pressing for peace in syria u.k. prime minister david cameron meets president putin in sochi looking to promote a transitional government in the war torn country. general election campaigning wraps up in pakistan ahead of a milestone democratic vote that's already been dubbed one of the deadliest in the country's history. of this world technical problems the crew of the international space station prepare for a space walk to deal with the leaky cooling system. they were going to just joined us. this friday evening in moscow and our top story u.k.

prime minister david cameron and russian president vladimir putin of russia path to peace in war torn syria trying to bridge their differences on the issue. has been following the talks at the black sea resort city of sochi. literally seventy two hours after the u.s. state secretary john kerry met the russian president and the russian foreign minister in moscow david cameron the british prime minister came over to the city of sochi the whole city of the twenty fourteen winter olympics that's where the russian president will be meeting most of his international callie's over the coming months and the biggest intrigue of this meeting here in sochi was whether david cameron would sing to the same to you as john kerry did in moscow now after months of harsh criticism coming from russia towards the west for taking one side in the syrian conflict that is the side of the syrian rebels even pushing for arming the syrian rebels and providing them with military training and even possibly intervening into the conflict by force now experts have said that after

the meeting and most call the stances of the both sides have somewhat softened the result of the meeting in moscow was the international conference to be called on by the end of this month which will see hopefully see both the members of the syrian opposition and the syrian government at the same negotiation table to in an attempt to find a peaceful solution to the conflict we heard here in sochi from david cameron who said that while u.k. acknowledges the fact that this is the syrian people who must choose their new government that's why he is strongly supportive of the international conference by the end of this month secret that we have had differing views on how best to handle the situation but we share fundamental aims to end the conflict to stop syria fragmenting let the syrian people choose who governs and to prevent the growth of violent extremists so i strongly support the conference that mr lavrov for mr kerry

agreed this week to deliver a political solution a solution which has a transitional government based on the consent of the syrian people as a whole the latest events of the last three days of talks between washington moscow and london have. clearly given us a sign that there may be a things to come but there may be some interesting things to come in terms of the syrian conflict and it's interesting to see whether this international meeting by the end of this month can actually do something to resolve the crisis in peaceful way but definitely the fact that the rhetoric has been softening is a major breakthrough on the syrian conflict on the stances about the syrian conflict from the major international players but britain and russia's efforts to work together to stop the violence in syria being complicated person toxic allegations london remains insistent that the syrian government has very likely used chemical weapons while suggesting the rebels didn't i was despite a recent u.n. probe revealing evidence indicating opposition forces could have used us and with

the u.k. pushing to lift an arms embargo on syria the talks are already faced with many potential stumbling blocks as artists are first found out 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 as yet they've reached any conclusions as to whether either side has indeed use chemical weapons now the one day talk is taking place at a time when those calls for some form of diplomatic progress to be made in place sight again to be very much focused on that the prime minister's spokesman saying that 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 the past when it comes to the topic of syria i would urge the russians and the russian government even at this late stage to look very carefully at why it

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 to say coming at a time when the u.k. for being 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 a face to the syrian regime a lot of concern from some here in the country and indeed internationally as to who exactly would constitute the legitimate 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 cremated 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 well you crazy idea of unleashing a flow of lethal aid to the syrian opposition is fueling fears that the arms may fall into the wrong hands with many experts pointing out that al qaeda linked groups have growing influence that russian european politics professor richard quest says the rebels in syria are radicalizing in the west has only been making the situation worse. 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 they 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 somebody in the middle and this is now being squeezed out in part of the fault of the policy of the west and 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 two days are the first limiting so that somehow or other that some sort of negotiated settlement could emerge out of this because syria's very difficult libyan it's very difficult. you have a very powerful stable forces internally which are beginning now to find trying to find a path to a post conflict situation and i hope that this visit today of david camm going with you asher and with putin can begin to facilitate this sort of path 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. there's russia the u.k. seek a common approach to ending the syrian conflict the u.s. has taken a step back in its support of the country's opposition we examine why washington

