that block failing to control its debt that. you're watching are the line from moscow where it's four again we have a look back at the week's top stories for you this sunday we begin with the crisis in relations between iran and the west bank's again this week fueled by wednesday's assassination of a top nuclear scientists in tehran but iranian officials blamed the murder on the u.s. and israel who want to stop its nuclear program meanwhile american and british warships are gathering in the persian gulf where you are wrong that earlier threatened to block a crucial oil lane and that's amid a pending oil embargo aimed at forcing tehran to abandon its atomic ambitions. the cold run of tension between iran and the west is simmering. it seems a slight is the increase of heat could make it boil over into an all out confrontation. but where we'll be that boiling point the point of no return we're

getting closer and closer to war with iran the iranians are playing with fire problems in a crisis if you get where any small thing can really set it off and it doesn't quote washington that the international nuclear watchdog is arm side closely monitoring iran's nuclear activities are they trying to develop a nuclear weapon no but we know that they're trying to develop a nuclear capability and that's what concerns us and our red line to iran is do not develop a nuclear weapon iran's main source of livelihood is oil export is in danger the u.s. is imposing fresh sanctions that will dramatically complicate transactions through iran's central bank iran is also close to losing europe as a customer the reason that this is happening is that this is the logical conclusion of our current strategy against iran we have sanctions in place with no diplomacy the only way that that is through confrontation cornered by crippling sanctions iran threatens to glock the strait of hormuz a vital oil artery through which

a six of the world's oil is shipped the u.s. replied by moving its fifth fleet to the region and saying if iran goes for it they will attack thousands of u.s. troops are being deployed to israel experts say the policy of isolating iran may lead to other threats from tehran and the possibility that one day they will go through with their threats but washington signals that it's ready or it wants everybody to believe that it's ready could way if we had to without using nuclear weapons ourselves take out their their nuclear capability well i certainly want them to believe that that's the case well is that if i absolutely want them to believe that that's the. it's secretary would you add anything to that some believe it's just a war of words and neither side will go for an all out conflict considering what it is asked or it will be for the whole region frankly speaking this tension is artificial it doesn't have to happen it doesn't need to exist the iranians would do

themselves an enormous favor by saying less. and we would do ourselves a favor by ignoring most of it all of this sadly i think is connected to israel and the israeli fear of iran for rhetorical reasons more than military iran might feel cornered and therefore make drastic moves right now it's in a war of words but one bullet shot and the powder keg can blow up the question is what's going to provide that deadly spark i'm going to check our reporting from washington our team. well syria's president bashar assad has issued an amnesty for crimes committed during the ongoing anti-government uprising in the country according to the official state news agency it will pardon peaceful protesters those who carried on license weapons and army defectors who turned themselves in before the end of the month meanwhile pressure on our side have been growing this week the ruler of quite harsh suggested

a military intervention and the underground in syria shaken when the pani has become the first arab leader to openly indorse military action qatar a monarchy itself is an ally of the u.s. and a strong advocate of regime change in damascus international affairs consultant lova news told r.t. that arab league countries lecturing syria on democracy are being hypocritical. so there's clearly not what you would call a democratic leader but if we didn't do you know she should not do was to the country what janet to me is doing i mean the end of recruit present the facts remain united showed you review what to do if you do. they are not just the ones that should point a finger and whether there is an international. point on to me. i think it's more complex than just the result genuine revolt but it is absolutely

sure. who are taking to rob you abuse you would never do is living among the people for their own purposes that is absolutely. syria's longtime ally turkey is among the increasingly vocal chorus calling for president to step down its lending of support to the armed opposition and keeping its own troops at the ready near the border resort where for notion of reports ankara might not be getting an accurate picture of what's happening inside syria. who the bloody state is calling the syrian crisis maintain a crime and says he is a growing and firelands may start spreading beyond the country's borders especially with his close neighbor turkey once a close friend too but now a harsh critic of damascus on. syria's first priority should be to listen to its people and meet their demands not to denounce others sort of massacring its people

we should listen to them. through glitter glue is a harsh critic himself but he's criticizing the turkish government ankara is on the side with the free syrian army and the syrian national council and military and diplomatic forces aimed at overthrowing the regime of bashar al assad it supports a buffer zone and a humanitarian corridor which some fear could bring turkish troops to syrian soil what does that mean according to international law it means aggression against a country it means war but any intervention would be different from the one in libya since russia and china have made it clear new war no fly zone resolutions which means the role of visual players like turkey increases dramatically but for new claims and korea's behavior is irresponsible and risky it has larger implications beyond the bilateral context of turkey syria as such the situation in

