u.k. foreign office deletes a tweet claiming british experts have found the nerve agent used in the scruple poisoning case that was produced in russia as the top story tonight. as the eve rejects russia's proposal for a joint investigation into the attack on the former spy and his daughter claiming that moscow refused to cooperate with the. head to russia turkey and iran agreed in a joint effort to rebuild syria earlier on today but there's a warning to out from them about militant attempts to potentially sabotage the peace process with chemical attacks. by the light from moscow it's artie's news at nine with me kevin and first more

developments today in the script to tell you about it's a case of now you see it now you don't on twitter as the british foreign office is early deleted a tweet today saying experts that british porton down had confirmed the nerve agent used in this crippled poisoning case was produced in russia tweets gone it's a move that not gone unnoticed by others online with some saying it is a damage limitation exercise maybe and this is reports from westminster for us. the foreign office has deleted a tweet that it had initially posted on march twenty second which read that analysis by world leading experts of the laboratory at porton down made clear that this was a military grade novacek nerve agent produced in russia now a couple of days before that boris johnson the u.k. foreign secretary also said that there is no doubt that russia was behind what happened you argue there they're sure of. the chalk in russia

how did you manage to find it out so quickly but when i look at the the evidence from the people whom important they were absolutely categorical and i asked the guy so i said are you sure and he said as they dodged well it seems that all of that was going well until yesterday when the chief executive of porton down came out and said that not only were the scientists not able to prove that the nerve agent came from russia but generally speaking they didn't know what the source was we have not verified the for say source but we provided the scientific information to the government but you have not been able to establish porton down that this was made in russia as i said it's our job to provide eat you know the scientific evidence that identifies for the particular narrow feature is that it's not our job to see where actually was manufactured so to be clear you will not tell you to look cool

down to say where it is from we haven't yet been able to do that at the same time the foreign office is saying everything is still the way it was and nothing is inconsistent they really have they've said quote the foreign secretary was making clear that porton down were sure it was another charkha point they have reinforced what the foreign secretary said then and what porton down have said recently is fully consistent with what we have said throughout it is russia that is putting forward multiple versions of events and obfuscating the truth and. quote well suffice it to see that on social media things are not so clear to anybody who has been following this and there have been quite a few tweets posted here in the u.k. calling for the resignation of boris johnson we also know that the labor party has challenged the u.k. foreign secretary to explain himself in the situation boris johnson has serious questions to answer he claimed on german television this was a russian produced nerve agent porton down then examined it and said all they

claimed to have to fight was an overture they couldn't say where it came from well now it remains to be seen whether or not boris johnson is going to be answering any of those questions given the vigorous ness with which accusations against russia have flown very early on in this case pretty much as soon as the name of the man poisoned her paul came out into the spotlight well there has been a further tweet from johnson who's getting a response on twitter he's suggesting jeremy corbyn the labor party leader is siding with russia were at least twenty eight countries are back in london and have expelled russian diplomats in the wake of this crippled cases subquestion the u.k.'s measures australia is one country to do that or stresses it was pressured to follow the trend when the situation gets tough you have to keep channels open the u.k. ambassador to austria issued a demarche on wednesday in order to encourage us to take specific measures on

saturday to demolish was repeated on monday while i was in kosovo the chancellor and i spoke over the phone about our position which is now public it's our tradition to bring people together especially in difficult situations the a human time has rejected a draft proposal by russia today for a joint investigation a meeting of the chemical weapons watchdog the o.p.c. double in brussels also accused russia of being unwilling to cooperate in return reporting from the hague or europe correspondent peter all of. well the special meeting of the o.p.c. w. got underway on wednesday with russia's permanent representative tabling a motion to start a inclusive unified in what was called a constructive civilized investigation all this was dismissed out of hand by both the united kingdom eighty years representatives we heard from the british side they referred to russia's proposal as perverted and of the ten to divert attention away

from the investigation they also when told to said that it was in poor taste for russia to put this forward on this day saying it was one year since the chemical weapons attack on a town in syria which left over one hundred people dead the u.k. accuses the assad government of carrying out that attack and dicky's is russia of covering up and stopping an investigation into that he said it was content for the lives that were lost that russia puts this forward on this day he was then followed up by a representative from the european union he said the e.u. didn't agree with russia's proposal for a joint investigation saying if russia hadn't provided information it should have done so the u.k. already he also went on to say that the european union had concerns that russia could pull away from the p.c. w entirely also

a representative from the european commission saying that that laboratory important down wasn't charged with the terminating where the chemical have come from only determining what chemical in. our understanding is that. the rule of the expert there was to identify the type of agent which used the source from time to also what the experts have found they did. agent. for their district. for the rest i would refer you to the marsh european council where you can see the subject of the true position so we didn't get the answers to the many many questions that we may have hoped for out of this me thing we are hoping and should be hearing from the russian permanent representative in just a little while be asking him for more about what unfolded at this meeting here in the hague. columns on the program now he's a professor of chemistry at cornell university hey dave thank you for your time

