and that the block selling to control its debt epidemic. a warm welcome to the weekly here on our t.v. this sunday on the news to now with the latest in a look back at the week's top stories we begin with the crisis in relations between iran and the west which peaked again this week fueled by wednesday's assassination of a top nuclear scientist in tehran iranian officials blame 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 ron had earlier threatened to block a crucial oil lane 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. seems the slightest

increase of heat could make it boil over into an all out confrontation. 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 quell washington that the international nuclear watchdog these i'm sorry 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 its oil export is in danger the u.s. is imposing fresh thanks and 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 and is through confrontation cornered by crippling sanctions iran's threatening to block the strait of hormuz a vital artery through which a sixth of the world's oil is shipped the u.s. replied by moving its fiercely 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 moment 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 wait up 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 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

a disaster 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. and coming up this hour for you the cookbook of politics in conflicts that takes not a lecture that a few filled promises season with an ear for the common people the elusive recipe for peace that conflicts than it's serving up in

a region simmering on the ground. but it's a perfect recruitment and for the taliban produced by and starring american troops the reaction to the shocking footage of u.s. marines urinating on dead afghan you know. syria's president bashar also it 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 my sense weapons and army defectors who turned themselves in before the end of the month meanwhile pressure on our side has been growing this week the ruler of qatar suggested a military intervention to end the address in syria shaken been calling for alcohol he has become the first arab leader openly indorse military action qatar a monarchy itself is an ally of the u.s. and a strong advocate of regime change across the arab world of international affairs consultant loaded with news told r.t.

that arab league countries lecturing syria on democracy are being hypocritical. now so there's clearly not what you would call a democratic leader but within the our country she should not do worse to me on the contrary what janet to me is doing i mean you do see an oblique represent the facts remain the united arab emirates so do review what do do with few do money they are not the ones that should point a finger and whether there is an international students you would call them and said point on to me to do this part if you think it cheats more conflict than just that the results show genuine only but it is absolutely sure that there are elements from outside who are taking who rob you abusing whatever there 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 asad to step

down as lending of support to the armed opposition and keeping its own troops at the ready near the border because aren't his roof a notion of reports ankara might not be getting an accurate picture of what's happening inside syria. with the bloody status quo in the syrian crisis maintaining its commitments he is a growing violence may start spreading beyond the country's borders especially with his close neighboring turkey wants to close friends too but now a harsh critique of damascus on. syria's first priority should be to listen to its people and their demands not to denounce others instead of massacring its people we should listen to them. as a harsh critic himself yes 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 and 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 no more 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 cache. sufficiently especially on the part of our government. works with a middle eastern studies center based and kyra it's sponsored by the turkish

foreign ministry to help shape policy and its opinion on syria it's clear breach of syria is killing their own 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 year it to me is the picture they paint for officials in ankara isn't likely to be an accurate one the technology at changing you know when you look at the photographs or the videos coming from these governorates you can easily see that there is something going on that 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 officially 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. the euro struggle for survival got that much more difficult this week after a major credit rating agencies sliced the credit scores of nine nations the downgrades handed out by standard and poor's come amid growing concern that the euro zone's failed to rein in its runaway finances and debt france and austria were especially hard hit losing their procedures aaa says that this is a safe haven for investors so the reaction from e.u. leaders were varied with some calling the move i'm justified by others accepted the decision and called for her to accept economists across the board now waiting for monday when kabul markets opened to gauge how much damage has been done done markland from the institute for democracy and cooperation in paris believes the

euro project has reached its end. downgrading of france but not of germany obviously means that the franco german axis is no longer tenable proposition what we see in the euro is are those that there's only one country calling the shots not two and that's germany there's no doubt that it will strike a terrible blow for sarkozy is only real chance of winning the election was to show himself as a safe pair of hands as the devil you know in a crisis now it's clear that france has both a crisis and the devil 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 we will see just

a this announcement that downgrading of france or as having been one of the decisive moments. and investment analyst patrick young says he believes the rating cards are 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 cents 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 still ahead tainted by torture now ten years old a report on the last reduces then being held in guantanamo bay despite barack obama's election sanded down and repeated calls from protesters him with his words . millions of people went out to vote today in kazakhstan walking to polling booths to decide on a new parliament elections come a little less than a month after all workers staging a prolonged strike over poor pay clashed fatally with security forces their actions were said to take place in august by the president dissolved parliament last november and ordered an immediate vote the move was welcomed by the opposition and is expected to break the country's single party system as a kind of boycott reports violent unrest is a priority in kazakhstan having learned learned disturbing lessons from the arab

spring. it wasn't for the snow and the freezing temperatures stance capital of aston that 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 our oil and gas and it is that x. for that allow this country the luxury of building its new capital from scratch in fact kazakstan is now producing about as much oil as leave beer was churning out prior to its civil war and the similarities don't and here both kazakstan and libya have predominantly muslim populations both were considered still words of calm in their turbulent neighborhoods and both have experienced decades of rule by just one man in terms of style that's fast no schildt on the survivor 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 but there are those who envy our well being the countries who are revolutions took place have gone back ten to fifteen years economically speaking the town of john the sand is rightfully called catholic stands all capital but it's no match for glistening asked donna 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. in the wake of the arab spring

but it was because i stand as a semblance of a. democracy with several parties in parliament and some a position in media but the essence of the regime is similar to those of the arab countries that's why the first thing the authorities did when their pricing began was to switch off the mobo networks and the internet connection before the people even demanded it out loud because of the riches decided to offer political reforms the people in there are 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 wishes have approved millions of dollars worth of programs to give their rest a cd a facelift and create new jobs but you need to use. the president's close

