indiscriminate killings there are extra judicial killings there's summary execution of the code or gadhafi. members of those found early executed nobody can prove to do justice or the huge your motives are being taught in the by europeans by the americans of. this place is this they get too into. all civil war. that is one of the walls under the the rule of gadhafi. and we've been asking our viewers what the revolt has meant for libya on our web site r.t. dot com at the moment almost fifty percent believe it's been turned into an oil coul of the west a third think it has ruined a country that's already been torn by civil war six believe libya is now a hotbed for islamic strata goals and only five percent actually view it as a country on the path to democracy let us know what you think by voting at r.t.

dot com. top police are searching for two more suspects in a failed terror plot they say targeted israeli diplomats in bangkok three iranians have already been detained over tuesday's explosions in the time capital which is under international pressure over its nuclear program denies involvement the israeli pm however has called around the greatest exporter of terrorism in the world but as the reports from tel aviv many israelis aren't convinced. like the battle drones are growing louder and louder with israel continuing to this really harsh rhetoric towards iran accusing them essentially of terrorizing the entire world community there was a harsh statement which called to impose paralyzing sanctions on tehran all this while iran made it clear that they are indeed ready to sit down for talks to continue talks on its nuclear program but the prime minister of israel has made a statement saying that

a reigning aggression should be stopped course that brings forth many theories that the military confrontation with iran is imminent and nowhere are these fears more prominent than in israel according to the latest polls less than fifty percent of the israelis support the idea of going to war with iran most of them believe that israel has a no problems of its own and that you don't really need a confrontation with iran there is of course the issue of palestine which never really completely goes off the table then there is the rather strained relations with lebanon which some fear may escalate into a renewed conflict and the latest of those concerns of course is the issue of egypt where the muslim brotherhood said they might reconsider a peace accord which they do have with israel in response to u.s. pressure in regards really enjoyed scandal so a lot of people in israel primarily are thinking that perhaps israel should stop the rhetoric it does carry on right now and focus on its internal problems and the

problems on their borders rather than really push forth with aggressive rhetoric towards iran. russian special forces have killed seven suspected militants in a counter terror operation in russia's north caucasus chechen leader or amazon as the leader of the gang was responsible for a number of attacks in the region the anti-terrorism operation on the border of chechnya and dagestan has been underway since monday officials say some thirty gunmen have been hiding in the area helicopters and artillery how been deployed to hunt them down reporters reports say that up to thirteen police officers have been killed in the ongoing operation some moral news in brief for you this hour a suicide bomb targeting worshipers killed twenty six people and wounded dozens in northwestern pakistan the blast went off outside the mosque in a busy market in the town of close to the afghan border thousands of pakistani civilians have done in bombings over the last five years most of them carried out

by sunni islamist militants. german president christian wolf house resigned the opposition demanded he step down over accusations he accepted a list of favors while serving as governor of lower saxony including a private home loan from a friend's wife on thursday prosecutors called for his immunity to be lifted chancellor angela merkel has expressed regret at wolf's resignation and says she'll seek agreement with the opposition and the new president. a major armed robbery house been carried out at the ancient olympia museum in greece two thieves entered the building where they bound and gagged a female employee before stealing up to seventy important artifacts greece's culture minister submitted his resignation following the incident friday's robbery is the second major museum theft in the past two months in january works by problem because so n.p.t. drill were stolen from the country's national gallery in central athens. more billionaires live in moscow than in any other city in the world and entertainment

real stained and luxury goods market is geared up for major spenders this week our moscow team takes a sneak peek at the lifestyle of the mega rich. i can honestly say that big is the largest suite i've seen in my entire life but alone here in russia about four hundred ninety square meter is this monster of a room costs just under a million rubles a night school taxes roughly around sixteen thousand dollars whether we're talking about. a list celebrities will simply be filthy rich i think any multi-millionaire would enjoy staying here. latest edition of is coming your way in just over an hour's time.

