a presidential forum is up to progress on syria's chemical disarmament. sad to discuss the elimination of toxic arsenal the ongoing conflict and the prospects. it's very and it's hard to tell right now exactly how long will be down here especially easy to promise but hard to deliver the closure of guantanamo is as elusive as it is up twelve years is that tara jail reports from inside future it may face. a tax haven on the take britain sends millions of pounds to prop up a rocky outcrop taxpayers at home or in the dark about who gets it and why also the . rest of the outskirts of moscow police have been stumping down on illegal

immigration every friday they go on accommodation places of work looking for illegal immigrants it's friday morning and we go in with the police one of those rights. from a studio center in moscow this is r.t. with international news and comment russia's president has praised the cooperation between syrian authorities and the chemical weapons watchdog in a phone conversation with the syrian leader that became the first head of a un security council member state in years to personally talk to bashar assad more information who's reported from the water own country several times earlier explain the significance of the phone call this is very significant in terms of of course from russia and from the u.n. security council to show support for all the mission that the syrian forces are now undertake. and the crisis in the country and mostly focused on the chemical

arsenal of syria the demolition of the chemical weapons of syria but also another important topic was geneva two peace talks that despite some skepticism is considered by many as important and crucial to the we saw peacefully the fact of crisis in syria as they say it takes two to tango and this is where the main obstacle in solving the syrian crisis lies and has been lined since the beginning since the conflict started because syrian opposition has repeatedly rejected any dialogue with syrian car into forty's with president assad personally saying that they will never talk to him and they will never come back to dialogue. to he goes and. bashar assad easily determine president office here is too so it is

quite. bad luck right now so we actually heard some opposition factions saying that they are now ready but i've been to syria many times including held rebel held territories and i've seen that the opposition is very much divided and sometimes fractions that are fighting president bashar assad in syria are not doing connected to each other they don't even know bout that child is so it's like even if we're hearing from one fraction but. now ready it doesn't necessarily mean unfortunately that all their position all the forces are now ready for dialogue and this is why it's quite difficult at this time to talk about any peace between the warring sides. they hold key positions in the world's biggest military and they want to guantanamo prison closed thirty eight of united states' most respected retired generals and admirals want the senate to take immediate steps despite pressure and promises the jails still reach its twelfth anniversary punctuated by

torture and hunger strikes along the way well almost eight hundred inmates have gone through guantanamo but only seven have been tried and convicted washington says the rest are too dangerous to release but analysts say the evidence against them is speculative and as for the hot potato getting it closed well both congress and the president blame each other even though barack obama has full authority to shut it and then there's the cost which is tripled in just five months according to estimates keeping one inmate costs an astounding two and a half million dollars a year roughly one hundred times more than the average mainland prisoner and the stars are chicken and now reports on the tension centers future. when it comes to this prison the numbers speak for themselves since being set up after the attacks of nine eleven a total of seven hundred seventy nine detainee's have been held at guantanamo today

one hundred sixty four people remain over half of them have been long cleared for release but remain locked up a total of six people is currently under trial alleged prisoners of war brought here since two thousand and two removed from the battlefield of america's ever expanding war on terror it's both the policy of the u.s. not to hold anyone longer than necessary but we also know that whenever we release someone we assume a richness over a period of more than a decade the majority of detainees held here have been set free if the men of guantanamo are really these superhuman monsters you know the worst of the worst quote dick cheney. they would have been women. most of those still kept locked up have not been charged and are being held indefinitely what sort of a black hole of the weak system where the president of the united states simply refuses to say the innocent but u.s. officials say the law of war remains behind this barbed wire the idea that in

a war when you capture folks you as the capturing authority are permitted to hold people during the duration of hostilities. when hostilities and or if there's no longer any purpose legitimate purpose to to hold them then they must be released a tiny problem the war on terror has no geographic borders with men once held here repeat treated to a wide array of countries. who are only specific to guantanamo you can't even you couldn't even the case on the u.s. mainland because it would be unconstitutional and illegal the war on terror also has no end in sight and national security is a popular excuse to simply ignore the law. the spite the rhetoric really isn't about national security or prisoners being so dangerous that they can't possibly be released and that can't be true after being locked up the legal process if any moves at a glacial pace in two thousand and twelve five detainees were transferred to had

