fall into the ocean two months after its launch we're getting conflicting reports on whether though it's the pacific all the atlantic. while copious eleven pm here in moscow this sunday night you're watching the weekly it's our roundup of the top stories from the last seven days with me kevin and first the crisis in relations between iran and the west picked again fueled by wednesday's assassination of a top nuclear scientist into iran 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 the persian gulf where rather earlier threaten to block a crucial oil lane made a pending all embargo aimed at forcing to rant to abandon its atomic ambitions. the cold run of tension between iran and the west is simmering. it 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 were 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 the 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. gee 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 threaten to block the strait of hormuz a vital oil artery through which a sixth 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 thing that 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 that after 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 i 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 coming up just a bit later this hour the cookbook of politics in kazakhstan takes not the elections for the common people in season with a few fulfilled promises nose and seems to be the elusive recipe for peace that kazakhstan is serving up in the region. that elsewhere is simmering with unrest.

also u.s. military optimism for progress is crushed by a league cia report painting a group picture of what's actually going on in the country suggest ignitors decade long occupation has it's still me. next though syria's president bashar al 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 assad's been growing this week the ruler of carter suggested a military intervention should in the arm rest in syria. become the first arab leader indeed to openly indorse military action. self is an ally of the united states and a strong advocate of regime change in damascus syria mideast research and syracuse university says this exposes the double standards of the oh.

this is just really unbelievable to hear this especially considering that today qatar amir is actually in sri lanka another country whose government violently oppress its people and there was no word not a peep from the international media from the international politicians and nor from the security council and so this is really problematic that sri lanka can get away with this kind of violence but you know when it comes to a country that is against western interests there is a different standard and of course we have to remember that the tires sent forces to rain to help you know well a demonstration they brutally repressed democratic protesters in bahrain you know with the invitation from the. royal autocratic government there so this call for you know interference or intervention in syria really is. ridiculous when one looks

at the undemocratic past and present of these gulf countries and how and why they believe that they can use force to you know interfere in a country that's going you know suffering from a civil war really and from the violence from its own citizens well you know who is who are the arab troops going to shoot at if they enter syria syria's longtime ally turkey is among the increasingly vocal chorus calling for president assad to step in it's lending its support to the armed opposition and keeping its own troops at the ready near the border bizarre to where from reports next anchor it might not be getting an accurate picture of what's really happening in syria. with the bloody status quo i mean the syrian crisis mind of prime months it is a growing violence may start spreading beyond the country's borders especially with its close neighboring turkey wants to close friends too but now a harsh critic of damascus. serious first priority should be to listen to its

people and their demands not to denounce others sort of massacring its people you should listen to them. so glitter glue is a harsh critic himself but he said his criticizing the turkish government because 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 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 their own vision of players like turkey increases dramatically but fruit 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 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 photographs or the videos coming from these governorates you can easily see that there is

something going on but the sources of these redos 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 while fish really and currencies it wants peace and stability in the region its troops are already just kilometers from the border with syria. r.t. turkey and a bit later on tonight we hear from the author of what we describe as a blueprint for nonviolent revolution. gene sharp explains whether his peaceful revolution concept is a match for the arab spring reality more from him later or so now it's time to look

at how washington the slatted american bogeyman has won the hearts and homes of half a million people in the u.s. . the euro struggle for survival got that much more difficult this last week after a major credit rating agency slashed the credit scores of nine nations the downgrades handed out by standard and poor's come amid growing concern that the eurozone failed to raid in its runaway finances debt france and austria were especially hard hit losing their prestigious aaa status that made them a safe haven for investors and the reaction from e.u. leaders was varied with some calling the move on justified while others accepted the decision and called for urgent action economists across thing you are now waiting for monday when the markets are open again to gauge how much damage is being done laughlin from the institute for democracy and cooperation in paris told me he believes the euro project reached its end the 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 zone is that 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 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 that they 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 that we will see just a this announcement downgrading of france and as having been one of the decisive moments investment patrick young says he believes the rating cuts were well overdue

