lowing welcome to cross talk i'm peter lavelle libya intervention like in the specter of civil war libya's transition away from the khadafi regime is proving far more problematic than nato planners had ever anticipated central civilian control is an illusion and tribal loyalty is strong it would appear it is a lot easier to take down a regime than to establish a new order. to cross not libya i'm joined by dr venter while in hanover he is an associate professor of government at dartmouth college in paris we cross to the end of jonestown she is an independent political commentator and author of fool's crusade yugoslavia nato and western delusions and in london we have nick mayo he is a foreign correspondent for the sunday telegraph all right folks this is crossfire that means you can jump in anytime you want and i very much encourage it and i'd

like to first go to diana diana is the the intervention that we saw nato undergo was it an intervention without responsibility because libya is a mess and it's getting messier all the time and particularly in light of the last few hours a day or so of torture charges and the n.p.c. is proving to be very very inept. well that was perfectly foreseeable but when you when you go in and change a regime by bombing you know you clearly are causing chaos. and they didn't seem to care that they were going to be causing chaos because they didn't like gadhafi and they seized an opportunity to get rid of a leader that they didn't like figuring perhaps wrongly that anything would be more favorable since any new leaders would be grateful to them for

coming to power but that definitely remains to be seen ok nic if i go to you. i'm going to do a play on words here i mean a lot of people see there was an illegitimate use of force with the u.n. resolution one nine hundred seventy three to overthrow gadhafi and because of that it would make use of force we see illegitimate use of force also now after the fact in libya because there is no legitimate use of force by any central government. well there is real chaos on the ground in libya at the moment it's a problem with militias as you say have been a large numbers of people detained last numbers of people tortured. we think and there's there are many problems with the m.t.c. it's a very weak ministration it doesn't really have that much legitimacy there's been no proper elections yet but i think you have to remember that most libyans expected that they realized that there would be

a certain amount of chaos after the fall of gadhafi this was a dictator who was in power for four decades. and of course there are lots of pent up resentments there a lot sort of conflicts between tribes and groups and cities in libya and there is no government at the moment to sort these problems i'll make i can stay with them you have to get into into lincoln so it takes a. little it's not civil war yet but i think you're going anywhere near but don't you think it's very problematic that you have western countries recognizing the n.p.c. saying this is a legitimate government of libya when the libyans themselves in have a chance to say that did anybody even ask. well i was in benghazi shortly after the revolution broke out and people were absolutely begging for nato to intervene before just before where there were also strikes because of the dog i had jump into and that's the point of the program go ahead there i

mean there are ways that you were in benghazi everybody knows that benghazi is precisely where the opposition was at at what months after that you had huge demonstrations in tripoli in favor of retaining the regime or at least against the nato bombing so you can see the people there were some people that you saw that wanted this and there were others who didn't and the point is that an age old to choose to go with with the ones that they knew that they were arming by the way as we find out later and the day and. courage to revolt knowing that they could get western support ok dirk want you got your letter very very difficult to find anyone in tripoli possibly anywhere anywhere in libya and they're all true to agree with you on that of course there were large demonstrations in favor of gadhafi there were people who were being paid and. i was in a little i was in tripoli in august and for so he knows that. if you really want

to shoot a very very popular area it's going to try to come do revolution my folks come on folks is going to. hand over to show me your beer you can call anything you can get a bunch of thugs to where i want to say listen to this is very very simple you know you i am here i remember intervention you have resolution and nine hundred seventy three that has been accepted by the internet you are not you know a date which the united nations because there is a loser this is americana some very careful consideration to what would need to have in libya and frankly deliberations at that particular point in time remember when the libyans are about to be slaughtered in benghazi libya and were actually asking for intervention now you could argue as if the americans are already there arguing don't we there killed the nato intervention and the really went to beyond what nine hundred seventy three allowed but nevertheless you have a government in place that is as was mentioned not elected which is

