draw on the words one country. and three future i assess a crew members and near death all the way to the space station prospects for you spacecraft launches successfully from the baikonur cosmodrome. a very warm welcome to this is r.t. live from moscow russia nato to look into reports of widespread civilian deaths in libya caused by the military alliance is seven month long bombing campaign well the claims filed by rights groups contradict his assertion that twenty six thousand of its airstrikes did not cause any civilian casualties and the killing hasn't ended just because gadhafi is dead and gone former rebels continue. the porters of the toppled regime and you may find some of the images and boy this report disturbing.

the this is what it's like to look down in the face a group of man the young and old captured after the nadir propped rebels overran get off his hometown of sirte there was behind a camera delivers a verdict what did you work for gadhafi did you. and the captives themselves seem doubts about what's coming next. and it seems like these play now that possibly be as the rebels assisted by western powers so to liberate the country from gadhafi i've been longines about he said district tendencies grow more and more outlandish by the day and that seems to justify any sort of treatment for his perceived loyalists in some places the violence is quite bad the town we looked out in was called god and the militias from the neighboring town of misrata are terrorizing the people of to where they accuse them of having fought for qaddafi of having committed atrocities in his name this is one of the liberated

tripoli's new landmarks a prison where moammar gadhafi was set to hold his political opponents with no access to lawyers and no chance for a fair trial. but while the prisons new guards have a very elaborate in their rating gadhafi is ferocity is here and hatred still resides in this neighborhood. obviously is a poor area in southern tripoli where more margot had strong support base prior to . the district also has its name to the tourists present a scene of torture and arbitrary killings but while gadhafi is gone the human rights abuses still remain rather from this area still disappearing without a trace of their families are too scared to talk about. this is probably the only place in libya with families of a logic get out his supporters can turn to for how mohammed to form peace and your

earlier this year it investigated the fate of those who disappeared in good office prisons he is now primarily dealing with people who went missing under libya's new leadership it's usually mothers who come here and at first they are scared to tell me that this son or husband was with the gadhafi forces they usually say he was a civilian court in the crossfire but i tell them that i don't care which side he was on all i need is accurate information so that we can start searching. mohammad and his friends have been taking photos of unidentified bodies that have been popping up across lee bear in recent months this naturists are probably their relatives most realistic hope of finding closure but even after sifting through them many managed to retain hope like this man whose brother disappeared on the front lines of banjo. i hope he's in tunisia maybe his in hospital maybe he's lost

his memory or has no way of contacting us. they see dies last. it's still alive even if many people are going to boycott artsy tripoli. six state duma the lower house of parliament has held its first session after a heated debate said again from the ruling united russia party was chosen as the speaker it comes as protests continue against the elections two weeks ago spawned by allegations of vote rigging while my colleague. putting their grandchildren an italian although he's been following events. it was a very intense first session of the state duma heated debates and raised voices receipt of the voting the voting for a new duma speaker with two hundred thirty eight voices for and eighty eight against a new speaker has been true since and this ruling united russia's candidate to gay marriage can the government shot full advance last week when mr b.

and i was going until recently crowned in chief of style stepped down for a duma seat apart from that opposition will have a louder voice in the new duma with united russia failing to secure a constitutional majority is believe that the lower house of the russian parliament will again become a field of heated debates and now that united russia does not have a majority of the committees fourteen out of twenty nine committees so far will be controlled by the three opposition parties it's also believed that the whole approach to lawmaking in russia will change in the tabio over to you know this dumas first session it goes ahead against the backdrop of a lot of protests so what can you tell us about well during the first plenary session of the newly elected lower house of the russian parliament members of the opposition gathered for an unsanctioned protest outside the stadium when according to opposition bloggers over twenty people were arrested also aleksey now values well known for its harsh criticism of the russian government was released from

custody where he spent the last fifteen days after he was arrested during opposition rallies which took place shortly after the parliamentary elections in the country which took place on the fourth of december there also been number of peaceful demonstrations including one in moscow when over twenty thousand people gathered on one of the city's main squares to do months in the lens of the results of the parliamentary elections claiming there the results were falsified following that's russian president dmitry medvedev ordered an investigation into the case and over it. fifty criminal cases were filed in that respect and at twenty one polling stations the voting results were no however that does not change the outcome over the parliamentary election this they do is going to stay in the way it was shaped on the fourth of december and the ongoing investigation is not going to change that