well moscow may indeed be a safe haven for billionaires but not for much longer kareena will tell you why in the business update that's up next. thank you karen hello and welcome to business here and that's right here's a warning to the super rich if you're planning to buy a mega yalta must do it now the finance ministry says it's working out a way to impose a new luxury tax next year that's up to prime minister putin said he wanted to tax conspicuous consumption that's the price for not investing in the development of a country. well known for the love of expensive boats but the new duty would also apply to things like cars and houses however under a gold blot says such measures often how the opposite effect. there are plenty of perverts in russia to be taxed and luxury goods but the question is what is the

purpose of the texas coast becoming clear the global experienced straits whatever they introduce that there was no economic benefits of it but instead the money started flowing away from the country and proper to be bought outside of and even people moved outside of the country so the only purpose of the taxes i see you see is the social fairness if you want which is the candidate is trying to achieve through use campaign basically to calm down the differentiation between the super rich and the poor people in the country. let's take a look at the markets now first currency the euro is trading a bit hard to both the dollar and the ruble on hopes greece will see a long awaited bailout deal next week the ruble is high gas the u.s. currency is supported by stronger crude. look at oil now it's heading for its biggest weekly gain this year as encouraging signs from the u.s. the biggest consumer of crude is pulsing the output for fuel sometimes it was

stocks opened with modest gains on friday on hopes greece would get another round of rescue funds out for a meeting of european finance ministers early next week also u.s. economic data supported the federal reserve knew that inflation remains in check. the european stock markets are high and masters us like a more optimistic fresh u.s. economic data banks lead the gains on reports that the european central bank and european officials are moving closer to an agreement to close greece's economy and germany commerzbank gained over one and a half percent and deutsche bank took on one point three percent. here in russia markets rose to a six month high as all traded at its strongest lever in six weeks a level in six weeks the r.t.s. m i six ended the week mixed over the miles it's losing point one percent less. check on the index for some isaacs some energy stocks you raised earlier games where the rosneft finishing down more than half

a percent we were off an actual mixed spread bank boys have a percent higher rating by the economist magazine scored it as the world's second best stock in terms of return on investment over the past decade and even you bank has reversed early losses and was trading flat mark rubenstein for metropol wraps up the week for us. you know the few factors are playing against each other one we've been getting all the positive amarcord data i'll be knighted states with a whole week on the other hand we don't have there is a lucian with a great story this week which markets are pretty much expected so basically you know is down near zero that is their flood performance in the markets this week. and gas cars here as well are good russian fuel with a ten percent discount and the country's gas monopoly gas from says it's agreed to a price cut but fought off calls to increase the spot price component in his

contract the concession comes after a long drawn negotiations with some of gospel's biggest customers including france's g.d.s. swiss and. germany long term supply contracts indexed to the price of crude but its customers demand the company switch from an oil based formula due to the influx of cheap gas prices. well that's all i have for you this hour but i'll be back in about fifteen minutes with more time either.

the book. the limits. it's just simply the band . the book. culture is that so much given to each musician to find the mark with seriousness my

final point is the west refuse to describe events being played out in syria as a civil war why is there such me. thanks for joining us on how past the hour and let's take a quick recap of your headlines for you one mile's pressure on the syrian regime to step down as the general assembly adopts a non-binding resolution russia was among twelve states who voted against it saying the draft fails to address the armed opposition. greece scrambles to meet every mounting e.u. conditions to secure more bailout cash as euro zone leaders demand greater supervision of our plans as finances while some countries who kept their national

currencies are proving to be far better off. and libya marks three years since the revolt that eventually brought down colonel gadhafi but rival militias still run on track to allegations of human rights abuses mount and the interim leadership is said to have no real power. up next the ongoing crisis in syria comes under serious scrutiny and cross talk with peter lavelle. blowing welcome to cross talk i'm curious about syria and the spiral of violence

why does the west refuse to describe events being played out in syria as a civil war why is there such resistance to finding a political settlement among the warring factions and will outside intervention eventual tear syria apart. if you. could cross talk the situation unfolding in syria i'm joined by kurt worth miller in washington he's a research fellow at the center for religious freedom at the hudson institute in london we have patrick case he's a journalist and political commentator and in cairo we go to rami gerar he is a political activist and co-founder of activists news association all right gentlemen this is crosstalk that means you can jump in anytime you want patrick i'd like to go to you first in london there seems to be this amazing lack of recognition that really what's happening in syria is a civil war and i'm looking at western capitals right now but when i think about what's going on there and i see the pictures there are two concepts two words that

come to my mind one is militarization and the other one is lebanese ation and i'm of course i'm referring to the civil war that played out in all in lebanon for such a long time that was so horrific for that small country i mean it is a civil war and we have such a good example of historical example you don't have to look at libya look at lebanon and you have a reasonably good fit. i agree that i think it should be seen in that kind of way as a civil war i also think you know it's a civil war a slightly different story because it is very difficult to establish exactly who the opposition is in syria and exactly how they came here and that is now do you think in terms of the struggle against this are that is one of the problems you have quite a split into its kind of chaotic situation in syria more so than you did in the the arab spring last year in say egypt or tunisia there's less of a sense of ok here in the opposition so i can understand why it's