associates appointed to oversee the turbulent region in a few years and 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 like all rulers and those that are by would much rather learn from the mistakes of others especially if they come at a price paid by gadhafi on a boycott artsy kazakstan. the world was shocked those three by an online video that showed american marines urinating on dead bodies of taliban fighters the u.s. military says identified the soldiers in the clip and appointed a three star general to investigate but regional 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 offered. transforming this country into a more humane country into a democracy and we're seeing it happening right now with the appearance of this kind of a video is 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 this 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 is really in danger is their life. many now fear that this video will encourage more young muslims to join radical terrorist groups like the taliban or al qaida take the libretto and afghan 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 the burning of the koran that happened with. terry jones as then there was the abu ghraib 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 and across the jihad web channels and they end up reading anti-american sentiment this is the hugest recruitment for al qaida that we can do it's on fathomable 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 abu ghraib happen twice now in afghanistan. well not everyone in america is outraged by what

the marines were filmed doing and you can find out on our web site part two dot com c.n.n. contributor praises the troops actions as a cool thing she would do the same in their position also online. violent clashes in romania watch out footage as frustrated in iraq overall sturdy cob and low standard of living. this week the anniversary of the world's most controversial prison at guantanamo bay was marked by public protests on both sides of the atlantic demonstrators called on president obama to honor his election pledge and shut down the jail for starters laura smith reports many cite a new law that allows america to detain anyone it deems hostile as proof that obama's promises were empty once. one pro bono one. abdel moneim am absolutely today's 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 they actually thought oh the americans my goodness it will save me from the torture that had months of torture by them but no he was transported to time and

there 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 here in london which includes one son he's never even see and fall for moving closer to being freed shuckers 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 one tunnel that i'm very sorry indeed president obama for reasons. like a preschool will or he would say complete inability to deliver this nor. lived up to that promise. is now bracing to book american citizens to try it 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 lists not knowing whether he can expect to be released. now for a brief look at some other stories making headlines around the world a bomb blast has killed at least thirteen people and wounded twenty in eastern pakistan the explosions happened in the midst of a religious procession in which hundreds of shiites were marking the end of the a period of mourning just believe a bomb was planted ahead of a gathering and time for maximum impact after the blast mourners began throwing rocks at police who in turn deployed tear gas to control the crowds. three

survivors have been rescued from the stricken cruise ship costa concordia which ran aground off italy's coast out of over four thousand people onboard three have been confirmed dead and seventeen are still unaccounted for the vessel capsized late on friday near the island of giglio police have detained the captain who was seen drinking in the bar when the incident happened you may be fake he may face charges for manslaughter and abandoning the ship leaving passengers in danger. but ukraine enters the home straight for the euro twenty twelve football championships but the joy of hosting one of the world's most prestigious tournament is overshadowed by fears it could backfire on the people are just alexei yourselves he explains. the incredible adventures of food bullheads from extreme accommodation to driving through impassable roads this is the scenario some believe awaits fans who will flock to ukraine for the euro twenty twelve tournament kiev

based journalists organized this photo exhibition trying to voice a rather pessimistic message about the upcoming football coach. we're being told by the government that everything has been built by the fans will face those problems the twee ordinary craniums face every day very poor stray better issues bribery by the police and terrible medical facilities i'm afraid it could be a major failure. at first glance such concerns may seem laughable even in the darkest times of financial troubles the euro twenty twelve projects remained top priority when almost all construction projects were halted roads airports and stadiums never stopped being built after a string of stadium opening ceremonies in ukraine you wait for chiefs are now completely sure the country is ready to host the tournament but this is just one

example of what really worries some in ukraine this broken road is only several hundred meters away from a vital highway and there is a slim chance it would ever be repaired before or after the tournament kicks off experts believe ukraine simply has no money for that and the euro twenty twelve will not change the situation. ukraine is spent fourteen billion dollars on euro twenty twelve projects but we predicted to earn only half a billion from the tournament twenty eight times less everyone knew that it's a typical situation especially faced in europe the question is if we could afford such spending in hard times like this. tournament organizers brush all this criticism aside saying. regardless of how much money your twenty twelve brings the country is building a bright future for itself for the first time in twenty years history people get new airports new roads new terminals everything is new we believe that people who

is in ukraine they will come again there was of ukraine so this is our main goal especially you are twenty twelve clock was installed in central kiev to count down the minutes to june skew cough and despite some skepticism the majority of ukrainians are relieved to see it ticking in their capital city north and you are else with all the airports and stadiums springing up it's hard to believe now that almost a year ago the tournament could have moved to another country by you a four as ukraine was not doing good enough now there is no doubt whatsoever it will be held here but one question still remains whether it would become an opportunity of a lifetime or a luxury this economically his country could not have afforded a look see reporting from kiev in ukraine. that wraps up our weekly program this hour we have much more lined up for you next hour here on r.t. including recognition from over eighty un members and making serbia step down still

wasn't enough because of our radicals headed for the border to walk serbian good but stumble on aren't fully. and we work out how washington's latin american bogeyman has warmed up heart and homes up half a million people in the u.s. find out why next hour here on our team. but before that ok we'll bring you the latest sports including heated tempers in the tennis world she'll be here in less than twenty minutes and i'll have a recap of the headlines after this short break. this

is our time to reclaim the american dream and reaffirm that fundamental truth that out of many we all want that wall we breathe 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 afraid. i might like. to. 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 forty four bridge that.

we are counting. properly counting and i think it's spread by it's cutting our heart. it's making real democracy. all but impossible. live from moscow here's a look at the weekly stories we're covering this sunday and there is no let up in the iran u.s. dispute over nukes and sanctions following the assassination of a top atomic researcher in tehran claims on america and israel. a growing line of intervention supporters the emir of qatar is the first arab leader to openly call for foreign military action in syria former ally turkey keeps its forces on standby.