the line from moscow our top stories creeping contagion the eurozone champion germany and tours ratings downgrade with fears the crisis is hitting a monetary union biggest economy. military maneuvering russia plans closer ties with china while america promises to move most of its warships to the asia pacific in coming years. and protest peacefully or pay a fortune russia lawmakers pass a bill that sparked some of the most heated debate and set a new parliamentary record. now since the uprising broke out in syria

sectarian violence between supporters and opponents of the al sadr regime has flared up repeatedly in neighboring lebanon more on the ripples of the syrian civil war in our debate show crosstalk. and you can. still. go and welcome across talking to people about syria goes so does lebanon with a violent crisis in syria continuing to deepen and spread can lebanon remain on the sidelines much longer and many other questions abound is syria intentionally destabilizing lebanon and are there elements in lebanon being used to force regime change in damascus.

to cross-talk the wave of violence across lebanon i'm joined by robert fisk in beirut he is the middle east correspondent for the independent in pittsburgh we have typhoon goal he is a member of the answer coalition and in washington we cross to one of the he is a professor of middle east studies at the national defense university all right gentlemen crosstalk rules in effect that means you can jump in anytime on robert if i go to you first in beirut there seems to be two countervailing narratives going on right now is that the the syrian free army is in lebanon causing trouble looking for allies to topple assad or if you like the other one you have assad and his people influencing domestic politics again in lebanon which one do you like or an either or a combination. i don't think it was by chance that our side made his speech in the syrian parliament at almost exactly the same time that the violence restarted in tripoli with fifteen dead and fifty wounded that's almost too much of a coincidence but i don't believe there are the the line that's being taken by many

people here particularly in the political opposition but there are hundreds of syrian fighters among the allawi community in tripoli although there are hundreds of opposition fighters fighting the allo is when i have gone much to tripoli and i do it regularly and have done for the past year on the story although there are many people in tripoli who are syrian citizens their families are intermingled there are no syrian forces which i have ever seen up there nor for that matter foreign forces in tripoli i think there are lebanese fighting lebanese but is it dangerous yes is syria's problem spilling over it already has ok telephone can you want to enter the same question or you agree or disagree with robert on that. well why i needed the agree or disagree i mean we have to keep in mind that in lebanon there is a situation that there are two essential counterforce sources of thore one

represented by the march fourteenth call ition which is basically supported by most . governments including the us israel and then also the client states including saudi qatar and jordan and then on the other hand there is the march eight alliance which is sensually led by the free patriotic movement christian group hezbollah which has been. very important in. you know resisting the israeli aggression since one thousand nine hundred eighty two so it would be a little simplistic to just. simplify the whole lebanese conflict into a spillover from. the argument on that level when i say i would agree with you but i think that's what media does to simplify and that's why i'm asking you gentlemen to make it more complex my viewers understand what i'm going to you in washington

how would you look at it i mean was it fault i guess essentially is what i'm asking . i think it is bashar al assad and his regime and he is intentionally trying to spillover the conflict in syria into lebanon in order to scare the international community and to deter the international community from contributing to the toppling of his regime i agree with robert that it is lebanese fighting lebanese but these are proxy lebanese and so you do have those who are allied to the syrian regime who are doing the fighting against those who are for the syrian revolution so again i think the hands behind the conflict in lebanon and the spillover in lebanon is the bashar assad regime all right gentlemen before we continue let's have a look at some of the background to the story. hereon

tensions between supporters and opponents of the syrian government we've knighted street fighting in the lebanese city of tripoli and sound today it least fifteen people were killed and thirty wounded as activists reported fresh shelling in central syria where a message last week left more than one hundred people dead so there were a lot. more especially tripoli rounding your area and a lot of people warned about this about this because this is a continuation of what has taken place in syria the fighting in tripoli has erupted sporadically since the uprising in syria began fifteen months ago prompting on lebanese political factions to adopt a policy of disassociation from the uprising in lebanon and syria share a complex where both political and sectarian ties in rivalries which are easily inflamed community leaders in lebanon have repeatedly warned the violence in syria could spill over the border lebanon is already hosting thousands of syrian refugees