seems no more reluctant to use force in the region and the increasing radical threat that one of those looking to oust president assad although much more coming up than just after the break. but next election campaigning in pakistan may be done and dusted but deadly bomb blasts a striking terror across the rest of nation on the eve of the parliament poll there a motorbike stuff with explosives detonated near a political party offices in the country's north has killed at least four wounded many others it's the latest in a string of terrorist attacks ahead of the vote which marks pakistan's first democratic transition is a brief insight than into the top positions on the ballot list one of the front runners is the ruling socialist orientated pakistan people's party which was founded and so far led by the powerful bhutto family however they are expected to be over by the pakistan and headed by a two term former prime minister now as sharif he is looking to score points by turning his back on washington and its war on terror in the region and the

darkhorse to also paying the anti us cards that is cricket legend turned politician an anti drone activist in run come with his movement for justice or the p.t.i. supported by pakistan's military of course policy caffein off went to pakistan to see how the country's been approaching this landmark election. 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 recent 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 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 still target us but islam is parties have been targeted to 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 iron. party's. 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 a start it's

a. actions aren't politicians make promises they get boots. and then they forget everything 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 for 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 ridden a wave of popularity among younger voters with its 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 islamabad pakistan. was gets more notice is now the situation in pakistan go to washington with national security specialist patricia de janeiro patricia hi thanks

for being with us we've seen a huge amount of violence in the build up to this election with that kind of but is it even possible to hold a fair and decent election that's valid it's always. it's always a really difficult in these situations to hold a fair election but you know i think we have to keep our eye on the ball here and that is this idea that you know pakistan is going through their first transition from from a civilian government to a new civilian government. so we have to try to support the part of the movement as best we can these things are very tough though you know we saw the same thing in afghanistan with the taliban threatening and they're you know as we're seeing they're very very serious about these threats and and it's difficult for people that don't have a lot of. ability new or ability around with so many threats going on of. but how much sway does the pressure from the taliban have here this time. how was

it seems to me that they're being a bit more successful there than they have been in afghanistan at least in afghanistan or was it was kind of confined to a few provinces. it is actually the case in pakistan as a while but they are very very deadly and they don't have the same military. protection for the people that it seems that was present and are that has been present in some other countries that are going through the same thing including iraq two of them i contend the policies didn't even make it onto the taliban's block list ways that. well it seems to me that you know the terms are from the taliban are basically against democracy and against parties that are more secular but it seems to me is well then there are other things going on within the context of these attacks and that that is including you know those who are just

trying to take advantage of targeting a particular party or a particular individuals that they're not there you know they don't want to support so they're there piggybacking so to speak no nos sharif is expected to lead in the polls is a pledge to end. the country's cooperation in america's war on terror how is that going to affect the war on terror as far as pakistan is concerned the war on terror . how well i think we know as as the u.s. need to start rethinking our own strategy on our war on terror maybe this is a good time for us to decide to pull back a bit on how freely or using drone strikes and continuing to do that in the area. you know pakistan the individuals need to take firm control of their own future and you know they seem to you know the feedback that you get from most individuals there is that they're suffering from this war on terror so i think you know former

prime minister in the future mr sharif will get quite a bit of support for pulling back from the americans in this case as well a big bone of contention we just touched on it there is the drone strikes no pakistani cooled is ruled it illegal on its territory was not going to make any difference as far as the u.s. is concerned. it's very difficult always to come against the u.s. military and particularly. since they are operating from afghanistan which you know there are currently having skirmishes on the border between off afghans and pakistans as well so you know they're really going to have to negotiate with the u.s. and find different ways to get them to stop the flying of these drone strikes that's going to be very very difficult for them to physically be able to stop them other than large scale negotiations that really other types of pressure ok did you know international security specialist thanks for taking the time to be with us on o.t. appreciated. my pleasure of. ok right now as we've heard that american drone

strikes a major issue in the country's election campaign in a huge hurdle in relations between pakistan and the u.s. have been declared illegal by a pakistani court now according to washington they used to wipe out al qaida and taliban fighters but pakistan planes and scores of civilian deaths. you can have your say on the drone wars that are ongoing and you'll find a poll they on the matter telling us about it the vast majority of you see the drone strikes as nothing but a war crime if you can say slightly under ten percent of this i think the operations gave mixed results but allow the pakistani government to kill its enemies at minimal cost less if you consider drones the only option for fighting extremism in remote areas and finally very few just five percent believe that they are fundamentally justified but need to be more precise thanks to voting still plenty of time to make that change throughout the evening as well i'm kevin allen thanks for being with us tonight on r t coming up the international space station springs a leak the money is pouring from the i assessed the first time. all the facts and

figures on the two decade old space mission then right after this break. choose your language. we can with. the consensus. choose the opinions that immigrate to. choose the stories go to. choose.

