leaders in these kind of situations do you think we're ever going to see libya becoming a stable working viable democratic democratic state. i remember just under a year ago when we held the first demonstration against the intervention in libya and the young libyan man. said that we should join them in fact we slightly separate because it. was not exactly the same as ours but he explained very very clearly what he said the problem or that he said that if you intervene in this way you would precisely lead to sectarianism the breakup of your tribalism it's natural because all these things he said. kept in check. i think it was frequently now because what he's saying is like you. know in the wake of all those on the rest do you think we're going to see continued violence in the country perhaps

a new wave of it. i can't find anybody who says that the official process is likely to happen what's supposed to happen is a. process we will roll on to june this year when you will have the first elections and they will vote on the constitution and various other things are supposed to happen and i just can't find anybody who says yes this is this is what it's actually like me because we have to bear in mind the words that i quoted at the beginning about the danger of civil war and break up and. nothing has happened they were supposed to integrate the militias into the supposed national long in the supposed national police force and just by the very limited newspaper reports you know you see that very very few people have joined it you have this creation of a federation of the western militias a few days ago one hundred militias in the west of libya and that really does seem to be

a step on the road to the breakup of libya into at least two parts west and east if not more so as a sign come find anybody who says that they think the things just go away and the militias will respond tribalism land and so on i am afraid not so briefly to wrap up do you think that the uprising has reached its goals. i know i don't think so i mean if. people said that the problem was khadafi you can find many people who say when the problem wasn't good i feel as such it was it was lack of rule of law for example and clearly you don't have the lower end of your told no i don't think i don't care for people for all right jim brann from the stop the war coalition thanks for your time. type 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 thai capital tehran which is under international pressure over its controversial nuclear program denies involvement israeli prime minister though as calderon the greatest export or of terror in the world as our reports from tel aviv many israelis may not be convinced . seems 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 elaine aggression should be stopped the course that brings forth many theories that the military confrontation with iran is imminent and nowhere are these theories 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 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 and then there is the rather strained relations with lebanon which some fear may escalate into 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 to the 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 those borders rather than really push forth with aggressive rhetoric towards iran russian special forces have killed seven suspected militants at

a counter terror operation in the country's north caucasus the head of the chechen republic says the leader of the gang was responsible for a number of attacks in the region the anti terror operation on the border of chechnya and dagestan was under way since monday officials say some thirty gunman had been hiding in the area helicopters and artillery were used to ferret them out but reports say after thirteen police officers have been killed in the ongoing operation. turning now to some other stories making headlines across the globe a suicide bomb targeting worshipers killed twenty six and wounded dozens in northwest pakistan the blast went off outside a mosque in a busy market in the town of parrots in are close to the afghan border thousands of pakistani civilians have been killed in bombings over the last five years most of them carried out by sunni islamist militants. german president christian walls has resigned the opposition demanded he stepped out over accusations he accepted illicit favors while serving as governor of lower saxony

including a private home loan from a friend's wife but thursday prosecutors called regime unity to be lifting chancellor on a limb merkel are expressing regret at will's resignation and says she'll seek agreement with the opposition on a new president nixon. and a major been carried out at the ancient a limpia museum in greece two thieves entered the building where they bound and gagged a female employee and stole up to seventy important artifacts reeses culture minister submitted his resignation following the incident the robbery on friday is the second major museum fifth in the last two months in january works by picasso and were stolen from the country's national gallery in central athens. business update next with kareena stay with us. i. know and welcome to business here in r t thanks for joining me european gas consumers will now get russian fuel with a ten percent discount the country's gas monopoly gazprom says it's agreed to