being with us it came up again today the accusations in the o.p.c. w. meeting that have been called by russia. somehow russia's got undocumented stockpiles of chemical weapons yes it was the o.p.c. w there overseeing the destruction of all the what was it last year really the end of it twenty seventeen year in russia so why did that allegation do you think come to the fore again any thoughts on that personally. actually i don't know why. that's to geo political question that goes outside my dotted line and i chimed in on social media which got me into this mass because of the chemistry that was being claimed to be unique. i basically claimed it was not something that's that's where i enter the picture ok well you're a chemist let's talk about the chemistry saw the vix is starting to make my eyes cross the more i'm hearing about it i mean yesterday we heard that maybe up to two

dozen countries could have produced this kind of thing we heard from. russian military chemists saying well actually the. chemicals that are needed to make nova chocolate's a very specialised thing they could be kind of readily available and a chemist caught in knowing what he's doing with. some good equipment could make these things then you know from other parties no there's not that there's not a chance that could be the case what's the real truth about this novacek a two three four agent with this group of things this group of chemicals as you see it is it something that only a real hard state sponsored thing could do or could more people be able to make it not this together. they're really remarkably simple compounds and they're all very similar so they all have basically a phosphorus group with four groups attach they all have an oxygen and a fluorine which are invariant and so so the trick is to get the other two groups

in and i would say that the ones that i've looked at which is at least a dozen of them they could be made in two or three steps by pretty much any organic chemist in my opinion which is why this notion that it's specialized russian technology i peg the needle on that and said now it's not you might die trying to make that my you would need special equipment to keep yourself from getting a dose of the stuff. there's there's ways to do that for twenty or thirty thousand dollars so there's nothing high tech a bottom except for not killing yourself in the early days of this is well it's interesting to hear you say that put a bit of clarity on it because what you're saying this is becoming more to the fore in the early days as well you're hearing again i'm not a chemist this was some kind of a binary. weapon where you basically joined to the chemicals together and then you could mix it all in sight as you're about to deliver it if you like does that make sense to you that you know that you maybe could have brought one part of it

another part of it separately they just needed to be introduced to each other at the time of delivery to the victim makes sense or not. it makes total sense but i think that technology has been around for years there is a question of how fast the two to pieces react did that presumably was optimized by the chemist developing the nerve agents but it could be something as fancy as some highly technological aerosol spray mechanism that that that i wouldn't be familiar with or as simple as taking two beakers and throwing them on the ground together and having to mix in a paddle and next thing you know noxious faber's are coming off so it doesn't have to be a complex thing next thing we're talking about military grade the accusation is military grade no whatever happened to these guys in souls but it's an awful thing to happen to the public around but immediately it was talk of military grade

military grade strength and though you'd think it was military grade strength again and not a chemist i don't get this stuff works but you'd think it would have had a maybe a stronger effect is an awful effect in a way but it's surely made to kill people here. well again it's back to more common sense than chemistry for me but if you get one molecule of anything on you you're not going to feel an effect unless maybe it's a virus which it's not and and if you got doused in the stuff you'd probably die in a heartbeat and so somewhere in between you you end up with a range of dosages and which you die slowly you die quickly you don't die at all but you're sick or you just have minor side effects on the can it would depend critically on dosage the talking about this. family of these sort of weapons through august like a different mix. some time again mention of this what was it goes in the gallery

five three four was it was then just a five three four what you know about that particular nova choke. i don't know i'm sorry i thought you take on board a similar thing it's a two three four is what i know it doesn't matter and they're also similar and the design looks to me the ones i looked at they're all going to come at the same direction it's a very simple modifications you could almost imagine making one by mistake which would be a catastrophic moment for that chemists but the but they're you know i could give a problem a set in my first year grad course how would you make these and the students would all get it yeah. because you could talk a lot more but unfortunately have a times against a sense of it's much better program called a professor of chemistry called the university. number of russian diplomats who give their reaction to the latest developments in the scruple case today more on but now of course he goes down. there's

a good share of irony in the u.k.'s latest the accusation against russia well you know that russia is refusing to share any information on the scruple case with the u.k. because from the looks of it it seems that now london is a shameless lee boring lines for a most closed book of concerns for weeks russia has been calling on london to disclose at least some information on their investigation into this cripple case and has been criticizing london for their blatant refusal to do so so now it seems london is turning more schools argument against itself so really russia's reaction russia's response to this has been hardly a surprise alba writes if people and you can assure that russia denied the information on the case was not willing to discuss the question and denied any possibility of cooperation this is one hundred percent prism. well this is far from the only thing with heard from the russian diplomats the foreign ministry has said