syria must be handled with great care by all powers and unfortunately i don't see that cash. separation. especially on the part of our government or hand works with a middle eastern studies center based in and kyra it's sponsored by the turkish foreign ministry to help shape policy and its opinion on syria it's clear syria is killing people. not always that's clear nobody has objectively information what is going on in syria the center specialists haven't been to syria for over a year it means the picture they paint for officials in ankara is unlikely to be an accurate one the technology changing you know when you look at the graphs or the videos coming from these governorates you can easily see that there is something going on but the sources of these videos are often questionable so it's easy to be misled and get a false picture of what's really happening but there does. researchers from coming

to firm conclusions military operations this is the last option which turkey does not want to see but this is an option it may have declared it doesn't welcome a military solution to the syrian crisis but turkey hasn't ruled it out either plain and if game if there is massive migration from its troubled neighbor turkey says it will have to protect its own people and marc fisher and korea insists it wants peace and stability in the region its troops are already just kilometers from the border with syria. r.t. turkey. well coming up for you here in our city what it takes to get ahead of a new type of arab spring might take snap election and they add a few of the filled promise of the season with a year for the common people the worth of recipe for peace back conflicts that are in serving up in a region that simmering with rats. but if the purpose of the group meant and for

the taliban produced by and starring american troops the reaction to the stampede footage of u.s. marines urinating on dead afghan the military. heroes struggle for survival got that much more difficult this week after a major credit rating agencies slashed the credit scores of nine nations downgrades handed out by standard and poor's come amid growing concern that the eurozone failed to rein in its runaway finances and that france and austria were especially hard hit losing their prestigious aaa status that made them safe haven for investors to call the action from the e.u. these are the words varied with some calling the move on justified while others accepted the decision and called for urgent action economists across the e.u. are now waiting for monday when global markets opened to gauge how much damage has been done don laughlin from the institute for democracy and cooperation in paris believes the euro project has reached. the downgrading of france but

not of germany obviously means that the franco german axis is no longer term proposition what we see in the euro is there's there's only one country calling the shots not two and that's germany there's no doubt that it will extract a terrible blow for sarkozy's only real chance of winning the election was to show himself as a safe pair of. devil you know in a crisis you know it's clear that sort of france has posed a crisis and the devil look you know i mean it's true that these agencies are not above reproach they've made. a lot of mistakes in the past but i think that european leaders are being completely paranoid when they blame the ratings agencies for their problems any fool can see that there is a massive debt problem in europe and i think when the euro finally collapses as it will do surely within i would think probably the next year when we will see this

day this announcement that downgrading of france or as having been one of the decisive moments. as an analyst patrick young says he believes the reading cards were well overdue. it's been deserved frankly for several years i mean the french government has been economically incontinent for the course of several decades they've lived in never neverland they have no concept of how to run a reasonable economy in terms of not spending more money than they can afford it's a disaster for mr sarkozy but then again it's been coming since the start of his presidency it's been building for twenty five years and he did nothing about it so he's just as culpable as everybody else in this issue on the future of the euro everything is not up for grabs again it emotionally destabilizes every single aspect of the euro because we still have no leadership in the euro zone we've got situations like greece needing fourteen and a half billion euros to refund in march alone the euro sits on the precipice

tragically and that's a terrible thing for all our viewers throughout the world. coming up to thirteen minutes past the hour and later in the program empty promises sorry of kuantan of a prisoner of war it's earth day with protesters in the u.s. great britain urging obama keep his word and set it down. and we report on a wave of anger triggered by israel now called boycott law back to call it the first step towards fascism. now it's decision day in kazakhstan with millions flocking to polling booths to cast their votes in snap parliamentary elections the ballot was ordered by president ezer by of and comes just a month after all workers' strike striking over poor pay class favorably with security forces elections were set to take place in august but the president dissolved parliament last november and ordered an immediate vote welcomed by the opposition it's

a move that's widely expected to break the country's single party system as a fun a boycott reports preempting violent unrest is a priority in kazakhstan having learned wearing lessons from the arab spring. if it wasn't for the snow and the freezing temperatures stands capital of aston i could easily be mistaken for one of the gleaming cities of the gulf a village just two decades ago it is now an oasis in the desert but it's architecture having a distinct arriving flavor like many arab countries kazakhstan's primary sources of income are all in gas and it is that x. word that allowed this country the luxury of building its new capital city from scratch in fact kazakstan is now producing about as much oil as lieve beer was churning out prior to its civil war and the similarities and here both kazakstan and libya have predominantly muslim populations both were considered still roots of calm in their turbulent neighborhoods and both have experienced decades of rule by

