vote counting is almost over and russia's parliamentary election the united russia party is in the lead winning the majority of seats in the lower house but still losing a big share of its previous popular support. as global players need to decide the future of afghanistan and pakistan whose role is key to stability in the region boycotts the event of a nato recent deadly air raid on one of its border post. moscow downgrades diplomatic ties with qatar after the russian ambassador the country's assaulted by

airport security playing fields who could be linked to moscow's position on syria. welcome this is r t it's a monday night here in moscow my name's kevin zero in on our top story the russians have had their say and who they want to see in parliament. with almost all the ballots counted after sunday's parliamentary election for parties have made it to the country's lower house the state duma the ruling united russia party remains by far the largest group but it's been dubbed a significant setback with a sharp fall in support of his paper all of it is in central moscow. united russia

taking the majority of the vote the communists coming in second and third place i fear russia with the liberal democrats for now the rest of the parties that i haven't named there they failed to get the required percent of the vote in order to take a place in the duma united russia currently around forty nine percent of the vote they don't have and passed the all important fifty percent mark that's a psychological barrier to say that half of the country is on side with them now even though they haven't passed the us mark due to the seats from the parties that failed to meet the threshold they were distributed between those four parties united russia actually have over fifty percent of the seats what this means is they can pass just about any law which they want to skits me without having to form a coalition with one of the other parties so they don't need to form a coalition before we're hearing from united russia party leadership is that they

are willing to form coalitions during this duma though they've said that it will depend on the individual issue at hand as well as the political party all parties are making accusations of vote rigging intellectual fraud in this poll these range from people voting more than once to the use of invisible ink on some ballot papers and what we're hearing from international observers is that i think pardon me what we have seen as well as we've seen protests and rallies on election day around the country though they were in cities like moscow and st petersburg we saw the biggest of these these rallies were suddenly in labor woman to particular political party or another others not just against political parties but also against the election as a whole know during these rallies in st petersburg and moscow what we we saw well around several several hundreds of arrests now the international observers who are looking at the election. some have suggested that they were. violations when it comes to

the fairness of the election other international observers have said that those accusations aren't particularly well founded the o.e.c.d. has a long record of highly politicized election observations and of making politically inflammatory statements it would be very interesting to ask you a seat when the two are the draft report of the election did it go see it usually goes draw up a draft report before the election even too late because that is the usual practice in other words these this statement that we have now on monday morning may not therefore be based on actual observations by its observers president dmitri medvedev has said that any allegations in all obligations of electoral fraud will be investigated by russian law enforcement and anybody found guilty of infringements will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law he's paid or all over there will political analysts to be to burbage told r.t. that despite an apparent plunge in popularity united russia will still be able to

carry out its reforms which will most likely be liberal works if you count the votes in two thousand seven forty five million voters almost forty five million voted for united russia now it is at least ten or eleven million less not all the water accounted so maybe that figure will reach me so there are twelve million disillusioned people it i'm not sure they voted for either party so a lot of them probably just didn't come to a halt it's one of the paradox us people who. actually ended up supporting united russia but i don't view it as very absurd because actually they cannot make suggestions of liberals are fulfilled by united russia look at the people who advise united russia on economy all of them are die hard. economists. you know here russia says that its new position in the parliament will still allow it to continue on its current political path some european analysts believe that the party will

help ensure stability is something that russia's foreign partners are looking for in their relations with the country earthing said be positively. sure that the said about them has been pressed over the rush militias that are going in the direction of people who believe that there is everything will stay in russia that this the ability will be there and we can local t.v. for the next five and a half the positional edge and see if he has to deal with russia which we know we can to support of course not on the two or on the kind of energy of dialogue with russia or of the european union without getting more of the pendant on the experts imports of gas from outside but service of the recent developments of the interesting china or for the year or is that or that someone else on assistance and overcoming the crisis of the reach of the european union this now so we have to take a fresh look at the national economy of the possibility of the essence of pressure

which russia can offer the european union to solve its all crisis and this will be interesting to see humans the subject of the bit of political operation in the couple of months the car now we're helping to keep figure the pulse of development since kind of continues in the russian parliamentary election and a bit later we've got more reaction fears one of the program does get you can also track the latest facts figures and analysis on our web site to the address dot com . russia's foreign ministry has downgraded relations with following an incident in which the russian bust into the country was assaulted by border security guards envoys to leave the country soon. down upgraded relations with qatar this comes after an incident in the doha airport on the twenty ninth of november when the ambassador with two of his colleagues were trying to pass through