a bit hard to understand to define it in very clear cut but at the same time i think you know the west the west refusal to see it in these kind of terms and to see it's almost in a very polarized way where you have assad he's effectively now who was you know a couple of years ago seen as a reformer and was actually kind of welcome. you know the west very much saw themselves as being able to work with him now have kind of really polarized a situation and see him as a kind of ogre like figure similar to the way in which he was portrayed who is effectively just playing on the syrian people and i think that polarized nation won't benefit anyone especially should it mean western intervention into the situation take her to go to you i mean we had we had assad come out saying he wants to have a referendum on the twenty six of twenty seventh of this i'm sorry twenty six of this month and it was scaf doubt very much by western capitals again i mean want why is there such resistance to at least try negotiated settlement to this conflict

because if there is no settlement the deaths continue people continue to die and you know if you choose a side in a civil war which effectively is what the west has already done you still have more deaths i mean it's the worst of all possible worlds right now i think it is unfair to draw. a real clear parallel between could r.p. of course and bashar assad for one. reason and that is between us there's also a fairly comprehensive regime it's not quite the same person if occasion of the state that khadafi was of course there is of course the significant cult of personality that surrounded the syrian regime long before bashar assad came to power of course and so when we're talking here about the syrian government not just talking about bashar assad we're also talking about the entire back the regime that's backing him up with all of their supporters and a pretty significant state apparatus and that's something that really needs to come

into play or we're not just talking about a single individual who pulls all the strings of the state having said that i think it's fairly clear that there is simply too much water under the bridge at this point there been too many deaths there's been too much bloodshed and a tremendous amount of polarization between opposition figures. not necessarily in terms of just the leaders but in terms of the people who have been coming out to protest putting their lives on the line and in between them and this state that's been perpetrating these well i mean there's going to have if i go to romania and cairo i mean again i'm very hesitant to make this guy by narry here i mean there are the protesters quote unquote protesters and some are pretty heavily armed now and they're killing a lot of people i mean there are even reports reports because not much is coming out of syria that we can rely upon of beheadings ok i mean this is there's a radicalization on the protesters so i don't i mean these people are not you know

solzhenitsyn with the kalashnikov ok i mean this is getting much more serious that's why i started out the program by calling it a civil war i mean there is there is violence being committed by at least two sides and i would say all sides what do you think about that. i'll definitely answer to that but if i could first go back to patrick saying. what he said that there is one point to keep in mind syria is no exception from the arab spring from any other country that's taking part in the arab spring that these are revolutions and syria is not an exception the only thing that makes it an exception is the excessive use of violence by the syrian regime and the fact that the syrian government has as managed to continue killing its people without anyone stepping in or able to protect the civilians the syrian people have tried themselves the international community has also tried but failed to do anything and in that case in terms of syria now facing this civil war this is definitely over exaggerated this isn't this

isn't almost as far as being claimed but what we're seeing in syria is the government basically placing this propaganda that there is a civil war coming in syria that it's already begun and that their sectarian strife the only party that actually introduced tarion strife at the very beginning of the syrian revolution was the syrian government this was the only way that the government could get out of this situation that we're in this mess that they were in where people were going to the streets and simply calling for democracy and for regime change the government had to cover the up the only way they could cover that up is scare the minority. and if i can interject here i mean if you want to put it it's water under a bridge ok fine but now all sides are committing acts of violence ok you want to say who started it ok fine ok but any state in the world is going to strike back at people that have arms ok and i'm not justifying the regime in syria but what i'm saying is that all sides are using violence right now and that's why i'll go back to my keep hammering away at my point of why can't why shouldn't the international

community be pushing for negotiations on the ground instead of having saudi arabia and kuwait and all these other countries turkey the united states and who knows what israel's role in all this is right now i mean why should we be focused on the folks on the ground first before this spreads to the entire region. i'm sorry but i wouldn't agree with in fact that there was violence being patrolled from both sides us not the case we have one side that it's attacking its own people in peaceful demonstrations and another side which is formed of defected soldiers and maybe some recruited civilians who wish to protect these civilians these are defected soldiers they don't have a tillery or they or they have weapons forty seven is that the max maybe an r.p.g. but not tanks not gunships and if i go to crashing in london now yes we can change that may change patrick go ahead. well i just like to say i don't see what the problem is with the syrian people taking up arms against assad you know i do agree