lebanese are getting nervous they don't want to have to live through another civil war and especially because you know this is not their conflict they may have their own thoughts about the syrian government but they understand that this is where the syrian people to the side and they want security damascus has a long history of intervention in lebanon and has made no secret of the hope to make its weaken a big part of syria since the creation of contemporary lebanon in one nine hundred twenty most syrians have never accepted it as a sovereign state it is yet to be seen with a series bloody scenario is to be repeated in lebanon but the number of casualties in the never ending clashes seem to be a gloomy prophecy for the country and the e.u. dinner for cross-talk moscow. ok robert frank about human beirut i mean in light of the reporting what we have said already in this program is that you know you can see it. and hand in lebanese politics but you know lebanese politics is very fragile at best ok it doesn't it does appear in how

you know ok but it does say at the same time it shows the fragility the fragility of the political system in lebanon so i mean no matter what happens on its neighbor in its neighborhood it's going to be impacted look i think you've got to realize in your report it was mentioned that lebanon was created in one thousand nine hundred twenty what it might also said it was created by the french and nine hundred twenty by being cut out of syria it was a syrian gov into which lebanon was taken away that's why for example you have so many people in tripoli who have relatives in homes because one hundred years ago they were the same family is that's why when people say all the rest syrians in tripoli of course there are they also have lebanese passports because under the before the french came and chopped up the middle east which we british also did quite a lot of this was one area people in tripoli will go to homs to go shopping and

there's many politicians in tripoli including the sunni muslim politicians opposed to us who have relatives in syria this is a complex that you have to realize before you say what's going on in tripoli ok i suggest to all my viewers who read robert's books as i've read every single one of them typhoon if i go to you in pittsburgh it's really a sectarian difference here that's going on here i mean you can look at lebanon you can look at syria but it's really the different sects that are involved in here and this is what robert said at the partition of one thousand twenty never resolve these issues. i mean i think we have to talk about the the political representation system in lebanon to get a better understanding of the source of the conflict to as robert luda to the french colony colonizers in nineteen twenty and then later in the one nine hundred forty s. we have to talk about the confessional system which portions the. political representation in lebanon based on eighteen different religious sects and. even

though say the muslim population reach compromises about seventy percent of the overall society it's only in the recent months that only health and health representation has been assigned and then within that seventy percent or in the muslim population itself the shiites comprise about thirty five to forty percent of the overall population i think it's the have to realize that there is an underlying political context to this whole conflict today that it is not necessarily just in the sectarian conflict it is in a sense resistance against the object is in the region it is essentially a conflict of forces on the one side supported by us imperialism and the client states represented by the march fourteenth correlation and on the other side it's

march eighth alliance and. if you were to look at the popular support. not just based on the this confessional system we would realize that a majority of the lebanese population is behind the march. alliance more of a final to you how much of it because there's plenty of reports and i'd like to see a lot more confirmation that there are foreign fighters in northern lebanon using northern lebanon as a safe haven to go into syria it's a very porous border. it's a very porous border i agree i agree with robert that it is a complex situation but let us not exaggerate the complexities. or what is basically happened and to make things easier for the audience who is not very well acquainted with this conflict what it is a national uprising in syria against an old story tarion regime which has been in

place in forty eight hears. a shot it has had these all of the view that syria is his family farm and in order to hang on to the family farm he is using scare tactics one of the scare tactics is to lead the international community to believe that there will be civil war next door if his regime and what i mean can you can you answer either i'm sorry but can you answer my question is northern lebanon being used as a staging ground to destabilize syria to bring in arms troops fighters is that true or false in your opinion it could well be there is a lot of smuggling of arms from lebanon to syria there is a lot of smuggling of arms from iraq to syria and the longer this conflict festers the more smuggling there is going to be the more radicalized the fighters are going to be and the more outsiders are going to intervene in this conflict and so it is better for syria and lebanon and the region that this conflict ok robert what do you think about what is how much out influence is there fueling the conflict in

syria when we see lebanon as a as a staging ground. you know i've been right up on the edge of the syrian border in the north and all lebanese people living there some of whom of course i would want some from right so you muslims almost all of them told me that at night men do pasta cross the border in both directions one family said i'm going to show you here we're going to go to a short break and i'll come back you after that short break we'll continue our discussion i'm up on stage. and. with the end of the war and going the way of the soviet union many people thought that nuclear weapons disappeared. the risk is not zero that something might be

going off by mistake especially with nuclear weapons on hair trigger alert. because of the victims to use it as a threat as an actual event but you know if you keep spending a trillion dollars a year on weapons of eventually you're going to blow everybody up you you know people are dying from these weapons but until we actually see it people don't make up nuclear weapons or a bill. that represents all the firepower of the second world war this second sound is the equivalent firepower of the world's nuclear arsenal today. wealthy british style. guys let's go. to the. market.