security with a parcel of diplomatic mail now that parcel is expected to go through without any problems but they tried to x. rated which is against diplomatic normalcy the security forces tried to take this package away from the diplomats which caused harm to the diplomats the ambassador and two of the people traveling with him now the ambassador is in hospital and is expected to make it back to here and soon as he has recovered from the attack it is no secret that moscow is not happy with what they believe are actions in instigating and in antagonizing efforts in the arab spring in fact if you go back into libya it is a long been the position of sergey lavrov the foreign minister here in russia saying that guitar is responsible in helping to arm the rebels in libya which is antagonize that situation further currently in syria and it's along in the position

of russia that if there are going to be diplomatic sanctions that they have to be across the board to both the government and the rebels so there's been a long tension between russia and qatar this latest development is just furthering those tensions. dependent news website the colbert report told us he believes content may be intentionally souring relations with russia. there is no way that something something like that could not have taken place without the people involved having known exactly what they were doing and it really is an egregious affront to all diplomatic relations so one has to imagine that this is a major diplomatic incident and not one that will be smoothed over very easily one seeds in the recent recent events especially over the last several months as qatar has become the head the rotational head of the arab league one has seen them taking on a much more prominent role in the region they were instrumental apparently in getting syria. kicked out of the arab league and just as they were instrumental in getting

libya kicked out shortly before the arab league decided that humanitarian intervention was in order for libya so it is it seems like. qatar has been coming into its own recently and taking on more of an aggressive stance in general and i think we can see this is an extension of the general policy so at this hour on our british champagne is teaming up to make a prediction policy for the u.s. a level playing field. we need to make sure that we are being equal and we are being fair to all citizens and that is not the case at the outrage of the controversial creative of the law was washington to the man in the u.k. hand over ready said this is the build up of one of the british public and politics of before but. also watch the business program about ten minutes time to find out how comments for election results may affect the country's economy. the two most powerful leaders but they share a single nickname. for their recurring attempts to try and hammer out

a eurozone rescue plan between just the pair of the the french and german leaders angela merkel and nicolas sarkozy of course are pushing for a new e.u. treaty at a meeting in paris that could lead to the creation of a fiscal union for eurozone states or even the entire european union that's already been described as an intervention in countries national budgets which would be a strictly controlled by brussels let's talk about. no with patrick the executive director of the investment firm advisors you can say budgets instead patrick now how do you assess this cozy work or partnership of course they're the leaders are just said the euro zone's two biggest economies but can they really call the two rule seventeen members like you to incredibly difficult kevin because if for no other reason than actually the the key here is thing we've seen in the course of recent meetings and today it was very apparent is that mrs merkel really doesn't help the slightest understanding of voice economics funking finance and things like

that in fact given the fact that she's a scientist and a physicist i'm sort of starting to worry a little bit about the strength of german engineering maybe that was all smoke and mirrors as well the truth is neither party really has a clue what they're doing neither party really is capable of getting on top of what the solution is and what we've ended up with is another another piece of duct tape has been crossed the euro in order to try and hold it together so this isn't the gold of perth toward solve a should when i say oh well let's talk a bit more about this fiscal union plan that they are putting together is big while the discussion about what we think of it what you think of it rather how democratic is the idea of brussels be in control the country's financial policies in the first place well you look up and we are in a situation where everything greek has been devalued for the course of the last year it months well democracy as we all know is an instant greek world and that too has been quite clearly devalued over the course of this agreement i mean we're

seeing here a curious kind of i mean france and germany are basically saying we know best we know how the euro zone should be run and this is what should happen that might be a reasonable idea if their own behavior had actually been exemplary but for those who look back say a decade haven't we used to have a thing called the stability and growth pact and the stability and growth pact that any person. who has a budget deficit of more than three percent of g.d.p. will be strictly strictly told of what they've done in the euro so what do we find nearly a decade later well we've got you know this physicist turned girl wonder politician markey and her chair while i was sarky running around saying well what we've decided is if you run a three percent g.d.p. deficit you're going to find yourself in deep trouble nothing has changed no one wants to obey the rules and france and germany are trying to dictate on the rest of

europe why this should run their economies an essential core of them have their own domestic political difficulties that are causing problems but of course some of the countries hardest hit are imposing their own a sturdy measures they say they're being hit hard by i think it was notably but it's only as well and i'm seeing those new austerity measures on sunday and even brought the lady mentioning it to tears the minister for well where else you are from there let's take a listen actually. we have had to do that and this has also of course to sit politically we have had to ask for. if these were ministers of said they're also from couldn't pronounce the word sacrifice a ball of the tears you could see the pain how did painful is this painful is your membership for the country in italy and it really is suffering by the sounds of it