a problem there certainly is an enormous amount of chaos and that chaos may probably deepen over the next few weeks in the next few months but overall i think the alternative that particular as you were looking at libya and september and october and so there really was no alternative and so yes you can argue that the international community went too far that the responsibility to protect wasn't really implemented very carefully but i think in light of the. difficulties that the country faced to the west and the libyans themselves faced enormous difficulties and that in the end i think everybody agreed that the regime change was almost an inevitability well it's well into it once you say they want to once you say that when you say there's no fly zone and we see this going on now with syria he must go then it is an editable because in the west doesn't back down and it uses force here if i can go to you the problem here we have here right now in

building a democratic state in libya and i think everyone most everyone wants that there's no state institutions should be building state institutions first before you start doing that are you putting the horse before the cart. well there's a terrific problem in the world how do how do you how do you feel the government in a in a country that's really never had any experience of democracy and i have to say i was very impressed in my time on the ground in libya with the people i met i met a lot of libyans was all different social backgrounds who want democracy they believe they can build some kind of democracy it will be a libyan democracy an arab democracy it will probably be quite different to the kind of democracies we have in the in the west but most people don't think it will be easy there are a big economic problems to deal with this this terrific militia problem there are lots of young men with weapons with no jobs for them to go to that and i think

a lot of the libyans i know are quite disappointed with the record of the m.t.c. so far they would like to see the government. has more control and certainly has more control over the over over the militias and i think this is becoming a problem for libya at the moment elections you bring up a very good a few make you proud and you really have a very good point that you. very much hold that we haven't heard from the much from the i can do you know the lead going to jerk because he has a tennis match your go ahead. i mean you know the debate the basic issue is that this is a country that for forty two years under gadhafi has seen a very systematic destruction of all the kind of modern institutions that you need to really make a modern state work and so in a sense the libyans are asked to really start with us i would absolutely nothing and one of the problems is that in a sense first of all there is the issue that the t n c is not truly

a legitimate entity within libya but the other problem is that it is a matter of timing and that is there are an enormous amount of demands being made for order for economic handouts for all the. things that the modern state does and there are indeed there are not the institutions there in a sense the t.c.'s as an old modern state building experiments they're running against time and they're going to lose a lot of battles you can only hope that in the long run and particularly with the help of the united nations and so on that these institutions get created that the central government the successor to the t.n.c. is able to get what is called a wallop only of violence that it can control the territory and that eventually these institutions will be created bit by bit it's a long process the libyans were very aware of this the kind of talks of that took place at the united nations last summer for three months where

the united nations was thinking very systematically about what libya needed indicated that there would be major problems and i think we're seeing that also doesn't mean that it necessarily has to end in k.l. it certainly means that the process could be prolonged and really messy go ahead diana go ahead and i think a lot of these things could have been foreseen when the bombs and i are willing to go back. may i have please go back to the first of all the statement that there was no alternative at the very beginning when there were the first people heard which turned out to be propaganda and iranians about. bombing his own people that has been pretty well this proved since then now at the very beginning there was an opportunity and there were offers from latin america from africa to mediate to find some kind of compromise to find some evolution now the fact is that colonel gadhafi was mortal like every human being his regime has lasted

probably too long but was not going to last forever because. if we die all of this and perhaps there was a way to. go for evolution and evolution toward changes that would be more democratic and so on but news coming from the outside here i don't know if you know this is you create result of me and many with me is just downright mean to me right now how you are very close and after a short break we'll continue our discussion on libya state with r.t. . and.

he. says. he's. welcome back defrost on your lapel to remind you we're talking about what's going

on in libya today. and you can see. ok right before we go to the break and all the mayhem you want to say something so go right ahead. well i just want to take issue with what was just said about there being alternative store they actually have yes there are countries that try to start a diplomatic process you may remember that president zuma of south africa went to libya a couple of times the african union tried to intervene but remember that very systematically from the beginning gadhafi refused to negotiate the refused to consider any kind of alternative to the invasion that actually did eventually happen it was said in his defense that his son safer as lamb also try to intervene and that say for the islam could function as an intermediary but you may remember that very famous interview

