious to me until now his time in the witness stand has lifted that need a mike in the shadows he revealed how some of his companies employ primarily disabled staff and a lucrative thirty percent tax breaks and he came clean on the piles of cash he

paid for protection and he dived into the infamous salad minium wars of the ninety's where we now know someone was murdered every three days not exactly the clean cut image and one of britain's most beloved foreign imports. into i think it was the morning of you know the only difference between a rattler people and here is pure good because of the very image of it he doesn't really come across aggressively that we say anything at all he wants to go respectable you know suddenly we're all made aware of the rather sort of see the origins of his wealth it's a bird of that wealth that police parazynski claims is he's still a wanted man in russia he's suing mr and promote it for six and a half billion dollars they set up the oil company significator in the ninety's but as he claims he was black mail them to selling his stake a fraction of its true worth a mere one point two million dollars the money here is massive the case is expected

to smash the record for the u.k.'s most expensive privately funded litigation is thought to be costing eighty dollars a second in here as were the legal fees mr every move which is a rule to be sixteen million dollars a barrel. they work cut out there are no way in no fee basis the pair used to be close mr. b. gave his protege the all important leg up into the world of the super rich and we now know he was paid for his troubles but mr a says that was just protection money knowing they were business partners it's that claim this case right so there's no concrete evidence after all this was the ninety's russia none of their deals were written down five weeks in and i've counted the cost of nine billionaires five russian. one is becky paul israeli one british the crown prince of abu dhabi is suddenly involved for transferring one point three billion dollars from one to the other not to mention future strange deals recordings of meetings that maybe never

happened the whole thing's extraordinarily bizarre you try and piece the whole thing together which becomes another difficult task because you don't know how much of this is even anyway true according to mr pease law is just a his he has billions in a complex web of short holdings so even if there is to be those when he'll have a difficult task it's correcting any money with so much at stake it's painstaking progress the battles expected to go on into the new year after bennett r.t. . now at twenty minutes past the hour here in moscow you're watching r.t. a report a by the un's atomic watchdog has heightened fears this week that iran could be developing a nuclear weapon israel is now calling on the international community to act despite being an undeclared nuclear power itself but russia is stressing the need for caution over what appears to be an inconclusive report iran's brushing the allegations aside blaming the u.s. for putting pressure on the international atomic energy agency iranian lawmakers

are now calling for a review of the country's cooperation with the agency western leaders have come down hard on tehran over the claims made in the report but london based political analyst chris bambery thinks they're looking in the wrong direction. i'm still waiting to hear the british threatening strong measures against israel who just the other week tested avoids the missile capable of carrying nuclear warheads israel has a weak all you could program which was kept secret we know the britain and france many years ago provided you remember that the rich are really into for that for that program and see in secret meanwhile israel has also carried out. an operation using a lethal air b.c. so the. sea warplanes can go in there and come back in preparation for an attack around why nato is allowing israel to use its base and sardinia for its progress i don't know perhaps when he can explain but instead we have the power which has used

its own weapons america britain which is currently replacing literally crude weapons. and israel with its a legal and the secret nuclear program and a country which has said it would use nuclear weapons if it was a defeat in a war with one of its arab states ganging up against iran and i think the danger is that if that route is not close in creating nuclear weapons it may well do so in response to the continuing war drums being britain in western capitals and. tel aviv you're watching the weekly here on r.t. and to syria now where the head of russia's orthodox church is calling on syrians to end the bloodshed in their country patriarch kirill visit is the latest effort by moscow to try and mediate a peace deal by the move comes as the arab league decided to suspend serious membership it sparked public fury in damascus let's not get some more perspective on this and i'll speak to political analyst janet glazebrook here. thank you for coming on the program today so i don't ask this has called on the arab league to

bring any civilian and military observers to the country of course as i was saying in the wake of syria's suspension by the arab league do you think you can still salvage its membership with. oh i don't know for a minute i felt the arab league are all about the most the moment. imposed by the un. so these people don't really represent anyone other than a small amount. or. gary or. both from the arab league really with the war mostly with the pageant owner. he already their agent. and so what do you think if you find any credibility in some of the reports and some of the analysis we've been seeing here that the arab league are quite interested in regime change in syria some sort of a regional power grab yet for if the regime in the.

america i like the structure iran syria the independent. i'm about. mostly overthrowing. the monarchy that were imposed on them by the french and yeah there are going to feel. like. i'm from syria and iran they were the pendant from the region where. you found your eight years on the road and. its relation to. us you're now when you bring you a sword in turkey when you bring it bring in the u.s. and europe let's address the issue of western countries or they've been calling for regime change in syria all the while crying about human rights they have been backing the anti-government protests but they're not so enthusiastic when the thousands do rally in damascus in support of the president i will do you think that is. well of course it's the rest of the media brain role in the

war mongering of the arab league. wait for the next round of war i'm so they do this right now for all you know he's so perfect and that. pretty right oh except that. they are as you said this is completely not for the protest. movement figure if i thought he'd been massively exaggerate the media over the fields in professor. recently a demonstration the make that by the opposition and thousand people on it was reported on the air from the right that night five hundred so they're on the one hundred look at the. exaggerating the strength of the office and movement downplaying the fact that we'll move on as we've been it. for the

rate and one for war and. memos and forth and on the other hand. as you say completely neglecting the obvious demonstrations in support. and these these demonstrations how there's a reason for them which is doubt. one of the demands and changes proposed by some of their hormones is that they want to end subsidies stories on finance and subsidies and fuel and food considered a lifeline for many working class syrians so there's no there's no surprise that the opposition movement doesn't have the support with a brain the middle west media houses because it's going to cross over many people are not and sounds of middle ground. all right and i find a lot of the article put out as he had time place but thank you for coming on the program today. however you are watching a weekly here on it's good to have your company today e.u. police are investigating ethnic clashes in northern cause of which resulted in

a serbian man's death and at least two injuries late on wednesday fresh violence came as nato peacekeepers deployed in the area fired tear gas and ethnic peacekeepers say it was an attempt to seize one of their barricades set up months ago in an ongoing dispute on the cause of a border of u.n. secretary general says the tension has been caused by cause of those attempts to extend its control over border crossings in the dominated area political analyst alexander believes there is a big picture behind nato is actions they've been doing it for years now and they've broken their mandate that actually they are doing the job of pain control government and prishtina and they're doing it openly in spite of their mandate from the un which is going to be a peacekeeping mandate to keep the warring sides separated this is an aggressive show of force so really they're acting like an occupier. peacekeepers and they're behind the crisis in greece they're behind the crisis in iran we're seeing right

now is the selling of the new world this order and serbia is one of the flashpoints . all right well it's now a nearly seven thirty pm on sunday here in moscow you are watching r.t. i'll be back with a recap of the headlines in just a few moments to stay with us. twenty

years ago in the largest country. disappearance of.

what had been tremendous. jennifer. where did it take. great.