. the iraqi prime minister has told kurdish authorities one hundred over his rival the country's sunni vice president whose want to allegations he's been running a hit squad well it all began just a day after the last u.s. troops left the country to the peace of the challenges are fabricated and accused the pm of cracking down on competition in order to tighten his grip on power or the contentious start to a free iraq has already raised concern u.s. senator john mccain even called for the return of american forces to iraq experts fear is likely to ignite sectarian tensions between shia and sunni muslims or for the scots are joined by peter who are and who served as a diplomat for the u.s. foreign service for over twenty three years many thanks for joining us this evening now the vice president's reaction it can be understood can't he has got a lot to lose in this situation but on the other hand there are some who actually

think that his accusations do hold water all through the v.p. is the prime minister's closest rival and. anti american sentiment is policy at play here do you think. absolutely politics in iraq is a full context sport and what we're seeing now is nothing more than the continuation of the tensions between the sunni shia and the kurds that have been in place since the election of march two thousand and ten however what's very significant about this is the timing moloch he waited almost while twenty four hours after the last american soldier left iraq before he released this latest series of attacks and i think it's the timing of this that's most significant and looking ahead of course there is love lost is now between the sunnis and shia muslims as you've been saying they've really been to tell the stories ever since the dam was toppled that the other crucial thing in this is what could happen from

here is there a danger that this confrontation could descend into a get more violence. absolutely that danger exists in iraq any given time i think at this point my guess will be that will not descend into that type of violence that we saw back in two thousand and five and two thousand and six i think instead what we're seeing are the very early skirmishes of what will be a much longer and larger war i think this one is going to be fought out over a period of months moloch ease usual actions with threatening new arrests the vice president or just the beginning of a process that will play out over time you talked earlier about the timing of will they sound significant this was a day off to u.s. troops withdraw from iraq do you think this points towards the fact that perhaps u.s. troops were indeed a stabilizing factor within the country them. i don't know that the troops presents itself was a stabilizing factor because we had in fact been drawing down and pulling back into the operating bases for quite some time i think what was significant about the

timing is it sent a signal that the iraqis are going to solve these problems their own way possibly with violence but that the united states was no longer in charge in iraq the presence of the troops was really a symbol at the end more than any reality and i think maliki certainly could have done these things a week earlier a week later but by choosing to do them literally the day the american soldiers left he was sending a message to his rivals that he was not going to be corralled and he was particularly sending a message to the united states that their influence was ending but of course seen a u.s. figure is also paying a lot of attention to this some including stand as a mccain or even calling now for the return of u.s. troops if the situation dolls' get out of control is there any possibility that america could retaliate in reputation is at stake here after all. i think the possibility exists but is very unlikely reinvading iraq at this point would be politically very very difficult to support for the american people it would also

have relatively little to do with what actually goes on on the ground in iraq keep in mind that at the height of the surge we had one hundred sixty six thousand troops in iraq with all the equipment and all the electronics and all the technology and even then the best we could do to kind of put a lid on some of the violence not really make it go away no i don't think the troops will be going back again i think america's influence is waning we'll do what we can behind the scenes but at this point this is really an issue that the iraqis are going to have to resolve hopefully without violence but they will have to resolve it mostly on their own ok i'm on there and he said as a diplomat for the u.s. foreign service and the twenty three years many thanks. thank you. now a russian soyuz spacecraft pairing three future international space station crew members has blasted into space and is in near orbit the saudis are stuffed full of newly developed digital equipment is expected to reach the i.s.a.'s on friday r.t.

these are now a was a lucky witness at the board's. why is rocket just about to blast off here from baikonur cosmodrome in a complex stand let's take a look at this site. absolutely incredible there will reach the top speed of one point five kilometers per second and i will have the rocket in orbit in less than ninety minutes from blast off that we just saw on board are three space men including russian cosmonaut dig going in young go along with an american astronaut a new european astronaut from holland and they will be onboard the international

space station for some six months of course that means they will be spending christmas and new year's there for some of them it's not the first time they'll be spending the holidays there we had a chance to speak to them just before takeoff and what they said word was yes we'll have some kind of celebration of their our commander will certainly have the christmas hats ready and we will take part in some kind of celebration of we really do have a lot of work to do what they'll be doing there is conducting several of some thirty six or so experiments there and also be doing engineering research one of the experiments which is considered the most important in terms of research that's going on at the international space station is actually trying to find life forms on the outer surface of the i assess of course this is the only way now to reach to have crews reached i assess through the site space program because the u.s. nasa i should say of course grounded their shuttle missions to the i s s so it's seen. although this is the last mission to the i assess for two thousand and eleven