. it's been deserved frankly for several years i mean the french government has been aker nominally incontinent for the course of several decades they've lived in never never land 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 to so he just as culpable as everybody else in this issue of the future of the euro everything is not up for grabs again it emotionally di stabilisers every single aspect of the euro because we still have no leadership in the eurozone 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 i'm not a terrible thing for all our viewers throughout the world. on their way back to our

breaking news this hour the debris of russia's failed martian space probe has fallen back to earth within the last hour but the specific location remains unclear paper all of those are correspond across this story page the details are still coming in i mean pacific atlantic who we're listening to what more do you know here right now what happened was the initial statement was made by the russian ministry the russian defense minister pardon saying that crush this debris that got through the atmosphere came down around twelve hundred fifty kilometers off the coast of chile in the pacific now we then heard a statement quoting somebody believed to be from cosmo saying that it come down in the atlantic now conflicting reports indeed two different ocean separated by the whole of the south american continent what are we seeing at the moment well it seems almost certain that it did come down in the pacific we've heard from astronomers in brazil who have said well they saw no falling debris in their equipment we're also hearing further statements quoting other sources inside ross cosmos saying that yes it is the pacific so it looks like the. couldn't around two

hundred kilograms of material that didn't burn up in the atmosphere has come down in the waters of the pacific ocean good news though paid to be no reports of any injuries to anyone or anything we think it all went out into the sea that way ok a little bit of good news all on the back of the bad news because so many hopes from so many people involved in this project were were penned on this it just didn't go to plan did it what was the original plan for this very expensive mission of variance pencey expensive indeed one hundred seventy million dollars it cost to build focus grown twelve it's been a real soap opera tale of grunt it was a highly ambitious mission the most ambitious mission undertaken by the russian space agency in at least the last twenty years they were going to take this module this probe and fly it to the moon the martian moon phobos take soil samples and

bring them back to earth for analysis so that we could potentially look at setting up some kind of colony on. us that was the long term aim well its name raises a few eyebrows why focus grant i explained it's going to the surface of the moon a phobia is just the russian word for soil which the samples that was going to be picking up however it all went wrong pretty much from the off launched on the ninth of november well pretty much got into orbit and stayed there the there was belief that the navigation system had had a problem with it when these probes are launched they initially navigate using the sun and then have to switch to the stars to make it off into a mission to their to their well turn tended mission it was unable to do that once weeks days of trying to get in contact with it from the ground they have all failed and focused current coming down on sunday evening into we're hearing the pacific ocean ok well we'll be following the story of course is going to the final final final confirmation on that over the coming hours but for now over

a correspondent crossed this story thank you. next insurgent radio communications intercepted by pakistani armed forces have indicated that the leader of the country's taliban. has been killed in a u.s. drone strike the official taliban spokesman the country denied the report american drone strikes resumed wednesday having been suspended after a u.s. attack decimated a pakistani army base last november the instant sparked international outcry and caused pakistan to freeze nato supply routes through its territory and shut down an american base there this level but also promised to shoot down any drones on its territory but defense analyst told us that the supply is struck in pakistan tell a different story of america's intentions in the region. there's a complete political chaos in the slammer by the government is corrupt it is the americans that imposed this regime to achieve the objective of softening up pakistan for the doctrine of aft back but what is actually happening is that

pakistan army has started to regroup reorganize and this government is now on the verge of collapse which is also collapsing the u.s. strategic games in that region basically what the americans are trying to do is they're part of the responsibility of their fears and of what imus found upon pakistan and this is also corroborated from the fact that the nato supplies that pakistan has blocked today in pakistan then the military hardware which is then invision level hardware almost nine armored infantry divisions and their support equipment supplies weapons and ammunition but are stuck in pakistan and the concern in pakistan army is that if the americans are talking of the drawing from of i understand they're talking about peace deals of a taliban then why would the americans need a bronze and one in one main battle tanks and almost nine armored infantry divisions in afghanistan to fight an insurgency where they are blocking off these deals the cia report leaked this week says the u.s.

military operation in afghanistan is doomed to failure it directly contradicts recent optimism expressed by the department defense us troops are said to leave the central asian country in twenty fourteen but it american think peace in afghanistan believes the actual pull out will take far longer. it has been ten years that has not unified the country i said should have been it looks like there is no chance for the americans to see here government standing on its feet however this could fall on americans be honest on for quite a number of years i would say in the years are unknown at this time but it looks like it's going to be a long time because there's a corrupt government cannot function in the way that it is right now the fact is that there is a friction in the white house right now that some more say no basically the pentagon going military is the one calling up that same day no we should not really

rush in fast as we can polling booths across the start of no closed millions of people cast their votes to choose the country's new parliament of those votes being counted the elections cover little less than a month after oil workers staging a prolonged to strike over poor pay were locked in fatal clashes with security forces the elections were set to take place in august but the president dissolved parliament last november in order that made the ad vote poll so far show the ruling party has amassed some eighty one percent of the vote with its closest competitor coming in at seven percent that party will now become the second political group to enter parliament six on a boy who reports preempting violent unrest is a priority and having learned disturbing lessons from the arab spring. it wasn't for the snow and the freezing temperatures as it stands capital of astronaut could easily be mistaken for one of the gleaming cities of the gulf and really is just two decades ago it is now an oasis in the desert but its architecture having