that's a full islam gave two days after the uprising started that he himself was threatening to shoot everyone literally like rats in a barrel as he put it was dancing on top of an s.u.v. . in his hand there really were no alternatives anybody who makes you believe that gadhafi was willing to negotiate at that point simply does not know what the diplomatic process looked like that summer last year ok if i could change gears a little bit here next. week when you want to he was or he wasn't it's their country it's not ours and you're talking as if we have a person trying to sit here and decide what other countries should do i disagree basically with that i don't think it's up to us to desired result to be trying to remember this is resolution. of the united nations this is the united nations resolution and it was a donkey rule and it was the international community i had the right to protect your not only logan looking out for that rather than telling the whole world what to do you just have this same old imperialist mentality that you have the right and

the power because you have the power to tell other countries what to do and i basically disagree with that ok do you do you think the right to protect doctrine is dead now or is it is severely undermined because of what hap. in libya or strengthened the other way. well i think libya was an unusual case it's hard to see how a right to protect can be applied to somewhere like syria for example you really read my mind you read my mind exactly ok. but i think i think its use in libya was was very successful this wasn't regime change it was a revolution and. what whatever they were doing with the new and original starbound recognition neatly with no injuries each agency and when it did witness been regime change and also if there had a little nato bombs in there would not have been

a regime change without nato bombs obviously well i think you're probably right emotionally and your experience you know and it was very clear from what was said beside what was said selfishly it was very clear that the countries involved including the united states welcomed regime change if you look at the interviews that president obama secretary clinton and so on secretary gates at the time gave it was very clear from the beginning that in a sense the coalition would not simply abide by nine hundred seventy three d. implications of one thousand nine hundred seventy three but that the regime change was very much part and parcel of this if i can collect of durga i could say with you wasn't that an abuse of the resolution resolution one hundred seventy three. well i think there are many people that argue that indeed what the coalition then they went far beyond demanded that nine hundred seventy three allowed for them and therefore i think your question about whether the responsibility to protect still

can still work is indeed a very good one libya indeed was a very unique case and part because of the language that was used by the regime and so on and so it becomes much more difficult remember in libya. the arab league on board very early on you had the fact that the russia and china were willing to abstain or rather than veto nine hundred seventy three i think that becomes much more difficult in a case like syria where particularly russia has a more direct interest it doesn't make it impossible i think but the diplomatic process to get to the kind of nine hundred seventy three type of resolution that we've seen on libya will prove to be much more difficult in syria and perhaps in the end to may not happen ok diana fine go to you can you tell me who the hell is the n.p.c. who are these people after all these months it's still very opaque who are they.

well you know do we we know that these are people who are who who were privileged and under the old regime and who decided they could be more privileged under a western style regime i think you know this thing about wanting democracy when when it seems that i enter here because there's just no new leader only us where even finished i haven't said anything and you're interrupting me. i am saying there you have you said. which are simply are not true what my problem is that my problem with the m.d.c. is that a lot of the right everybody there that there are exiles that have come back and some of my actually lived in the suburbs of langley and that's my issue ok my issue is that these are western sarah gets and i saw this as a matter of fact one of the issues in libya's right now that when you talk to libyans they refer to the t.n.c. the transitional council as a government of foreigners and so i think you put your finger right on the mark

these are not cronies of gadhafi as a matter of fact most of those people have been arranged out the t.n.c. has brought in and i'm not even as you were going through the years and although neither of them were exiles and saw in a sense that this part of the problem and why they're not legitimate is because they really have no standing. the country at this point to make you want to jump in they're going to have to remember with the end to see that many of these are brave people who were a great risk from their fear when they joined the revolution of the last of all of being. about to die anyway you want to realize why they had a good escape i said i mean these are people that had western backing. though now are we live you went to see them took them to paris they were not risking very much they were sitting in benghazi under western protection whatever happened to the rest of this is they were already taken care of make this is a this is a ridiculous see this is a very very low dear fellow little guys who was there was sort of was support were