with me that you know in some ways you can see this as a continuation of the arab spring i think there is there's a slight difference in terms of the coherence of the opposition but. it is cracking down on particular areas in a very kind of brutal way it is difficult for people to get here and debate for example go to a kind of tired square like situation that you saw in egypt but i mean sometimes in these situations as we saw in libya people do need to take up arms against the state and to overthrow it i would defend that i don't think this necessarily can be resolved peacefully and you know attempts to negotiate could also put it on ice and i could put that struggle for freedom and democracy in syria which is going on you know on the on holds where i think is problematic though is where you have external forces effectively betraying the syrian people as vulnerable kind of like helpless in the situation and i'll able to battle against assad for themselves i think you

know it's very clear in my mind that the only way in which history can be made here the only way in which a true democracy could be brought about in genuine leadership and coherent sense of ideas for how to take the country forward can really be established is through the syrian people doing this for themselves rather than having western intervention which effectively is trying to deliver democracy to that region it doesn't work like that it hasn't worked actually it's actually been with me every country where that's taken actually if it may be contributing to the violence because if i go back to kurtz in washington you may have elements within syria they're hoping for a western intervention and that's not stopping them from the go sheeting and assad i mean you could look at it from a different point of view if there's going to be an intervention he's going to do as much as he possibly can now to make sure there's nothing to intervene about so i mean this. prospect of outside intervention makes the situation even worse in the country you know i think one of the one of the difficulties not just in our

conversation but in the broader conversation about syria is the definition of what we mean by intervention. and one of my concerns at the moment and i should say fairly fairly clearly i do believe that the i want to say the west but the outside world i think should be involved somehow i think there is some violence going on perhaps on both sides but it's clearly not not a parallel situation you know the free syrian army which is an entirely uncoordinated organization if we can even use that term by no means represents the same kind of power as the syrian state i don't think we can look at those in a completely parallel fashion but at the same time i think it's very clear that the state which has its has a responsibility its people to protect not to oppress has been using a far greater degree of violence against people some of whom are armed many of whom are not. then has if we can use this term the other side so i do believe that we

should intervene but i'm not talking about boots on the ground i'm not saying you know we should all go you know gung ho dropping bombs on the syrian army at the moment i think we can deal much more imaginative in terms of how we talk about intervention. in a way just as in terms of libya and i mean libya wasn't supposed to happen but libya happened ok all right gentlemen right we're going to go to a short break ok and after that short break we'll continue our discussion on syria stable. i. mean. i i. i . any match once lived is bound. to burn

for ever more eternal fire is on think about the possible future. do we old wants to see this on forever. resistance is not a politics but a culture. this could be. some. cultures of resistance among our team.

and you can say. welcome back to cross talk time to tell to remind you we're talking about the war in syria. and you can say. ok i'd like to go back to rami and in cairo i started out the program saying how disappointed i am but i expected that the western powers wouldn't like to call what's going on in in syria's civil war because it has very important political and geopolitical and clip implications but let's talk about another thing that western media and politicians don't like to talk about it and if the the sectarian strife there i mean this is about you you said in the first part of the program about

defectors most of them at least i've been told are sunni what does that tell you. not actually the case of the country as cindy is so you would see a majority of defectors being cinese we've seen otherwise we've seen christian defectors that's actually not the case but what you have in syria now is the government basically portraying the sectarian violence and that's sort of provoking both sides what you're seeing is in the army i have to be detailed about this in the army with mobile phones only the allies are allowed to carry those mobile phones and only they are allowed to film themselves basically undertaking atrocities against civilians we've seen these videos of soldiers beating civilians and they're mainly alawite it's not because only the other words are taking part in this crackdown actually every element of the country taking part in the security when the security forces are taking part all the different sectors but this basically points to the viewers that alawite so doing this and then when you're in

an area like hamas in baba amr and you've been under siege for twelve or so days and without bread water electricity or any source of communication then that does sound to frustrate people now i'm not saying that that means that what you're going to see is sectarian violence again the government is over exaggerating the sectarian violence what we're seeing is in the army. because people are not able to defect they reach a point where they refuse to open fire at civilians and they won't be executed by the regime these people the same soldiers that were executed of them lifted in funeral processions by the regime claiming that terrorist elements sunni terrorist elements killed them if they were a whites that would probably be the scenario and that would cause a conflict the longer the syrian army within but it is ok but if you want if you. really do it by mathematics then maybe most of the victories are sunni because the regime is not ok at least the leadership is that if i go to you the secretary in differences is something that is downplayed a lot in west.