a distinct arabic flavor like many arab countries kazakhstan's primary sources of income gas and it is that x. ray that allowed this country the luxury of building its new capital 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 don't 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's fast notional time there is a bias 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 our well being the countries who are revolutions took place have gone by ten to fifteen years economically speaking the town of john knows and is rightfully called catholics tons of oil capital but it's no match for glistening asked despite producing much of the country's hydrocarbons 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 injuries as the protests spread to other cities. in the wake of the arab spring but it was because extern has a semblance of democracy with several parties in parliament and some of 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 chasm the riches decided to offer 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 that they were just have approved millions of dollars worth of programs to give the 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 and will make some cities in the gulf pale in comparison. 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 and is that a buyer would much rather learn from the mistakes of others especially if they come at a price paid by gadhafi it's not a boycott artsy kazakstan. this week three anniversary of the world's most controversial prison tons of a bay was marred by public protests on both sides of the atlantic demonstrators called on us president obama tomorrow is election pledge and shut down the jail but critics see little change that happening because of the recently signed national defense authorization act alone in america to detain anyone it deems hostile thomas holders a lawyer for several detainees in guantanamo he believes that it's politics that have held about closing the infamous jail as promised. this is a political problem in a democracy when certain people are playing with fear the republican party is basically playing on fear to influence their constituents in the face of that fear

of the obama administration hasn't had the courage to oppose it or the courage to get the job done other things like the economy have seen more important it's a shame it's a challenge in a democracy and we need to continue. to fight to have this cause it's a stain on the reputation the united states is a horrible place over under forty people been arrested after members of kosovo's radical self-determination movement clashed with police five kilometers from a border crossing with the activists wearing to the frontier to block good shipment from serbia but was stopped and pepper sprayed by police disputes between kosovo and serbia of course tensions in the region for over a decade now belgrade's made a series of concessions to kosovo because of its ambitions to join the e.u. result of no reports they come of the expense of ethnic serbs living in the self-proclaimed state. it's a checkpoint in northern kosovo may not look like an obvious triumph of peace but

here is the same spot just two weeks ago since the summer e.u. backed kosovo albanians have tried to take control of the border between serbia and kosovo the serb minority erected barricades in response they don't recognize course of independence saying that the albanian dominated province is still part of serbia now both sides of fire new agreed that the border will be jointly policed. anyone can freely pass through this checkpoint when you're trumpeting this as a happy resolution that a standoff and while life here has become easier a lot of serbs are saying that once again they have given up too much for the compromise and have received no rush owen says about their long term future belgrade try to talk serbs in kosovo down from the barricades so it was to join the e.u. which made a peaceful solution to the border issue a precondition but despite progress on the border belgrade application for

candidate status has been stalled in the latest round of talks with brussels some countries which did recognize and they feel that serbia is a weak just before they are getting the kind of a status that's why they are squeezing serbia exacta trying to achieve something more than then usually asking the candidates. just meters from the east soldiers in the past serbian militia many here have been engaged in conflict through the albanians since nine hundred ninety nine when an ethnic war divided their territory into they have been coming to this roadblock since july and say they will carry on despite a border deal and only supposed why should we be happy to e.u. soldiers give us permission to use this road we never used to need permission to use it all we do not trust the e.u. or albanians wanted it when a relative's and friends have been injured in this conflict for the past twelve years. those who gain the most from the border compromise are ordinary serbs blocked roads prevented many children from coming to school and their parents from

buying even basic foodstuffs but normality is some distance away. so. there are constant warning sirens during the lessons these children are not growing up normally their lives are defined by the conflict and this is true not just for children but for all serbs have been living in kosovo for twelve years while opening the roads is a step forward the serb status in. independent kosovo they do not consider their own and that does not appear to want them remains as uncertain as ever you go girl i'd never see course of a. quick look ahead of what's to come for the rest this hour we continue to report on journalists caught in the crossfire during the war in iraq a scenario about five minutes now right after a recap of our top stories we're watching r.t. from moscow.

luu.

looking at the source of the past seven days in our china lot these are the headlines there's no let up in the iran u.s. dispute over nukes and sanctions forward an assassination of a top atomic research shouldn't around the food place but blamed rather on america and israel also headlining for us a growing line of intervention supporters there made of qatar now the first arab leader to openly call for foreign military action in syria both former ally turkey keeps its forces on standby along the border. turning up the heat wave of credit.