we're hearing that they'll be several more missions in two thousand and twelve and now it's the only way to. continue this very international what all the basement say is a very important program for the international space community reporting from baikonur cosmodrome. for archie. twenty eleven has been a year of sundowns for the space exploration industry daring projects that consistently made it into the headlines but there was much more the differences reveals. one of the biggest landmarks that we saw this year was the fiftieth anniversary of eureka guarin first space flight and just before one of the nasa astronauts went up there i was having to chat with him about what it actually meant that have that first flight by you daryn fifty years ago and he was saying really it changed us as

a species we stopped being limited to our own planet we were able to go out and explore further of course a few years after guarin first month set foot on the moon. of mars five hundred project which came to an end this year was really something quite exciting it was great to be able to to go in and have a look at it where they were when i'd seen it on television i was thinking wow this is six guys in a shed and then when i actually went to where the the mocked up spacecraft was i realized it was six guys in a very very small shed for five hundred twenty days i mean doing them a bit of a disservice saying that there is a show in the shed but when you see the pictures of the wood paneling and everything very small confined space that they were in for such a long time one year into their voyage the mars five hundred team currently simulating never journey to earth however it will be another five months before this door can be opened and they can step back to normality it was nice on the day

i remember the day when they came out. the look on their faces when the door opened the look on the very very pale faces of course you have to realize these guys hadn't seen sunlight for such a long time. they were ecstatic to have come out of there. and it really was i mean whether scientifically it ends up being the building block or the the first step towards the first step i think it was referred to by the organizers towards going to mars and trying to send people to the red planet for real. well looking back on twenty eleven one of the things that really stand out is the crash of that progress module now it wasn't just the module itself they've been using those since the late seventy's it was the fact that this was carried on a soyuz rocket now the soyuz rocket is the only way we have now getting people into space. the progress module that was launched at the end of august was carrying

valuable food and supplies for the international space station at the time we were hearing from and from the guys on the space station who that those food supplies had been for saying no this is fine it's ok i remember saying in my reports look these guys go through extensive cosmonaut training that they know what they're doing they'll be fine. volkov who is actually the mission commander who is up there when he returned from his time in space he was telling me that yeah they were genuinely a little bit worried they were generally scared at times they were going to run out of food they didn't know if they were going to be able to be brought back down to earth before that ran out in the beginning of twenty twelve pressures that these people put themselves through evidence thankfully that these failures that we've seen today seen this year these failures that we've seen this year didn't result in . any major problems on month spaceflight that's always the big concern but.

it has shown me the perseverance of these people who do risk their lives going into space on a well as a job they do it without a choice. so the first out of ten special reports every day until the chimes are in twelve on december thirty first and be sure not to mr brown. witnesses. to history in the making of. testimony. ten stories that shapes two thousand and eleven on r.t. . now add to this in syria say the country has seen some of its a physicist fighting since on respite down with a for two hundred people killed since monday the biggest number of casualties was reported in the syrian and western province where we live by government forces and legibly used heavy i'm mission against anti regime fighters that's ahead of the

arrival of an arab nuke advance team which is going to prepare for monitoring a mission in the country and it's awesome sara first reports there on the observers can present a clear picture of course really going on in syria. and the team from the arab league is expected to arrive in the country that's the head of the observer mission that's expected to hit at the end of the month and of course that mission can come to see me as both sides of the conflict account at the death toll rising all the time in the city of homs the other day that's the main opposition city where we see so much of the fighting breaking out was here with that certain parts of the city where the fighting is much more concentrated and we went to travel today spouses it is the key dangers but even the cars we were visiting when they were struggling on you could hear the sounds of heavy gunfire breaking out across the city the government of course still maintaining the fighting and militant movement and the

opposition saying that the government had been operating a crackdown policy on the protesters that i spoke to the foreign ministry spokesman the other day he was saying that what's needed now for house like countries is known to be adding fuel to this fire and again he called for a dialogue to be pushed in the situation if the outside warrant neighboring country . was to award wants to help sort of get out of the crisis what we need is to help and provide good offices to push the opposition who are seeing north to say you. yesterday and we're going to come out on one table to discuss everything that are not there because in our in our discussion we are afraid of democracy here in the capital. and sheltered from the conflict in the middle east by the economic sanctions that were imposed on the country.