put in power by the west and if you had been in benghazi and seen because of it in february march there was a spontaneous revolution and the people who stepped forward to join here and to see were completely disorganized there was no western backing for them at the beginning because western backing later when he was under under attack actually from good from curfews time they this was so this was a revolution it wasn't a regime change the writ of revolution came first and then the western backing came well is that over there and it was a rebellion in our it was a rebellion that was very quickly and armed rebellion and it is quite normal for governments wherever they are to repress an armed rebellion i'm sure that would happen in the u.k. as it is the only i did say so anywhere else and we cannot go around the. loop of the world supporting every single uprising in every single country no we

just chose it because they don't like gadhafi and i thought this was an easy one this would there was no real armed forces as mr vandeleur have pointed out there was no real army it was a looked like very a very. easy war to win and it was pretty easy although it took longer than they wanted and then afterwards there's chaos but as far as getting rid of gadhafi it looked so easy it was tempting and that's why i. don't you know they're going to point out there's a lot of oil there as well but i could change gears really change gears here there's a lot of well there's a lot of money there's a lot of wear out there to go to you first let's look a lot of resources and listen how do let me change gears we're running out of time to help a africa become and i want to change gears here and i want to go to dirk first i mean i want to look at interventions here and i'm going to include afghanistan and iraq ok and when we have regime change do you think that countries where there's

a western intervention like we have with libya we have with iraq and we have with afghanistan and then compare it to like where there wasn't and there is a regime change when you look at tunisia and egypt don't you think it's indigenous change of power there's a better chance for democracy like we have in egypt like we have in tunisia because western interventions military interventions slow it down or curb it or warp it and that's what we're seeing right now do you think that's fair. no i think that's a fair point to make i think if you have western intervention it creates inevitably and i think we will see this in libya sooner rather than later also it creates some kind of resentment and so if you can have a kind of if you want to an indigenous movement against those in power in the end i think it's tells spells greater success but we should qualify that also if we look for example at egypt where you know the rebellion was indigenous was really local

as a matter of fact we've not seen a great amount of change and egypt and it looks as if egypt in the end to may look very much the way you did before the rebellion started a year ago so i think in principle it's right and i think certainly in libya this will turn out to have said this all along to be much more of a nationalist uprising than anything else and so eventually i think. it will come to some extent haunt the west but i think you're absolutely right local is better but we haven't we should remember also a local was possible in the case of egypt and tunisia very you had a national army that could serve as a buffer between the regime and the people the point was that in libya you had no national army you had militias that stood you know i had to be has did that were there at the behest of the gadhafi government when in libya the uprising started you truly had an implosion and what really was revealed was what we haven't seen in every other country so far that there's a total vacuum of power

a total vacuum of institutions that the other speakers have really talked about and that makes it much much more difficult whether that is with western intervention or without western intervention to create a modern state in libya ok ok nic i'm going to you the last word you have thirty i know that is i know you want to make please let me go to nic nic is it getting messier in libya. well yes i think it is going to be messy i think there's going to be several years of turmoil there may be some bloodshed there may be fighting between militias but i don't think it will become a civil war and you have to remember we're talking about western intervention this is a very limited western intervention how many western troops are there in libya at the moment. ok gentlemen and lady look like you all look like your own separate militias on this program many thanks to my guest today in hanover paris and in london and thanks to our viewers for watching us here are to see you next time and remember prosperous. and.

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march in poland as a government websites are down by congress opposed to warsaw signing up to an international piracy agreement the pact was negotiated in secret and covers a broad swathe of copyright material from the sort of full. time around considers cutting into oil supply to europe just before the european union sanctions come into full force in july the move comes in an attempt to head off the trade ban imposed earlier by some european nations to curb tucker on the nuclear program. in syria arab league observers resume work after

a week's break and are already set to take their findings to the u.n. security council however any prospect of foreign intervention or sanctions has been imposed by russia as his government troops launch an all out offensive on approach has been a damascus suburb. coming up we head to washington and look at republican candidate newt gingrich and his links to a former president the big picture with tom hartman is next.