completed their military commission sentence two were court ordered released. detainees have been repatriated and one was a suicide over the years countless detainee claims of mistreatment and abuse dozens of suicide attempts mass hunger strikes lost patience and hope just this year the majority of the prison population refused to eat for six months straight only to be force fed the. mandate that we have is being able to provide adequate nutrition to preserve life washington has appointed a new envoy to close a camp that is a dark spot on america's image this comes after a mass hunger strike that returned the world's attention to the place that some have dubbed the gulag of our times even if close to it seems. to remain a stage in u.s. history forever it's very easy to end one ton of. you release the men that you're not prosecuting. and as you said only six men are being prosecuted right now the

military prosecutor has made clear that he intends to prosecute a few more but he's also made clear that it won't be more than a few more direct obama promised to close the notorious facility on day one of his presidency he's now in his second term it's only a president who can do it and the idea that it's you know that it's congress's fault is just not correct it is the president the top holding these men in detention some president has to come in and this. it's hard to tell right now exactly how long will be down here doing this mission. or what and stacy churkin are artsy guantanamo bay cuba. more than half of guantanamo prisoners a yemeni nationals and for them release from prison may not mean the end of their misfortunes the u.s.

and yemen to discussing plans to build a new center to house inmates after their release and it's already been labeled as guantanamo too well our correspondent lisa coming off has just returned from yemen where she met relatives of some of the detainees and shared her experiences with me . it's difficult to stay positive about these detainees coming home when you've been waiting as long as over a decade as was the case with some of the families who we've met now yemen is in a specific different situation for a variety of reasons than other countries more than half of the remaining detainees are you have many citizens fifty six of them have been cleared for release to get sent back from guantanamo not a single one has come home and in fact the last citizen to return to the country came home in a body back in twenty twelve and that is the fate that some of the families that we met with. could be in store for or for some of their loved ones one of the fathers that we met said that his son told them everything was going well and then basically found out through news reports that his son was participating in quite ill from the hunger strike which we have covered here at r t interesting enough

there were reports of a similar detention center being set up in yemen do you read into right so basically they get to government has been pushing for years now for a so-called rehabilitation facility which would basically take these detainees help them adjust to society and make sure that they don't rejoined with terrorist networks which is the main concern in the united states what we're learning now is that the united states and yemen actually had secret talks in rome about this proposed facility but there's very little details that have emerged and the issue really boils down to trust and money yemen has tried to use this as a political issue to get more funding from the united states in the past so the u.s. isn't necessarily willing to foot the bill actually the funding issue something that we spoke to with yemen's human rights minister this course of money we want. to integrate into society to. give. the i'm sure that they have. any order here toward the yemeni government because they have the

feeling that we neglected them since a long long time and just briefly it's perhaps that guantanamo could actually be closed i absolutely would not read into about it at all where u.s. official. the key concern isn't the difficulty of reintegrating these former detainees into society it's the concern that these detainees will reintegrate into al qaeda networks and it's not a completely not valid one we have to remember that al qaeda in the arabian peninsula was founded by former guantanamo detainees so it's certainly a valid concern this is going to be such a long way off i mean if we waited this long for it to close unfortunately i don't think it's going to be sped up just because of this idea. is what is more interviews with former prisoners and in depth coverage of the international pressure to close the facility. in britain you're never far from treating a top of the shoulder from the tax man but not everywhere. jurisdiction gets forced

to fund the crown's coffers in fact to can be quite the opposite to. such a place have you ever heard of care. ok. not ever heard of pick karen. pick an island or yes. i think of the pacific so i. thought well did you know that part of your taxes go to that island. have you ever heard of pitcairn. if you've never heard of pitcairn and you're an e.u. citizen it might be well worth knowing for that's where part of your taxes are go a. bit as one of britain's overseas territories a small island in the south pacific with a total population of about fifty people now locals don't pay taxes of the island's main source of income include tourism and postage stamps but it's still heavily

reliant on british e.u. eight well let's break down the numbers here in the ninth european development fund or e.t.f. received two million euros in a allocated for infrastructure building in the tempi v.f.p. it can receive two point four million that's a total. four point four million in thirteen years about six thousand eight hundred euros per person per year but that's not all earlier this year it emerged that the u.k. had sent about ten million pounds over four years to proponents of development aid reiterate the importance of maintaining quote solidarity and peace in developing nations and the european commission has indicated its attention to strengthen the focus of the e.t.f. on the world's poorest countries but details are scarce on how that assessment of allocation will be done but critics in the e.u. well particularly in the u.k. have long been voicing their disapproval on the government's money management which is essentially protecting what's given to others while slashing budgets for those

