serious crisis tops the agenda as president ford and british prime minister cameron with the two leaders seeking to hammer out a common approach to getting peace talks. meanwhile washington reaffirms its reluctance to back serious radicalised rebels and if further after russia and the us agree to set up an international conference to bring about an end to the escalating conflict. and a blood soaked democracy pakistan braces for saturday's historic general election amid a wave of brutal attacks and kidnappings by the taliban. it

is three pm in moscow you're watching r t with me marina josh. a working out a common approach to mediating peace in syria is expected to dominate the discussion as present lot of important hosts british prime minister david cameron the meeting comes after moscow and washington patched up some of the or differences on the crisis and called for an international conference on syria i did last here she has more. well literally seventy two hours after it was meeting john kerry secretary in moscow he's meeting the british prime minister david cameron in the city of sochi the host of the winter olympics in twenty fourteen that's where the russian president fact will be meeting most of his international colleagues over the coming months now this comes of course at the meeting in moscow where a principal decision on holding an international conference by the end of this month to have both the members of the syrian opposition and the syrian government at the same negotiation table to attempt to find some kind of peaceful solution to the syrian conflict indeed this meeting in moscow was

a breakthrough according to many experts because after months of harsh rhetoric the sides of managed to soften their position and agree on something in the long run the positions of the united states and russia have been different just the same story with the position of the u.k. and russia as well for months russia has been criticizing the west for taking one side in this conflict that is the side of the syrian rebels russia has been criticizing the calls in the west to arm the syrian rebels provide them with military training and even possibly intervene into the conflict going on in syria now definitely we also know that russia also said about the syrian conflict that the west has been calling on assad to step down but at the same time never mentioned that the future of the future of syria must be decided by the syrian people and mosco john kerry in many ways agreed that if the syrian people who will

have to decide the future of the country in election at the same time he regenerated that that washington does not want to see assad in power it's interesting to see whether the same sentiments will be coming from david cameron after he meets president putin here in sochi especially given the fact that he already prompted a statement saying that there was an urgent need to find a quick and peaceful solution of course we'll be keeping our viewers up to date. as we get all the details here in the russian city of sochi now the u.k. continues to insist the syrian regime may have recently used chemical weapons despite a top u.n. war crimes investigator saying there is reason to believe such arms were in fact used by the rebels and despite its official commitment to peace through diplomacy britain is stepping up efforts to start directly arming the syrian opposition as sarah ferguson our reports from the prime minister said to m.p.'s in the house of commons recently that there's a growing body of limited but persuasive evidence that the syrian regime has used

and continues to use chemical weapons now the u.n. war crimes investigators have said that as yet they've reached new conclusions as to whether either side has indeed use chemical weapons now the one day talk is taking place at a time when there is growing calls for some form of diplomatic progress to be made in place sites are going to be very much focused on not the prime minister's spokesman saying the u.k. considers russia an important player when it comes to these discussions despite this russian the u.k. has certainly had a fractious past when it comes to the topic of syria i would urge the russians in the russian government even at this late stage to look very carefully at why keeps doing what it's looking to do in syria the longer this goes on the stronger the case becomes for lifting the arms embargoes on the national coalition on the syrian opposition if we're left with no other alternative to that so we say coming at

a time when the u.k.'s been seen to try to step up efforts to bring an end to the e.u. arms embargo that would then allow the supply of weapons to the forces of pace to the syrian regime a lot of concern from some here in the country and indeed internationally as to exactly. it's an opposition given that there's say much concern surrounding the other elements inside the country that are also confusing the extremely fractured picture that we're seeing playing out as the syrian conflict continues nonetheless the two sides are going to be pushing ahead with these talks whether or not they'll be able to put that fractious past behind them and come to something cream and remains to be seeing but the u.k. prime minister's restated his commitment to trying to find some form of diplomatic progress moving forward western backing for the armed opposition has led to the

movement growing increasingly radicalized but thanks to the mediating push spearheaded by moscow there is now a chance to turn a trend around that's according to russian and european politics expert professor richard stuff. we do know quite a lot about the details of some of the groups involved though the details of the dynamics between them we know very little we do know that the various militant al-qaeda affiliated groups are strengthening because they have been the most years alone what has been the greatest tragedy of this whole thing over the last two or so years is that there has been and always was some gloom in the middle and this is now being squeezed out in part a fault of the policy of the west but it's not only their fault but clearly they have not facilitated those who are willing to negotiate and to go to the table so therefore the evidence that the last few days are the first glimmer of hope that somehow or other that some sort of negotiated settlement could emerge out of this