a price cut but fought off calls to increase the spot price component in its contract the concession comes after a long drawn negotiations with some of gas pumps biggest customers including france's g.d.s. ways and fingers of germany gas problems long term supply contracts are indexed to the price of crude but its customers demand the company switch from an oil based formula due to the influx of cheap spot gas prices. here's a warning to the super rich if you're planning to buy a mega yacht and russert do it now the finance ministry says it's working out a way to impose a new actually tax next year that's after prime minister putin says he wanted to tax conspicuous consumption as the price for not investing in the development of a country russian tycoons are well known for their love of expensive post and the new duty will also apply to things such as cars and houses however or under a cold blood says such measures often have the opposite effect there are plenty of

property in russia to be taxed luxury goods but the question is what is the purpose of the turks because we cannot make clear the global experience to straights whatever they introduce that there was no economic benefit so it. might have 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 currencies first the euro's trading a bit hard to both the dollar and the wrong hopes greece will see a long awaited bailout deal next week and the ruble is high against the us currency supported by stronger crude. and friday's trading session in the black british stocks gained ground driven by banks and miners investor sentiment was lifted by

upbeat retail sales data progress on this bailout. the r.t.s. and my six ended the week mixed with my seclusion point one percent on the whole stocks did well rising to a six month high all traded at its strongest level in six weeks let's check on the index movers on the myself some energy stocks raised earlier games with down half a percent we were financials finished mixed with bear back half. it waiting by the economist magazine's course as the world's second best stock in terms of return on investment over the past decade. has struggled to reverse the losses and things like women's time for metal building or. you know the few factors are playing against each other one we've been getting all the positive market data obviated states for the 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 and then the net of that is there flood performance in the markets this week that's all for me and the business desk this hour but remember you can always find more stories on our website r.t. dot com slash business. question is that so much given to each musician to find the mark left syria in

a spiral of violence why does the west refuse to describe events being played out in syria as a civil war why is there such meat. loaf the finance technology innovation all the moves them elements from around russia we've gone to the few jerks covered. the limits to just simply. just see. if.

eleven thirty pm in moscow these here are the headline the un piles pressure on the syrian regime has stepped down as the general assembly adopts a non-binding resolution russia says the draft fails to address the armed opposition of. greece's next belo could be creeping closer this by the e.u. is ever mounting demands while some countries who kept their national currencies are proving to be better all. libya marks a year since the revolt that eventually brought down colonel gadhafi but rival

militias still run unchecked in the interim leadership is said to have no real power. up next the ongoing crisis in syria comes under scrutiny cross talk with peter lavelle coming up. 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 music since the finding of political settlement among the warring factions and will outside intervention eventual tear syria apart.

you. get 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 the 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 the 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 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 within now have kind of really polarized a situation and see him as a kind of ogre like figure similar to the way in which good afy was portrayed who is effectively just trampling on the syrian people and i think that polarized nation won't benefit anyone especially should it mean western intervention into the situation a kurd if i 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 because 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 into the bridge at this point

there been too many deaths there's been too much bloodshed and a tremendous amount of polarization between the 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 a bit of i guess you know 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's 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 with what he said 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 and 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 this sectarian strife

the only party that actually introduced secretary and strike 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 that 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 one 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 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 unable 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 can 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 is where that state actually. 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 good that's 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 that justice 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 state. 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. download the official location your i pod touch from the. video. gold costs an r.s.s. feeds now in the palm of your posts question. and.

welcome back to cross talk time you'll help remind you we're talking about the war in syria. ok i'd like to go back to rami in cairo and 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 so you would see

a majority of defectors being cinese we've seen in other words 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 the trust cities 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 it's a 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 so many terrorist elements killed them if they were otherwise that would probably be the scenario and that would cause a conflict the longer the syrian but it ok but if you want if you. really do it by mathematics then met then most of the victims are sunni because the regime is not ok at least the leadership is patrick if i can go to you the sectarian differences is something that is downplayed a lot in western media but and that helps downplay the role that saudi arabia kuwait another great democracies by the way in the middle east during the arab spring that the role that they're playing there and again it seems to me it's a domino thing it's all about iran it has nothing to do about.