at home now a two thousand and twelve you gov survey says that fifty four percent of the british public think that the british government should not be giving very much overseas eight regardless of what public opinion surveys say for now the status quo remains in place reporting from london i'm tess are cilia. british m.p. go free blum told us what he thinks is behind these shadowy spending all about politics geopolitics influence money but who's actually getting this who's dealing here who's the big that there's no way trail they really seem to know what's going on nobody knows why the money goes there and it's absolutely a national it's a national disgrace it's a european national disgrace but of course what they're doing is buying influence if you go down to those french polynesian islands and you could buy the entire town council for a few hundred euros and then you could rate their fishing waters and i think you'll

find this is what it's all about. stay with us. as we tell you why british people are paying up for a rookie crop on the other side of the planet. the torch is on its epic journey to such a. one hundred twenty three days. in the cities of russia. really fourteen thousand people or sixty thousand. in a record setting trip. on our. list

please please please. r.t. dot com is launching a special project to mark the appalling scale of violence in iraq. we want you to know. when planning a trip to catch you should consider sorting out your exit visa before you go the french footballer has been held virtually captive by the authorities in cattle for more than a year on able to see his wife and daughter is because he tried to sue his club for not getting paid the international federation of professional football is campaigning for his release andrew southcott from the group joins me now so. from

what i understand these exit visas are supposed to be sorted by the employer in this case who's to blame is it the football club or the actual qatari authorities. well we're in a situation very simply where. it is making the requests for the exit visa from his club now a claim from the player who we are supporting wholeheartedly at the moment and so we are of course interested in seeing the documentation as this case on falls is that's he is in a position where he wants to sue his club for nearly two years of lost wages but so the club and so we are looking at them squarely right now together with qatar in the sense that of course there is a very controversial kafala sponsorship system in place which it prevents foreign workers from leaving the country on this that ploy is so they can leave we are looking at the club right now the appeal is against them they have to grant him the

release by giving him an exit visa. is very clear what we want to see happen here is that the player is released from the country is allowed to go back to france or wherever he might choose while retaining his legal rights to fight for his last salary in the qatari courts that's what we want that's what we can binding for a new are campaigning for him offering him support he's even spoken to president all land about this so he got any support from him to that help well look where it welcoming all support right now because clearly this is a groundswell of support and emotion around this issue and it's understandable because it's been gathering momentum for a long time now you have to look at the fact that back in february we were hearing about the case in the middle of last year and he took the claim to a qatari court and now here we are in november he's been without pay for two years we're in a situation where we understand that he's also had to act in this matter and that includes the fact that he sold off positions that he will be evicted from his home

in a matter of days and their full we have offered through our hardship fund here if you broke the opportunity for him at the very least while we help to try and resolve this situation. that he at least somewhere to live sustain a hotel or whatever the case may be for him his wife and his two daughters we are also very mindful of the fact that he has a very fragile mental state right now it's a precarious situation we're deeply concerned and so we are asking for the international football community to unite support fifth pro this is just one player but it's one of sixty thousand we represent around the world and we want him released that we release now presumably this is of interest to fee for what sort of reaction have you had from that well for you for let's let's be honest here we've been at the highest levels of government and within football authorities this is already gone right to the top and it's violence that's out of place now we're of course it's on everyone's lips site here baloney and today himself has written

begging for help from two famous names in the in the world going to be all in it didn't sit down both of them were ambassadors. twenty twenty two world cup bid and he's asking them now to join the fight to help him at least leave the country well it's very sense quickly talk about the impact on the world cup bid because of here is another example his case is another example of how foreign workers are treated there in qatar now r.t. we've already highlighted the abuses of construction starfall knows world cup projects on their basic criteria on conditions that world cup hosts are actually supposed to meet. yes well we understand that this is but a drop in the ocean we we clearly sympathize and understand the conditions which of course and we've lead on this as well when possible and we have people traveling through the region at times and know this situation intimately of course we have

our own representative and delegation which is planning to visit this month and hopefully the situation will be resolved before we arrive but certainly will be looking to force the issue of peace extraction from qatar zaki bellamy's at least when we are in town but we also understand that this goes much deeper that not only are we talking about sahiba alinea but many coaches many footballers many human beings people working foreigners who are there of course that whether working on world cup stadia building or not that the kafala sponsorship system is making it difficult for them at times and certainly we want to help. and make that an example for the world to follow us out here from the international federation of professional footballers live on r.t. thank you very much indeed for your thoughts and for joining us you're welcome. the pope's taking on the godfather in a corruption crusade investigating. the catholic church.