just one man in terms of style that fast. is the exact opposite of erratic more market afy and of course he's still in power but the libyan scenario no longer seems improbable in kazakstan even to its leader some young people are fascinated with what's happening in the world right now in africa and europe but we have to explain to the new generation that blindly believes everything it's told that there are those who envy your own or well being the countries who are revolutions took place have gone back ten to fifteen years economically speaking the town of jena zahn is rightfully called catholics tonnes of oil capital but it's no match for glistening asked. despite producing much of the country's hydro carbons for decades it's been poor and neglected. the uprising in western kazakstan has smouldered since last spring but culminated in december in a weekend of clashes with police that left seventeen dead and more than one hundred

injured as the protests spread to other cities. jittery in the wake of the arab spring but it was because i stand as a semblance of. crecy with several parties in parliament and some a position media but the essence of the regime is similar to those of the arab countries but the first thing the authorities did when their prize and began was to switch off the mobo networks and the internet connection before the people even demanded it out loud the cancer has the riches decided to offer a political reforms the people are now going to the polls to elect a new parliament recent constitutional amendments guarantee they'll be more than one party that has been up until now the challenge now is to keep all the good things stability prosperity. and at the same time allow the society to evolve. meanwhile their thirty's have approved millions of dollars worth

of programs to give the rest of cd a facelift and create new jobs between each case. the president's close associates appointed to oversee the turbulent region says in a few years will make some cities in the gulf pale in comparison. come here in a few years and you won't recognize this city while the arab spring may have inspired protesters around the world it's also taught authorities valuable lessons on how to contain those rallies and like all rulers in a suburb i would much rather learn from the mistakes of others especially if they come at a price paid by gadhafi and a boycott artsy kazakstan. but there's other news coming out of kazakhstan this sunday that's not a lecture and related a mosque what are the biggest in central asia caught fire in the capital of sanaa the building was still under construction but almost complete and there's still no want to supply to the structure which made firefighting much more difficult over

a hundred workers have been evacuated from the site and one person is known to have died the country's emergency services say the fire has now been put out. well the world was shocked this week by an online video that showed american marines urinating on the dead bodies of taliban fighters the u.s. military says it's identified the soldiers in the clip and appointed a three star general to investigate but original experts say the damage has already been done and it will be u.s. troops currently in afghanistan who will pay the price. let's not forget that the americans came to understand with the explicit objective also of transforming this country into a more humane country into a democracy and we are seeing happening right now with the appearance of this kind of a video it's the opposite and it is having an impact let's not forget that this is a region where religious values are really very deep deeply entrenched and the way

you treat bodies and the way you treated dead is something that is treated very secretly here and with this video you can you can rest assured that this will have an impact in terms of the kind of reaction the kind of backlash to this will generate this video will generate against the very. the american soldiers who are there right now in afghanistan it really in danger is their lives. but many now fear that the video will encourage more young muslims to join radical terrorist groups like the taliban or al qaeda take down the bird on afghanistan war veteran says that this latest scandal along with previous abuses is the perfect advertisement for recruiting terrorists. just to remind people of a few incidents that occurred a while back there was the burning of the koran that happened with. jerry jones and then there was the grave incident and before then there was the decision to invade

iraq that had nothing to do with nine eleven so all of these these situations pile on and they add up and what happens is al-qaeda and other terrorist organizations and using this video and they put it in their recruiting videos end up on you tube across the jihad web channels and they end up reading anti-american sentiment this is the hugest recruitment for al qaeda that we can do it's unfathomable how pathetic this is become because the war hasn't been brought to it and like obama said he was going to do and what we're seeing upgrades happen twice now in afghanistan. also in the program leon panetta as optimism for afghan progress was crushed by a cia leak the report presented the white house picture of what's going on in the trunk suggesting nato to have long military affair brought down to tell me. and meet russians new with airport security recruits breath through their hardness

and. their job until troubled passengers carrying what they shouldn't all that you know the next hour here on our. well this week the anniversary of the world's most controversial prison pantano bay was marked by public protests on both sides of the atlantic demonstrators called on us president obama to honor his election pledge and shut down the jail laura smith reports many sign a new law that allows america to detain anyone it deems hostile as proof that obama's promises were empty ones. one zero zero zero zero zero one zero zero zero abdullah i am absolutely today is probably just another day for the inmates of guantanamo bay they may not even know that people around the world are campaigning for them but as far afield as london demonstrations are held to demand the release of the hundred seventy one men still held without trial in the cuban camp after ten