that basically london is interested in sort of fanning the flames around the whole investigation around the whole assassination attempt a not interested in an actual and transparent investigation itself we've also heard from the foreign ministry that now with all the with the berridge of accusations flying the russia way all trust towards the u.k. in this situation in this scandal has been lost and amid this hail of mutual jabs between russia and the u.k. here in moscow we've heard from the chief of the always see thomas graham he's he's delivering the making a speech at a conference on international security he said that basically the corporation between russia and the u. is vital for european security and i managed to get a few minutes of his time and what i was really interested in is whether or not he

believes the whole six. around the scruple case hampers the said corporation and he told me that he believes that it is not rights when one side doesn't hear the other i'm truly worried about. these bristling. relations between east best. day it seems to work. on a daily basis and that is. a matter of concern i think to all security politicians we need to end to revert to dialogue we need to sit at the same time table we need to again to listen and try to understand development but more empathy towards the security perceptions of each other and i think that is listening trying to understand that's very important if we want to come out after this current mess kalahari logic well judging by the latest events the dialogue the

vital and the most basic trait and tool of diplomacy is something that is seems to be for now impossible to achieve in this situation yeah other responses to the recent developments in this crippled case president putin said that russia is not expecting an apology in your unused room we are not waiting for anything we just expect common sense to eventually prevail so that international relations will not be harmed as much as they are right now. well vladimir putin speaking there to join me to come from chile and anchorage been the yes we there tomorrow has been a guest as well speaking to the president to turkey and iran where the three power brokers of peace in syria met in an effort to try to reduce the ongoing violence in that war torn country now despite the differences over the conflict they it seems have found a way to work together covering what was happening in ankara the. k'nex. the guarantors have met in ankara turkey and there's absolutely no doubt about their

commitment to what the three countries are doing together though they are all still here with their own ambitions stipe aired on keep saying that his country won't tolerate the armed kurdish militias in northern syria so the so-called all of french military options well continue no matter what his son rouhani the iranian leader says that external powers though he did specifically mention the u.s. and israel are trying to use the terrorists on the ground in syria to reach some of their always goals lot of approved and proudly speaks about the russian efforts to evacuate eastern ghouta which as we understand has paid off with the evacuation of more than one hundred fifty thousand civilians and some of the rebels too although perhaps the most important point that was made by the russian president was that

moscow is in possession of some intelligence that points to some radical splatting to destroy the road towards peace with a chemical weapons attack because through options for the levy on joint strategic goal is to eliminate the terrorists who keep trying to destabilize the situation on the ground and sabotage the peace process they are doing this in every way possible we have obtained undeniable evidence of plan provocation by the militants with the use of chemical agents and then came a little surprise for mr aired on there were no questions planned but the turkish leader encouraged the audience to start asking them and then we heard the one that the journalists had been expecting for two days about america being back and forth over their future role in syria and here's what i mean by that will become another syria like very soon. very soon very soon we're coming out of saudi arabia. is very

interested no decision and i said well if you want to say maybe you can have to pay we are in syria fight isis that is our mission and the mission isn't over and we're going to complete that mission so who was first to jump in iran's president hassan rouhani couldn't miss his chance to bash washington in this case. the u.s. says one thing one day and then a completely different thing the next so we cannot trust the words and actions it seems they want to benefit from syria as much as possible and all mr air dog wants to say to the u.s. administration stop arming and funding the kurds full stop. let's bring in abdul bari atwan and offer a middle east analyst. time said you think this three way corporations are actually going to work given the differences that of the countries did vote on on

a number of issues none the less it looks like they're going to try their best to sort out finally syria is that the vibe you've got as well. well i believe there are common ground which actually make that the leaders to work together especially on syria i looked at the final communique of their meeting their summit and ankara it was very clear that they are agreed on a lot of things the first one not to allow the fact to old and new realities to be imposed in syria which means that there is no. chance for this in the entity to be established and north syria the other were the portals actually article of this community that they agreed that they should be the stability and security in syria and all that allow the syrian refugee to go back to syria the third one which is also extremely important not to use the terrorists as

a pretext to keep foreign forces and not syria which is a clear reference to the americans to thousand troops based there i was going to say this all hot on the heels of this story just very recently today u.s. officials saying president trump now has been persuaded not to pull the military out of syria or maidenly despite its declaration woman said last week that the u.s. would be coming out of syria very serve so real mixed messages there's far as america is concerned what their intentions are how is that going to play with it. well actually you know we were surprised by the american retreat from president graham you know press release saying that he will leave syria very soon why it is it is actually shocking. you know surprising many people in the middle east because actually he was very determined and he did take this resolution without