because syria is very difficult libya it's very difficult. you have a very powerful stable forces internally which are beginning now to find trying to find a path to post conflict situation and dare i hope that this visit today if they're ever going with the russian and with putin can begin to facilitate this sort of passed out of conflict there is a way out but it means that all sides have to start changing and be willing to give and take a bit more the u.s. defense secretary says the old order in the middle east is disappearing although it's still not clear what will replace it chuck hagel stressed the conflict in syria is becoming increasingly more sectarian extremists are the country's collapse now more real than ever but while some u.s. lawmakers make fresh calls for military intervention washington it's taken a backseat as guide and she can now explains. after the administration all but

accused the assad government of having used chemical weapons vice president joe biden now says quote we don't know for certain whether they were used by some of the opposition including the radicals who have aligned themselves with all qaida this is probably the first time we hear someone in the administration talk about the possibility that the rebels may have used chemical weapons just a few days ago the white house press secretary was responding to the findings of the u.n. human rights investigation which said serry nerve gas may have been used by the rebels in syria and he basically brushed off the report saying it's quote highly likely that al saud forces were behind it that has also been the narrative perpetuated in the media last week chuck hagel said the administration is considering arming the opposition also this week a bill was introduced in the senate that would authorize exactly that chuck hagel delivered a speech at the this conference in washington where several commanders of the free syrian army were also invited in that speech he does not mention or means the rebels he said this secretary kerry and russian foreign minister lavrov announced

they will seek to convene an international conference with representatives of the syrian government and the opposition to determine how to implement a political transition in syria. using the four range of tools the united states will continue to work toward achieving our goal of ending the violence and helping the syrian people transition to opposed to sort of thore so we see there is a build up of hope for this conference which will presumably take place sometime at the end of may both washington and moscow said they're working on it but as far as the syrian opposition so far they have not clearly come out in favor of a political solution also it's not clear how the idea of a political solution something that washington says it wants to achieve can coexist with the idea of flooding the conflict with more weapons because when you give them all arms the message is go fight the messages not stop fighting so it seems that

arming the rebels contradicts the core message of this geneva communique and both washington and moscow say they want this upcoming conference to be based on that geneva communique and that message is basically stop fighting and find a political solution. across the border in lebanon they have has been lost as they are ready to receive shipments of advanced weapons from the syrian leadership statement comes just days after israeli airstrikes targeted suspect the arms depos near the syrian capital and while border tensions rise the syrian opposition is being increasingly radicalized as our middle east correspondent policy we are now reports. the united nations says that its peacekeeping forces are continuing to monitor the separation of israeli and syrian forces along the israel syrian border but they have said that they've moved some of the units to new positions because of the precarious security situation twice in the last three months un forces have been kidnapped from the very same position according to the martyrs brigade which

is the group that detained for filipino u.n. peacekeepers earlier this week they have been released we're being told that the united nations negotiated a safe passage with the syrian army forces in the area meanwhile we all received reports that the free syrian army which is the main opposition to the syrian president bashar assad is losing finds his as well as capabilities is among the forces inside syria in some places reportedly entire units of the f.s.a. have defected and they've moved to jump. which is and there's none of this organization with links to al qaida what we're being told is that the main reasons for the defections are basic conditions and emissions and weapons that it certainly does present a dynamic for the united states britain and other governments who provide that support to the syrian rebels and also considered arming them with weapons the entire situation is of course also of great concern to israel which is just next

door this is why many in these talks between russia and britain to see what they will yield paula see on television. all coming out here in r.t. big brother equipment is in high demand following the boston tea. u.s. cities are being more cameras but it's god the privacy advocates worried that the surveillance surge will only trump the rights of those supertax we'll bring you the details in just a few minutes here in our team. more

news today. from these are the images world world has been seeing from the streets of canada. trying to corporations rule today. welcome back to watching r.t.l. pakistan's main political parties have held their final rallies as voters prepare

for saturday's poll and the country's first transition from one democratically like a government to another well let's not take a closer look at the front runners in the race the outgoing oh a ruling social democrats the pakistan people's party founded and led by the powerful buddha family stop the polls five times before however so far they are expected to fall behind the conservatives the pakistan muslim league n. headed by two times former prime minister nawaz sharif he's pledged to and the u.s. led war on terror in pakistan should his party win the race while the dark horse however in the race is cricket legend turned politician imran khan and his movement for justice or the p.d.i. supported by pakistan's powerful military and election is a major step for pakistan's democracy but one which has been marred by violence across the volatile state this it often is now reports. week after week these are