wealthy british. markets. find out what's really happening to the global economy for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines two kinds of reports on our t.v. . critic chuck hagel hasn't ruled out military action against syria but stressed that a political solution is more viable the pentagon chief added that the country's collapse is becoming an increasingly real possibility with the war there becoming more sectarian and explains next washington remains reluctant to get further involved in the conflict. 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 all such 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 veil 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 did not mention or means the rebels he said this turkey jerry 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 a post to sort of forward 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 or arms the messages 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. online moscow's night sky lit up with some amazing pyrotechnics last night because she could go out on the exhibit does leave victory day firework display which marred sixty eight years since the defeat of nazi germany also got some really moving water but election veterans themselves the two and also just a click away will be new up to the first row seat to watch a recount a solar eclipse if you missed it this time around the loans expected to visit again in about twenty years so why not catch it out si dot com instead more pictures available right now. now talk of things in space the international space station sprung a leak the sixth one crew reported to ground control on thursday when white flakes were seen escaping from the structure russian and american experts are meeting to try to troubleshoot what one flight directors called

a very serious defect earlier r.t. shaun thomas told my colleague more about this ongoing orbital mission. 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 may ninth 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 went in the to be system. system that they have 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 backup systems or redundancies they can also do a spacewalk but the problem is that it takes two nasa astronauts to do a spacewalk of this specific type right one of the nasa astronauts is leaving on.

pretty quick what this system does is it cools the electronics then to 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 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 in the 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 we'll keep you posted on the developments there as we get more as well in a brief today the u.k. says it will remove normal senshi embassy stuff from libya's capital tripoli the city see mounting political uncertainty of violence over recent months including a car bomb attack on france's embassy britain's announcement comes just hours after a bomb targeted a police station in the eastern city of benghazi where two similar attacks are taking place this month. the world news headlines rescues have found another

survivor amazing story this one the duck garment factory rubble the woman survives seventeen days without food or water trapped under the debris where more than a thousand others die it comes as local authorities are forced to carry a d.n.a. test on decaying bodies still being extracted from the devastated factory building . thousands have gathered in belgrade to protest the handover of serbian territory to kosovo authorities it comes as the two governments agreed a brussels brokered treaty to normalize regional relations and also pave the way to for serbia's even session but the group at least fifty thousand ethnic serbs in the course of a rule in a region prone to ethnic strife belgrade though remains adamant in its refusal to recognize costco's an independent state. programs continue thanks be with us i'll be martin examines next where the high tech revolution could lead mankind of the near future laces edition of breaking the set next.

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 very 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 isn't could 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 a 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 yeah you might want to just stay away from that one but that's just my opinion. to live on one hundred thirty three bucks a month for food i should try it because you know how fabulous bad luck i got so. i mean the town i believe that i'm still really knows. and we're all for it so personally. it's. the worst for delivering the white house or the.

radio guy for minestrone. soup did you ever seen anything like that i'm still. up guys i'm out he might welcome a break in the set so about a month from now israel will host its annual presidential conference the event will comedy at least five thousand people including some big names like bill clinton tony blair even barbra streisand but there is one famous academic will not be in attendance cambridge university stephen hawking in a letter the organizer of the of the conference talking stated and i accepted the invitation to the conference with the intention that this would not only allow me to express my opinion on the prospects for peace settlement but also because it would allow me to lecture on the west bank however i received a number of emails from palestinian academics there your nana's that i should respect the boycott and in view of all this i must withdraw from the conference had

i attended i would have stated my opinion that the policy of the present israeli government is likely to lead to disaster yet the spite criticism from israeli leaders and academics hawking has come forward stating that he will be boycotting this procedures conference to protest israel's occupation of palestine wow i wish more famous intellectuals would take such a bold standard. so today i want to give kudos to hawking for doing what most people in the us spotlight are too afraid to do but hey he is one of the most intelligent does in the world so maybe we should all take a cue. it's time to break the set. or the to. do you ever seen anything like. the digital space of networks social media and technology have revolutionized communication and interaction worldwide however.