this is. just. around the city. for the sanctions would put in place have now become much more frequent and. longer as well. now washington has once again a criticism of the syrian regime warning of new international measures unless it withdraws security forces from the streets let's talk more on this now i'm joined live by ivan eland a political analyst and senior fellow at the independent twenty thousand joining us here on ass he now the u.s. threatens do international used against the syrian government as we've just been saying america says it has a quote credible reports of the acid regime continues to indiscriminately kill schools and civilians and army defectors what do you make of that statement. well

it's probably true but the question is should more sanctions be put on and i think that probably counterproductive sanctions usually rally the population around the regime so if the united states goes to get rid of assad then it's probably the same the new sanctions are probably going to have the opposite effect. and the best thing to do i think is probably to. stay out of it as far as the united states goes because anything the united states does a sort of radioactive in the arab arab world to large extent and i think them pushing. democracy on syria is a bad idea if the syrians want to. you know rebelling and move toward a more democratic system that's great but i don't think united states should interfere with that certainly the regime is brutal but. and has been for

a long time but the question is whether the united states should interfere in the situation and so it's sanctions that's what the u.s. is referring to when they talk about international measures right yes yes this is an implied threat to increase the sanctions as you know they've increased the sanctions recently on iran for its nuclear program and so they're also threatening to do so on assad's government in syria for because he's really repressing these protesters and moving on now the first team of the arab league observers is expected to arrive in the country on thursday while the rest are expected at the end of december what do you think that they'll find in the country. well i think. i'm not sure that they'll find much because i think the assad regime will probably try to keep them away from any story so we know where the violence has occurred and that sort of thing is not supposed to be supposed to withdraw the troops from the

cities and stop the violence supposed to release political prisoners and he's supposed to let these monitors and international media go all over the country but i don't think he's probably going to do that because he hasn't done in the past and he's probably going to break his promise as he's done before so i don't necessarily hope for too much from the monitoring group but it is significant that he signed the agreement but i think it's probably did just buy time until he can figure out what to do but i think his regime is probably in the long term i don't know i don't have any prediction on how long it's going to last but given the developments of the other arab spring revolts and what happened to their leaders i think it's probably a good bet that these protests aren't going to go away and he's probably still in political trouble because of course there is confusion as to exactly what is happening inside syria the u.s. based intelligence gathering found his raise questions over the credibility all of

the existing syrian narrative saying that the country's opposition exaggerates in the facts to an outside support from powers like the u.s. how likely do you really think that is. well i think. after the libya libyan example opposition groups unfortunately are going to try to get the united states into some sort of shooting war over this sort of thing and use me where they do by lying or just even telling the facts you know they're going to be trying to do to get the united states in there and there are some people in the united states that would like to do that use libya as a model and do it attack syria and other countries and help the protesters but i think that's probably counterproductive because you don't know what's going to take the place of the regime and where i don't think the libyan. the soda the gyptian episode those haven't been solved yet those revolutions are still either late in

the case of libya or actually are still ongoing in the case of egypt so i think those countries are not out of the woods and stirring things up in these countries is not necessarily a good idea because you don't know what type of you're going to get it may be worse than assad ok ivan eland his calmness and senior fellow at the independent institute many thanks. thank you that's going to check now on some news this hour and at least twenty five people died in southeast turkey when a coach collided head on with a truck that was going to the brakes the crash happened on a road that was reduced to one lane while road works were taking place deadly car accidents all are frequent occurrence in the mountainous areas of the infamous for a minimal respect for traffic holders. still work is in greece have been protesting for fifty two days against a fifty two month as part of national standards the measures that they demand that

fide colleagues be hired bag while the country is struggling to escape the tightening news of debt which stresses to push it into default greece is trying to convince private creditors bags to write off today. the future of north korea following the sudden death of the country's long standing media is on the agenda today's cross-talk is coming up right after and top stories to stay with us.

wealthy british style but it's a time to. go. down. market why you know. why no one really happy. into the global economy with mike stronger for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune into cars a report on our. culture is that so much was made musingly to make it to a lot of people a variant of burger one came to the next kasich of north korea's dear leader again highlights the acute insecurity on the korean peninsula and beyond. news today violence is once again flared up. and these are the images the world has

been seeing from the streets of canada on the giant corporations are on the day. now here in moscow this is all twenty six thousand times and no civilian casualties outrage green said the kinds of a full list libya interventional one is a new and just as bloody campaign unfolds against gadhafi former supporters as. russia's freshly elected parliament has chosen its speaker the new states deem a convenience for the first time in two weeks all day it's election spad mass protests calls for one to count.