isn't it well look i mean this is catastrophic doing what is causing mischief for narrow lot of technocrats to be driven to tears so they do have emotions after all is the whole issue of indexing in other words every year inflation creeps up with prices and therefore everyone's pension goes up and what has happened is that this is a breach of very very significant importance within europe coven because we are actually saying that next year italian pensioners are going to get paid affectively a lower standard of living than they got this year i'm not trying to say that there's not been terrible things wrong with the italian budget because it's been wrong for fifty years but the truth is those are terrible terrible costs that are going to be impinged upon little ladies and older gentleman all the way through italy as well of course as a large number of extremely able bodied mediterranean figures who are retired and absolutely absurd ages and certainly not the sixty seven that they have to work to

in germany following on the for the success of the or not angela merkel recently say it's going to take a decade to resolve the crisis the czech leader on record as saying the past ten years are a lost decade for europe in terms of its economy but i say much about the effectiveness of the e.u. this is. the e.u. has done many things to try and help cross border trade actually have and i do think there are things that it has done fantastically the fact you can travel from one end of the century it i mean you can go from france all the way to slovenia without basically showing your passport that's magnificent but the problem we've heard is that all the way through this period people have not been willing to balance the books on their economies and we are going to have another loss i think the problem is what's not being said and that is you can stick pieces of duct tape over an exhaust that's breaking in an old car or you can stick it over the europe but some time or another piece of duct tape is going to split and you're ultimately going to brick and i don't see that you're a conservative no lateral what murky and sarka have actually managed to say today

or what's going to be said at the brussels conference we are still looking at the disastrous scenario for the euro and that is going to be a big problem not just for the europeans but for the whole world trivia executive director of the investment firm t.v. advisors thank you for your thoughts. if you drove afghanistan there's a stake conference in germany with delegates from key countries attending except one crucial one pakistan is boycotting it in the latest sign of a deepening crisis in its relations with the u.s. it follows the recent deadly nato air raid on a pakistan border post which killed twenty four of its soldiers can offer a pause. some of the key political figures like u.s. secretary of state hillary clinton and russia's foreign minister said go after all are taking part this is the second such conference being held in germany the first one happened exactly ten years ago back then the delegates were working on the rebuilding of the honest and we storing peace in the country building democratic

institutions and so on and unfortunately ten years later some of these issues still remain and probably one of the most troubling ones is still security especially in light of the alliance's plans to start pulling its forces out in twenty fourteen it's widely believed that afghanistan on its own can provide security and ganesan in general is still very complicated there's the taliban threat the drug trafficking very poor living conditions for the locals who are also increasingly tired and often even angered by foreign presence pakistan is a very important country in the region is the key partner of washington or at least it used to be it's also right there next to afghanistan and it's not taking part in this conference after an attack by the allied forces on its military post on the pakistani afghani border for more on the situation here's a report by my colleague. on the. supplies are would keep

a war running nato actions have put all operations in afghanistan in danger after attack that killed twenty four pakistani soldiers islamic law cut off one of the alliances major supply routes to again establish i would like to extend my most sincere condolences. to pakistan washington's condolences were not enough to repeated incursions by the u.s. military in pakistan really left no choice and also the humiliation that the pakistani military faced in front of its own soldiers and the pakistani people left no choice. before the government this time but you cut off the supply line whose relations between the u.s. and pakistan as unstable as ever in order to keep the war in afghanistan running mate or relies more on its other major supply route coming from the more. here it is the northern distribution network you see all these blue lines and here is the

route that pakistan shut down now the northern supply network was started when russia agreed to provide its territory and air space for transit if not only thought supplies to nato troops in afghanistan it proved to be a very reliable route more reliable than pakistan now it accounts for half of nato as non-lethal supplies on trucks railroads and by air supplies travel through russian territory from europe and from russia's far east all the way to afghanistan and the reliance on this route is set to expand in the last three years russia's cooperation on of ganesan as being key to nato operations there. i sit down with professor michael lee hoss who stressed he was speaking in a personal capacity the u.s. has a very tenuous kind of placement. in afghanistan and it is highly vulnerable it's highly vulnerable. pakistanis but it's more

vulnerable to russia i mean if russia were to withdraw its permission for us to use of surveillance we would be in a very difficult position in afghanistan the northern supply now work could now be in danger because of a failure in diplomacy moscow says because washington turned down all of its proposals on the missile defense issue russia might have to resort to other arguments including its cooperation with nato on afghanistan that. their processes which are critically important for russia which are about russia's national security one of them is nato expansion into russian borders and the fact that washington goes ahead with a robust missile shield program in europe without taking into consideration russia's concerns gives moscow to refuse any leverage it has to be heard by its partner but even the mere possibility that russia could cut off the northern supply route threatens the viability of all western operations in afghanistan nato risks

leaving almost one hundred forty thousand of its troops in afghanistan without vital supplies if diplomacy doesn't win the day with pakistan it's about people there being fed up with russia it's about their national security if washington does not seriously address the concerns of its partners even the best partnerships can fade i'm going to check our reporting from washington r.t. . british m.p.'s are staging a debate seeking the urgent renegotiation of what they see is a biased extradition treaty with the u.s. and great in the chaotic aftermath of nine eleven it allows washington to demand the extradition of any u.k. citizen without evidence of any crime and britain is bound to comply results of a bennett reports next from london patience is running low. all take and no give that's the growing feeling in britain's parliament against america's controversial extradition treaty it was signed in two thousand and three in the post nine eleven panic and makes it far easier for the us to take people from the u.k.