find out what's really happening to the. all economy for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune in to cause a report on r.t. . and you can. see. welcome back to cross talk that you know about to mind you were talking about the violence spreading throughout the middle east. and you can see. robber right before we went to the break you were telling me of how you know people in northern lebanon that said there are men that come through the night ok i mean who are these people here because there's a wide range of opinions of who they are tunisians let people from libya you know jihad is from saudi arabia i mean i know you live there i don't. i think that we've

got to cut out the mysterious dark evil foreign fighters from this narrative it's what the americans used all the time in iraq and i don't think lebanon deserves that there are men crossing that border who are lebanese and some of whom are syrian one family said to me when we see them in the darkness we say god bless you and take care clearly weapons are going across the lebanese army found a truckload of weapons two and a half months ago on the main coast road north of beirut oddly enough the u.n. which controls the coast of lebanon with a warship to prevent hezbollah getting weapons didn't spot those weapons which are apparently going to be used against the assad regime however you can take conspiracy theories rather too far in lebanon and believe everything that everybody tells you so you will end up by believing absolutely nothing ok there there's no doubt that there is that outside hands people do their western powers that definitely want to see assad go and they've already said it it's time for him to go i mean lebanon is

a perfect conduit to go into to do use that subterfuge in syria now my point is that if you use lebanon too much in that way you could destroy already a fragile country that is true so the point is it is it is clear that these outside forces mainly nato has already being involved in feeling this civil war in syria from the get go i mean based on certain b.q. leaks documents i am originally from turkey turkey the role of the turkish government in fueling the violence in syria by funding providing arms and support to these so-called opposition groups that have been behind most of the violence in syria itself. has been documented in political in the turkish of fish. in fact when the turkish official was in that document. challenge to divide the fact that how will the civil war the be perpetrated when there is

a lot of popular support for the assad government he said that is the turkish responsibility will be a lot of blood but it is our obligation to sunni sunni population so that's a very interesting and you say should when i go ahead in washington d.c. you want to react to that this is cross talk after all go ahead. one the conflict is not fuelled by the opposition it is. a brutal regime that wants to hang on to power if we are going to talk about the intervention of outside forces and one that is not done in the dark of the night as robert. tells us let us look at what is happening in broad daylight and that is the shipment of russian arms through the port arthur tools to the said regime for him to continue killing an unarmed serial if you like yours or if you like it or not if we are illegal it's not even legal it's there's no you're not illegal but it was highly highly resolution and said if

you don't like it you don't have the right it's not illegal it's all i hate it i don't like it at all it's myself. and there are plenty and they have all oppositions being given arms by them last week. that is five really. robert go ahead and you want to jump and look at most of the reports coming. around now sure are going to be. going to say that libya there at the moment i think the russians are still very very angry actually sat down. and i think that that port is the only mediterranean warm water port they've got left to them and they want to keep it and i suspect that it's more militarily important to putin to keep that port than we realize and when it comes to tough politics remember this is a russian government that smashed up chechnya it's not going to have second thoughts on russia's wasn't going to get its own economy is going to smash the very different robert when you look at russia's territorial integrity and you when you

look at libya but i agree with you one libyan talking no excuse me a second we're talking here about a middle east that's been chopped up by other powers and russia is not yet chopping up the middle east is a russia russia is seems to me you're not seeing a sin really going to be i don't think anybody is running russia is now on the chopping us. anything else i'm and you're trying to support international law typhoon go ahead i didn't expect this to happen typhoon go ahead if anybody's trying to chop up middle east it is the governments in nato that is trying to reshape. the existing independent states taken the opportunity of the arab spring as a jumping point and with this syria case when we talk about d n n n n peace plane in play and it's being not steps all be clear that is just this stepping stone for validating setting the pretext for military intervention by the nato powers when