years one of those men is shaka omer who's earned the dubious distinction of being the last british resident held in guantanamo he was in afghanistan or nine eleven he says doing charity work digging wells and building a girls' school in kabul. when the u.s. invasion began almost went into hiding from an increasingly wary northern alliance but his freedom didn't last shuckers supporters maintain he was sold for a bounty went into the hands of the northern alliance who were warlords basically and he actually thought all the americans that my goodness it will save me from the torture that he's had lots of torture by them but no he was transported to when time and bear he has remains despite president obama's original election pledge to close guantanamo altogether despite being cleared for release and despite being

a legal permanent resident in the u.k. with family in london which includes one son he's never even seen and fall for a moving closer to being freed shockers supporters see worrying developments in the us is attitude to extrajudicial detention obama recently signed the national defense authorization act which places domestic terror investigations into the hands of the military and extends a ban on transferring prisoners out of kuantan i'm very sorry indeed president obama for reasons of. the preschool will or he would say complete inability to deliver. lived up to that promise and is now bracing to become american citizens need to try this in military commissions which are very far from being. the british government has requested the release of but there's been no

movement on the case since two thousand and seven meanwhile as his family grows up without him he lives out his life in a tiny window. not knowing whether he can expect to be released laura smith. we're going to explore all our stories on our website with much more lined up for you at our dot com thirty two years on board the long history proves liner which ran aground off the italian coast say it was like the titanic it's a live picture of count five the concorde you follow the search and rescue operation live video stream at our dot com. plus violent clashes in romania watch footage of frustration are robbed of prosperity and low standard of living. and israel heated spirit is gaining momentum over the controversial boycott law it outlaws any criticism of the country's policy

including its settlement construction in the west bank but activists are pinning their hopes on the israeli supreme court to overturn the legislation but as artist polls are found out the congress parliament has a whole range of other controversial bills on its agenda. gershon baskin is a wanted man in israel for his outspoken views against the government's policy of settlement expansion it's ironic because if it wasn't for those left wing israeli activist it's dark for israel would have secured a recent prisoner swap that's always way the soldier gilad shalit exchanged for palestinian prisoners after five years in captivity gershon says it was his contacts within him us that allowed the two sides to reach an agreement but now a controversial so-called boycott threatens to find the post war hero if he steps out of line the appeal to the public is an arab appeal. and there is a competition of who is more strongly advocating a position which is

a very arab what the law says is that any israeli could face legal action just for speaking out in favor of boycotting settlements the first steps to fascism are quiet so. i i hope that the supreme court gives us a loud screaming telling us that fascism shouldn't pass but for now the supreme court is keeping quiet the state attorney again this month asked for more time to consider the arguments angering gabion who team who filed a petition to another law the morning after it was passed in parliament until the court rules otherwise israeli owners of companies based in the settlements can seek damages for boycotts called against the goods so i don't i don't accept any boycott . by the. right not boycott the boycott law is one of several controversial pieces of legislation being advanced by the netanyahu government a number of similarly criticized bills are currently under discussion in the israeli parliament another ball aims to dramatically limit foreign funding of

nongovernmental groups critical of israel it's expected to receive cabinet approval soon this is a very conservative right wing coalition they have a solid majority in parliament burke. still they sort of promote these bills which which all perceived not only by the left but by the previous by the courts as as not encouraging them ocracy ok all sort of limiting free speech in israel many here think it's a way for the right wing coalition government of prime minister netanyahu to stay in power but for people like gershon baskin he says he'll continue to call for a boycott of the settlements and far from censoring him the law has only strengthened his resolve to stop israel's growing onslaught on democracy policy r.t. tel aviv. where i take a short break here in our three i'll be back with a recap of our week the top stories.

now it's not about spilling blood. and it's the war of barricades from one side and fears blockade from the other. invisible border has cut people from the land for twelve years. the conflict that divided serbia into two hostile parts is still not over.

this is art. to reclaim the american dream and reaffirm that fundamental truth that out of many we are won that war with the we hope. to me the american dream is to live in peace and prosperity and freedom and a government under socialism is not a government of free. you have very motivated out cross the country who are activists who are willing to fight for what they think is right for themselves but in fact this border bridge.

we are drowning in property drowning and i think it's threatened by it's cutting our heart. it's making real democracy. all but impossible. it's four thirty pm in moscow here's a look at the week's main stories there is no let up in iraq u.s. dispute over a new sanctions following the assassination of a pop atomic researcher in tehran blamed on america and israel. are growing line of intervention supporters the emir of qatar is the first arab leader openly call for foreign military action in syria former ally turkey says forces on standby border.