even consulting with his administration with his foreign office with his generals so i believe now when turkey decided actually to side with russia to buy a four hundred missiles and to actually confront what the russian with that the iranian. moves by that have the. rebels to establish entity and the north of syria and by the help of the united states i believe this actually made. american general to put pressure on presence ramp and all the sea change in his point of view and as see if they succeed is now america will actually consider that. as their as sensitive to the turkish allies so russia turkey iran agreeing on this joint effort to rebuild syria but also warning coming from this meeting as well about maybe militant attempts to sabotage the peace process

a great today maybe potentially chemical attacks so warning there is not going to be the easy part. well actually it wouldn't be you we know that the chemical weapons were used as a fabrication before in order to you know the american to bomb syria and there were a lot of actually indications that this direction now i believe that situation is much better after kicking out all the terrorist groups from both are and is good in damascus and make the country capital immune from any attack promoter at tracks by the rebels so i think now this is the way it is much better there is still obstacle which is edwards and no syria and we know that you know these groups of the terrorist groups and particularly there are actually situated there so it is there are some problems but i believe we have now as strong alliance between

a superpower which is russia to a regional superpower with iran and turkey and i believe the situation could be much better personally i expect some sort of a political deal coming soon to put an end to the war in syria after seven years or so of a conflict and a half a million people more displaced surely it must come so for now the barrier one or three middle east analyst thank you for your time i was myself on the program. and of course it's all the war all the horror of a life for many people still has to go on best it can is going to be some lighter moments best like while many cities in syria lie in ruins after years of fighting i still some are trying to make the best of it artie's rightly video agency crew travel to aleppo so often in the headlines that place for all the horror there they filmed a local park could be going through their paces. for

the international art scene was established nearly four years ago the crisis and brutal war in the country could be trained under difficult circumstances. facing many problems due to a lack of facilities like the inventory training and whatnot any injury means we have to stop for two or three months. or a few professional trainers we're using you tube and other facilities on the internet to contribute to the movement and experience. the next stories by someone who got out of syria eventually an american photojournalist says he feels betrayed by the f.b.i. after he spent seven months held by terrorists in that country he claims the f.b.i.

used to track the jihadists in syria instead of trying to rescue them. ok the paid off my discover card caraway that's what it takes to fool the f.b.i. and the immediately started to look at me as an enemy of the state just the lead case agent means you prove he she admitted this to me but i'm sure if there are some time went by they realized that it wasn't me and by that point they were buying show many laptops tablets which created an intelligence gathering dream come true for the f.b.i. if they entered into if they intercepted these laptops and tablets which i know that they did and then delivered them into the hands of al qaeda it did not really matter if i was with them or not well i mean lower was gone by the time i discovered all this change told me he's basically he's a coward he ignored me ignored my emails he ignored my message on facebook. but saw as the guy was talking to me that he was attempting since his story to

cross the syrian border into turkey when he was captured by elmo's fire which was at the time affiliated with al qaida seems he spent months in different rebel held prisons in the around aleppo then in twenty thirteen the monies to escape becoming the first westerner to do so is what the book about the ordeal called the dawn praed describing the nightmare of his captivity. iraq and syria each he needs before my abduction during the time i was photographing the war from the free syrian army side i was the air force intelligence and come out to bell which were two of the most dangerous parts aleppo at the time and on new year's eve after i got photographs i went there for i was on my way out forty five minutes from the turkish border when i was abducted by the young officer front ok in syria i didn't want anybody coming to rescue me there was no way you can lay seals in the areas that i was in one prison yes it was out the country every other was in a lot of there's just no way to fly blackboards low enough we were not going to get

shot down so i didn't want anybody coming to get me but i did want them doing the best that they could to keep me safe and none of that was done. the trade war between china and the united states is spiraling beijing's announced now that it's going to introduce reciprocal tariffs on u.s. goods like food and cars this time now worth around fifty billion dollars a year the chinese foreign ministry is also condemned the recent u.s. proposal to impose a levy on thirteen hundred products we will do. to ensure the release of the tariffs on the united states size it was a typical unilateralist and trade protectionist approach in this regard of china saw them represent stations and with no basis in fact that the chinese side strongly condemns and firmly opposes this washington slap thirteen hundred chinese products with tariffs on choose date include construction machinery consumer electronics and medical devices also worth around fifty billion dollars a year president trump tweeted two that there is no current trade war with china as

washington has already lost years ago. with some thoughts on the latest a spiraling of this the economist richard wolfe speaks to us he says that the u.s. could pay a high price for trump's economic decisions here. all of this destruction of the world trade is the theatrical mr truck this is about domestic political theater it's not a solution to the underlying economic problems of the united states the chinese have all kinds of economic leverage on the united states and my guess is if you keep provoking them in the way that mr trump thinks is useful for him politically they will look at all of their weapons thanks for watching this quick reminder news alert for you on our society the economy still streaming live media conference so from the o.p.c. w there is on the show and.