how is it they just play and when one side this so-called opposition is funded and provided arms and beyond most of the while and. and and the syrian government has to defend itself and the it's becoming obviously clear that this peace plan is nothing but a r two p. the responsibility to protect style nato intervention as has happened in libya you're going to stay with lebanon here how is this is going to keep unfolding for lebanon because if we can see more pressure on assad to be removed by certain powers in the world and that's the western ghats some gulf countries here i mean is is lebanon going to be the staging ground into a staging ground in fact is will it destroy the country it's very fragile as i mentioned earlier in the program look a lot of the margin in through may go to washington first go ahead ok. the spill over has happened is going to continue is going to increase the more

a side feels vulnerable the more he's going to use lebanon again in order to deter foreign powers from moving his regime and if you allow me peter just a few seconds to say this i want to go back. to that slugfest we had and it's not because russia is angry at what's happened in libya that this should be taken out against the syrian people and it's not because russia wants the syrian port of tartus tools that it should be taken out against the syrian people you are all talking about intervention in nato and chopping up the region what you are forgetting is that they syrian uprising is a against a dictatorial family that has lost its legitimacy and that is the bottom line and we need to be on the side of democracy and freedom when rather than honest i think everybody already from really fat i mean it just it why do you think the opposition being funded by outside powers is democratic you know that's the my big problem with this robert you want to jump in there go right ahead. well i was going to go

back to your question on lebanon you brought up the hezbollah as you said i wanted to go there is always let me finish first of all is lebanon is always going through the greatest crisis since the last greatest crisis and the various powers have been trying to destroy lebanon for one hundred years and oddly enough even after a fifteen year civil war between one hundred seventy five and ninety nine it didn't manage it i'll tell you one thing i may be wrong on this but i hope i'm not i don't think lebanese people today want another war at the time of the civil war there were various cracks in the social structure of this country which could be opened up but you know during that war many lebanese children were sent away to be educated in rome in london new york and they've come back and they've said no to sectarianism and one of the things you do notice among the younger population here is a number interested in being sectarian maybe that is certainly an interest among various

groups inside syria i would just make one more little historical point when the french took over the mandate for syria and then lebanon they created a frontier of force in syria special special troops and they were mostly made up chosen by the french alawite and that's how that minority came to be allied originally with an outside power called france. i tell you had a phone if i can go to you has been brought up here and i think it's very important too because this is also been a group that has been targeted by the western powers primarily as an enemy a terrorist organization eccentric cetera this seems to be an interesting opportunity for them to get rid of assad and hezbollah simultaneously and i hope robert is right i mean they don't they don't destroy lebanon in the process well so even though hezbollah his portrayal is a going to want to pittsburgh for as. even though his beloved has been portrayed.

continues to be portrayed by the western media is just a a profit organization supported by iran and syria it is actually not true hezbollah has a deep popular support in lebanon with a lot of social services hospitals and schools and it has actually a huge problem it is especially with the recent two thousand and six israeli aggression and their defeat mostly by thanks to the. resistance. for for the nato and supporting governments this is a very good opportunity to to get rid of this. organization or debt that has a strong ties to to its public base when i often go back to you in washington again the law of unintended consequences how is things playing out with syria the unintended consequence for lebanon here because when i look at all of these

interventions in the past they never work out the way you plan. never i quite so my quite agree with robert the lebanese are truly exhausted from their long civil war and have really very very little appetite for a civil war and therefore you have the dissociation policy of mr najib mikati the prime minister but i think that what is happening in the region is far stronger than this again as robert mentioned earlier there are families that straddle the border there are economic interests and most of lebanon's economy really is to a large extent or to some extent at least dependent upon syria so there are many links that tie syria to lebanon and again and you think that's happens to syria or that happens in syria is bound to impact on lebanon so despite the exhaustion of the lebanese despite the this has those haitian policy i fear again that the conflict is spilling over into lebanon now you mentioned

a lot i'm sorry gentlemen let me run out of time here and i it's all keep our fingers crossed for lebanon many thanks my guest today in beirut pittsburg and in washington and thanks to our viewers for watching us here arche see you next time and remember cross talk. to.

we'll. still. listening. to slim. and.