the images the world has seen coming out of pakistan victims of a brutal wave of violence bomb blasts rippling across the country this is supposed to be a time of triumph for a country that's gearing up for its first ever democratic transition from one elected government to another but reason bomb and gun attacks by militants against religious minorities and secular politicians have called the country's stability into question and sown fear among pakistani voters. everyone is scared of bombs and nobody feels safe so very few people go and vote because they're scared and go to will be the winner. the pakistani taliban has vowed to target the country's secular parties and they've made good on that threat the awami national party or the a and p. has borne the brunt of the attacks forced to campaign in the shadows. we can't campaign we can't arrange meetings all parties are doing rallies with millions of people but we can only do them with two hundred men and even when we do that

terrorists are still targeting us but islam is parties have been targeted too this is the aftermath of an attack against a political party seen as being sympathetic to the taliban but the latter have condemned to democracy as a whole meaning any political party taking part in the elections could be considered fair game by the militant group more than six hundred thousand security personnel including fifty thousand soldiers have been deployed during the election to guard against attacks but that's not exactly a comforting sight for a country that's been ruled by the military for almost half its life as an independent state the violence isn't just political in a country where the majority faith is islam religious minorities have accused the mainstream political parties of not doing enough to protect them against attacks that could hurt the ruling party in the polls. people's party.

security. questions are these but the issues that may shape the outcome of the vote are more clear cut pakistan's economy has been battered by three years of successive floods which severely damaged agricultural heartlands power cuts are in demick with some rural areas getting only four hours of electricity per day clean water and food education and health care remain out of reach for many pakistanis crime and unemployment are huge issues in the cities all the main parties have vowed to tackle these bread and butter issues but few have outlined exactly how leaving voters skeptical it's a. politicians make promises to get votes. and then they forget everything about nearly five thousand candidates are running for pakistan's lower house of parliament and more than ten thousand hopefuls are angling for seats in pakistan's four provincial assemblies when it comes to the job of prime minister polls indicate that it's a showdown between former cricket legend imran khan and former prime minister nawaz

sharif the latter seems to be heading to victory but khan has written a wave of popularity among younger voters this promise to clamp down on corruption it's a tight race that's been overshadowed by violence a landmark election that is proven so far to be the bloodiest in the country's history the attacks are a stark reminder that politics and pakistan is a dangerous game and that democracy can be deadly. r t islamic pakistan. rolling out the big guns in a moscow spring sunshine you know calm watching the great and fireworks which marked sixty years since victory over the nazis we've also got moving wartime rigol actions from that are and stem cells. and here's what happens when you wrap yourself in knots american soldier accidentally trigger his parachute and school from the point the food is on one of.

the boston terror bombings reinvigorated debate over the role of public surveillance in the u.s. new york and other a major cities have in recent years expanded the number of cameras using homeland security department grants a multi-billion dollar security industry is growing at up to eight percent a year the question is who's keeping watch on what big brother is up to. investigate. the video surveillance market in the u.s. has been permanently expanding from more than i decade and here at new york city a s i s exhibition and conference we are getting enough. close look at some of the most latest and cutting edge surveillance technology that is being displayed by many security professionals that technology of course includes facial recognition iris scanning high definition close circuit cameras and other software that was once only seen in side by move now some would say it's appropriate for the site but

to be taking place in new york city because after all it was the mayor of the big apple that recently said he wanted to expand the amount of surveillance cameras that were on route the city of course those comments came in the aftermath of the boston terrorist attack and the mayor of new york is just one of many officials are out i did say that are calling for surveillance we spoke with some professionals that are here displaying their surveillance technology they say they have already seen up. in holes and increase and of course that can equate to a peak in sales i hate to say it but our phones have been ringing off the hook since the tragedy and you know it's it's an unfortunate thing but people are starting to think now how they should have been thinking all along you know to be able to provide a safe environment you have to think ahead is there going to be more surveillance cameras deployed and the answer to that is yes because lessons learned have shown us that if you have

a bench recording. you can go back and find information that might not have been pertinent while you thought you were filming it but all the sudden if an event happens you need all the information that the experts estimated that this industry would reach revenues of more than twenty billion dollars fight twenty sixteen but now those numbers are being recalculated to be projected even higher because of the terrorist attacks that took place and boston as government spending on video surveillance is expected to surge tension between law enforcement officials and privacy advocates is also expect. greets critics say that the american public has been force in the seat privacy and civil liberties in the name of national security but the payoff hasn't been big after all america's web spy cams failed to prevent the boston terrorist attacks and even when the f.b.i. finally revealed images of the suspects they needed the public's help to

identify reporting from new york were enough were not our take. down a man i was all about the absence of privacy journalists in a squire magazine at his her large a.j. jacobs he's filmed two months of his life with a camera attached easier and says mass surveillance is coming big time well here's what's ahead in his interview for t. later on friday i think that's going to be a problem i actually think you know big brother is a little bit of a problem but i think a little brother is going to be more of a problem but by that i mean other people will be videotaping you all the time so you do something embarrassing someone else is going to be videotaped and put on you tube and we'll be humiliated you know you won't be able to slip on the banana peel you know anymore without it going on the you tube this is what we're going to be doing we're all of our lives are going to be on the record so we're all going to be like politicians whatever we say will be recorded.