pressure is growing on ukraine over the potential agreements which will bring it closer to the e.u. the european parliament nelson is that if kiev does not meet key demands in the

next few weeks the deal will be put off for several years one of the main conditions is that ukrainian authorities allow the jailed former prime minister yulia timoshenko to leave the country for medical treatment let's get the thoughts now from martin mccauley an expert on eastern europe at me university of london what do you make of the deadline to put off any further chances for years if it doesn't get what it wants now. whether up the upping the ante because there was an attempt in the ukrainian parliament yesterday to put forward a motion which of past would've in fact allowed to show you to leave jail and possibly go to germany for medical treatment and the motion was indeed they didn't agree on the text so therefore that was held up so therefore the e.u. is very disappointed looking forward to signing the agreement will you on the twenty eighth of november twenty eighth of november that's coming very very shortly

what has happened is that president putin of russia has in fact of. playing something which we don't know he's talked to young college pretty college and would appear that young college is wavering now and ukraine isn't certain to sign the agreement so in a way it's not too sure which way to go east or west what will be the consequences if it does go west the consequences from russia. well russia says it's going to ban ukrainian chocolate and ukraine say they're going to buy less less russian gas and eventually buy new russian gas and so on but it doesn't that doesn't make much sense because if you look geographically the two countries are side one another they border one another it's normal to trade it would be up for a normal to have extensive trade between these two countries but what president putin wants is to set up

a customs union which would consist of russia ukraine. and various other countries so that this would be a country of the e.u. and he would see it as a defeat if ukraine signed this decision agreement because it's also considering signing it i mean it's opted out and that would be the first step in most people's minds and to the ukraine joining the e.u. and that is a very serious move from the from russia's point of view but of course economists say ukraine is in effect bankruptcy you wonder why the e.u. would want it on their books about using the term a shank issue or maybe as a way of i get out clause in effect to to lay the membership of ukraine. well they're saying that ukraine just reform its electoral system the justice system must be reformed and you quote quite a list so therefore of the e.u.

the e.u. perhaps it is world. i think it's not the position to welcome your members and it certainly has no largess. so therefore they're looking at your crane upping the ante and making these conditions right you have to meet those conditions by virtue of the twenty eight if you don't sign a deal used in the twenty's then goodbye for years nobody really believes that because if you don't sign this. then the start negotiating with the future and the european union is in deep trouble economically and politically it's gridlock and the key country of course is germany. germany will welcome another e.u. member whose question once dragged out the answer is no long term yes but in the short term they have their doubts martin really good to talk to you thank you so much for joining us live from london model mccourty expert in eastern europe in eastern europe former university of london thanks so much. three attacks targeting shiite worshipers i'm sorry we want to do that story will perhaps

do that a little bit later in the meantime global powers are tantalizingly close to a nuclear deal with iran well it's a part our program looks at israel's role after the break stay with us for that. you know i love these rare moments where i actually have something that really sounds positive to share with you the f.d.a. is working to ban partially hydrogenated oils which are the leading source of trance fats and foods and possibly the cause of up to twenty thousand heart attacks per year across the usa according to f.d.a. commissioner margaret hamburg as you know i would like the chemicals in my food kept to a minimum but the thing is the people at the f.d.a. are surely aware of all the hormones in beef and jim o's being produced why does the span have such a very narrow narrow focus in fact when you look at all the things that americans

consume smoke use that to swear health some get the violent band hammer while others are completely tolerated if you ever talk to hardcore marijuana smoker they'll tell you but dude weed is better for you than beer and that's the legal man and they kind of have a point i think there is this is one of those rare instances where a balance position is it really a good idea well the country could go the libertarian route and let it be everything be legal let people make their own choices or do what i think would be much much better actually really ban all the things that are destructive to our health both of these paths have positive and negative effects but they are a lot better than our current plan of bans some harmful things for some reason and allow other harmful things because while they lobby better but that's just my opinion. this is the media leave us so we leave the media. potions to cure the. party

there's a bill. for shoes that no one is asking with to get that you deserve answers from. politics only on our team. come on the welcome to worlds apart the recent rapprochement between iran and the united states may potentially put to rest one of the most toxic and the trees in more than geopolitics a possibility that would arguably benefit many peace loving nations many but not israel a country that seems to be increasingly constable leaving under what it calls an existential threat why is this back to war sweeter than the chance of peace well to discuss that i'm knowledge joined by.