than the other way around now forty five m.p.'s from the three main parties have crossed the political divide and joined forces they finally forced a debate and parliamentary vote on what they called an injustice was a mistake in the first person history i think it was a mistake it's not a level playing field even with a partner like america we need to make sure that we of being equal and we are being fair to our citizens and that is not the case of the moment britain must present evidence for any extradition but america doesn't need to a long awaited independent inquiry recently ruled this relationship was balanced but the numbers suggest otherwise one hundred twenty three people have been surrendered to america under the treaty since two thousand and four only fifty four have gone the other way america's ambassador to the u.k. has branded these figures myths and in accuracies but they were figures he's

embassy refused to reveal he's even accused m.p.'s of willfully distorting the facts in the run up to this crunch vote in parliament that could shift the balance but m.p.'s aren't backing down joining a battle some have fought since the treaty was signed i think you know seeing how many injustices have been caused because of it it was meant to be for terrorise fences it wasn't meant to be for the ken things they're using no janice's is gary mckinnon a mainstay on america's extradition wish list he was arrested ten years ago after hacking into pentagon files he says he was merely searching for u.f.o.'s gary has asperger's syndrome and according to his. mother should be tried in the u.k. on medical grounds but america's not giving up on one of their most wanted is so vengeful it's there you think uses some of the arjun it is so over the top they left him one is entering it three and

a half years after the arrest if gandhi was this latest threat that wouldn't have been done but it's very much i think he embarrassed them and because of that they were very angry at him there are nine cases currently fighting extradition to america richard o'dwyer is the latest he's wanted on copyright charges for creating a search engine for pirated content it's not even considered a crime in the u.k. but at the moment that doesn't matter the us can still get their man the coalition government promised to change this while in opposition now's the chance to deliver either bennett r.t. london. coming up shortly tonight we ask what's next for syria one of britain's top newspaper columnist sport coming up this hour too with kate lionel messi of third straight european player of the year award but facing tough competition from one teammate an arch rival is catch up on the business next the unity.

hello and a very warm welcome and as we've been hearing sunday's election has shifted the balance of power in the russian parliament you know i didn't russia will still be the biggest sponsor but with a much reduced majority to discuss what difference this might make to economic policy and the business climate i'm joined by you and that work from very much as a management thank you very much for joining us so broadly speaking what impact do you think these election will have on economic policy but i think it actually is an excellent day for investors and not just for investors russian investors because the russian people have voiced clearly that are not very happy with one party system we always said one person one party system is not stable so this could lead to stability to the right reforms we finally looking for but given the relatively weak showing by united russia are you concerned the government may increase public spending well i think that. finances accoutred has brought about a very open financial system of russia so if russia were to choose to add

additional expenditures i think it could very quickly suffer from having excessive expenditure and i think the russian government professional enough to avoid that so i don't expect more populistic measures i would hope on the contrary the russian government take efforts to take the forty seven million internet users and the middle class who feel this engaged because they're not represented in the duma so far make them happy that will mean fighting corruption of long massive i mean having independent judges independent media. outside of television they already independent but to vision to also become more independent and they would be great for russia and i think therefore it's a good day so it's just that there will be a large up position group in the doman also is good for the perception of investment climate but certainly if you have a duma that is where you have a constitutional majority not only change the laws you can also change the constitution then you have to rely on one person's will and i think no not having a constitutional majority is good. gives the first checks and balances good news on

the other hand we avoid the situation of the ninety's in the ninety's president and lost his elections in december ninety three and he could no longer control parliament now the united russia still is a majority it still can pass the laws that are needed but i think this is the last chance and i think they must understand within five years if they do not satisfy the intelligentsia the people they need to modernize the country that will be a challenge therefore i'm hopeful that putin to bluepoint will be as aggressive and as reformist as a quarter of his first term but. the main economic challenges will be for the new parliament and president when all the elections are over well so far russia has the world's best macroeconomic situation it has no debts it has no liquidity problems it's wonderful but it was hit the hardest defacto in two thousand and eight on any g twenty countries because it's completely dependent on oil and gas in wants to modernize it wants to modernize you need to liberalize so we need very simple reforms that just take a bit of political will and i believe the right people should have it and that was

a good deal. thank you very much for your analysis and that's all we have time for nobody can always find more stories online at archie dot com slash business. lulu news.