now there has been a leak at the international space station but nasa says there is no danger to the crew artesian thomas is the man to talk to about this case where much for joining us here in the studio you know obviously a lot about nasa and the ice has so tell us what's happening there exactly i mean apparently they saw some flakes there but how serious is the problem exactly well of thursday on may ninth the astronauts were you know reviewing the space station and what do they see if they see these white crystal flakes dissipating into the vacuum of space now from the area where they saw this coming from they determined that it was a coolant leak specifically an ammonia type of wind in the to be system. system that they've had problems with in the past now it is something that they're looking at it is pretty serious but nasa says that astronauts are not in danger at this time now in order to fix it there's a couple things they can do they can shut the system down they can go to a backup systems or redundancies they can also do

a spacewalk but the problem is that it takes to nasa astronauts to do a spacewalk of this. leaving on tuesday so if they're going to do it they have to do it pretty quick pretty quickly that's sure well you mentioned that the flight controllers noticed that but that happened in two thousand and six right and the problem has been fixed ever since so which means i mean it's not really that big of a deal or was well it is a big deal because what this system does is it cools the electronics that deal with the big solar arrays which provide power to the space station so if this doesn't get fixed if something goes wrong there could be some serious consequences but in two thousand and six you mentioned they did notice a problem with this same thing it was fixed in two thousand and eleven they went up with the idea to top it off and then periodically top off this ammonia leak as they needed but then it developed more problems pretty rapidly they did a spacewalk they fix the problem there's no idea now they don't know if this current problem is still part of the same problem or if it's a different problem with the same system yeah because you can go on patching up

things in there all the time and maybe the problem something else as you mentioned to resemble the eye it says is twelve years old i don't know in space terms whether that's really old or now it is all in fact if you think about cars here on earth or even the laptop computers most of us have replaced our laptops two or three times in that period of space but even faster than they have to expect with the space station is built on a truss system and then some pressurized compartments and pressurized components it's constantly being upgraded constantly being repaired in fact they have what are called orbital repair units which are already out there like spare parts and is also being used nonstop nonstop right but they do have regular repairs but you have to think about this space is an incredibly extreme environment so you're constantly having you know little meteor showers that they have to avoid pieces of space junk so they're always repairing but they also have backup plans and backup systems and they can also very even have a lifeboat the soyuz capsule as kind of an escape pod if you will so they're they're trained for this and you don't want to get in there on for scene circumstances exactly you don't want to see that space is routine they do have the

ability to grade and keep up with the technology there and i just you know whatever is thrown their way while sean thanks very much indeed for putting it all in perspective for us here and giving some insight on what the problem as and how we could possibly deal with it that was thomas talking to me in studio. and up next we've got peter lavelle's who rob their sleeves for some more crossed on this day with us. you know i've been asked a few times if i believe in conspiracy theories which is kind of an odd question i mean just in general believe in conspiracy theories like all of them even the ones that contradict each other i mean j.f.k. could have been killed by the mob the cia the k.g.b. and various secret societies at the same time or could he have been know what you

just declare themselves official conspiracy theories that's silly obviously it is good to just go around fishing for evil plots to explain every situation the mainstream media sure does lie a lot but i think they're telling the truth about that whole sky being blue thing but on the other hand if you never question what the glowing box in your house tells you that just makes you a sucker the kind of sucker who bought that there were magical mysterious invisible weapons of mass destruction in iraq and you know what in all honesty there's actually been real evil conspiracies that have been exposed like the tuskegee experiment and the fascist coup attempt against president roosevelt in one nine hundred thirty s. over all people think it's pearcey theories are matter of belief but actually they're completely a matter of facts and there's a lot of good evidence to support a conspiracy and good arguments that maybe you should consider it but if someone tells you the president is actually a rip tell him from the cosmos you might want to just stay away from that one but that's just my opinion.

the a. leg. oh listen.

hello and welcome to cross talk where all things considered i'm peter lavelle global gun control the u.n. has passed the arms trade treaty to regulate the international conventional weapons business supporters of the treaty claim it is a positive first step to tame an industry because over a half a million people a year opponents are dismissive they say the treaty is not balanced and favors the interest of arms exporting states. across the uk the arms trade treaty i'm joined by geoffrey ingersoll in new york he is a defense reporter with business insider in washington with.