they may in a few days they may even to clear and then to korean war at least hostilities but it's going to take a lot of tough slogging to work through some of these details and to particularly to put in place the security guarantees which i think the north koreans are going to insist on to go forward daniel let me go to you i mean the security guarantees that's what it's always been about and i'm glad that john mentioned the freeze for freeze because that's been around for a while nobody in the mainstream media says that where that idea comes from but i can tell you if you go to last year during the security council you could see the russian and chinese ambassador at length go through that. process here daniel before we go to the break go ahead in new york well i just want to remind your viewers that that in two thousand and two george w. bush virtually declared war on north korea which he somehow blamed for nine eleven but north korea was was one of the three countries comprising the so-called axis of

evil and the u.s. invaded one of those countries has been sort of rattling at the other ever since and so north korea had to have grave concerns regarding its own security so kim jong un figured his only protection lay in a nuclear nuclear weapon which he. let me jump in here hold that thought gentlemen we're going to go to a short break and after that short break we'll continue our discussion on the korean peninsula stay with our team. come. on.

the. political end used to be to get a mass of you start with a few feel for something fun instead i think it's just that my life. when i left that i sat next. to matt mccartney a lot of those make. it was the worst of the lot of the evening because somebody is slow. to.

keep. up the. chemistry of those mug him until he's the second to none of them and generally have a difficult time. and these years i live apart from that i don't. know how shame or. killing it's gonna be a admission from the. welcome

back to crossfire all things considered i'm peter lavelle to remind you we're discussing the korean peninsula and the possibility of peace. ok let's go back to daniel in new york you were taking us down history lane you were you were just talking about the axis of evil to pick up from there go ahead daniel yeah so in two thousand and two with this axis of evil speech george w. bush essentially declared war on north korea and that's that speech has never been rescinded anyway this one nope no apology issued no you know no taking back etc so so so kim jong un figured quite logically that it's only protection lay and having a nuclear weapon capable of striking the united states mainland which he apparently has achieved so that is his that is his is great you know is great chess pieces

ace in the hole and i don't think i want to live here but i really doubt that he will agree to for denuclearization unless the u.s. needs. it will engage equally and equally grand gesture which trump might be willing to do but i can guarantee the rest of the foreign policy establishment or blog as you call them will not they will raise holy hell and they will essentially block from from doing that. in washington can you reflect upon that because that's been my. in calling from all along you know i'm like john said i'm perfectly willing to give donald trump credit for this if this is kicked it off ok fine ok but there are forces and you see it all the time in the corporate media mimics the the their corporate owners ok they're not keen on seeing peace breaking out

particularly if it means negotiations as equal that's not in their d.n.a. they don't operate that way go ahead absolutely absolutely correct first let me back up a little bit out here and say that yes i totally agree with john that a huge amount of creditors also due to donald trump because let us remember before you talked about fire and fury and destroying north korea he also probably went up further than any us president had had talked about and talked about predicts some assurances that he doesn't seek the collapse of the north korean regime he doesn't seek regime change he doesn't want to have an invasion all of thirty eight over the thirty eighth parallel etc etc so he has tried he had made a lot of assurances also in his early months and that hasn't that has he has not got adequate credit for that so yes i mean in other ways also donald trump deserves credit and that's that's that's that's perfectly fine you know the one grilli good

thing going for donald trump is that the u.s. system provides huge on foreign policy huge amount of power not just of the presidency but to the president and so he can really override his staff because frankly this is all going to come down to donald trump and making that deal with the on which foreign policy establishment has not been willing to contemplate and part of the reason it's not been willing to contemplate it's easy to see is that all the came regime for ever and the kims never never. on their from their part oldest you. that cetera et cetera which is which is not entirely true it is partly true not entirely true but just too many forces i think people in washington. in cornwall mindset confrontational attitude to north east asian geopolitics with the thirty it being that trip wire and it's not easy

for many off them to come to terms that you know what the peninsula could be just insulated from that whole geopolitical environment let's ask john because john that was his line of business for a while i mean what are the forces moving against this here and beyond because it's donald trump's idea but i mean the you know talks through the bureaucratic inertia that you know that would be against this go ahead well i think i would disagree i think that currently the top leadership of the u.s. defense department is not against what trump is trying to do and we just saw that in syria we saw the d.o.d. weighed in and so we had symbolic strikes against syria rather than the more far reaching operation that some were advocating so. i think that we have to be a little bit careful here now i would take this back even

a little bit before the axis of evil speech people forget that nuclear weapons were first deployed on the korean peninsula during the eisenhower administration and we had at one time nine hundred fifty nuclear tactical nuclear weapons in korea this is and this is now a de quite well we had seven thousand and western europe. anyway. president bush the elder who's now ill in the hospital was the was the one who decided to put an end to this this kind of madness and so we began withdrawing them but you know you don't have to explain the nuclear issue in terms of the evil nature of the north korean regime although perhaps there's some of that that that can be part of the explanation it's really an action reaction sequence and we took the initial action and the north koreans then responded to it so i think

the same dynamic can be used in the current circumstances and terms of confidence building measures and hopefully we can walk this back i agree completely that having. a progressive president and seoul is a huge help and i think china and the russia can also help but. i think it's going to be really difficult to unreliable this not which which we've tied ourselves up in the peninsula in these various asymmetries ok daniel i think this kind of leads to where i want to go in the program i mean i am sure that there is there's a sense that if if the u.s. in there's the perception of the u.s. backing down the perception of the u.s. . involved in a diplomatic process that would be deemed as a piece meant here that would have a ricochet effect through all of the other in tangling alliances the u.s.

has in the pacific is this part of the thinking there because it is john said you know to untie this or not here there is a huge ripple effect through the entire region go ahead daniel. totally true totally true and would be a huge ripple effect in washington as well where all these countries have their have their interests they have their they have their you know their little alliances japan most particularly russia and china as well so if you know. the north may be playing a kind of vietnamese game where they're trying to you know seek a closer alliance with the south in order to protect themselves against china so therefore that's certainly possible and china could be getting nervous as well and china has friends in washington and. you have to say the japanese wouldn't be very happy if it is with a unified strong powerful korean peninsula so you know that they wouldn't there to

hold the fence thinking would have to be rethought keep going daniel. and japan has tons of friends in washington also so so i think that we're going to see a huge ripple effect from the north northeastern northeast asia on to washington. pile on and you know and trump is on one hand trump has got great power as a u.s. president but on this hand politically he's very. yes he is really on the ropes it's a ferocious problem. so i don't know i doubt very much it'll be able to withstand these forces and i think that he will i'm pretty sure he is incapable of engaging in the same kind of grand gesture that kim jong un is willing to engage and you know let me go back to sort of i mean you know he won the presidency he surprises it's all the time you know maybe it'll work this time i don't know i mean don't you think also it's just a mindset i mean north korea is this cartoonish evil character the axis of

evil i mean it's so convenient and there's so many people that have made entire careers out of demonizing and i'm not i'm not siding with the north koreans or its leadership i don't do that kind of thing i i'm basically a realist when it comes to foreign policy so but i mean don't you think that's part of the problem here is changing minds you know taking a fresh look and there isn't this really an amazing opportunity that we may never see again go ahead. oh absolutely absolutely you get an opportunity to source the end of the korean war in. as since the end of the korean war to have a peace regime on the peninsula as well as since the denuclearization declaration and agreements of the early one thousand nine hundred to do the nuclearization let me go out a little bit on a limb here and make two points you know with regard to denuclearize nation most people and i totally agree understand there the views that this is going to be very

difficult close to impossible he's not going to give it up i'm one of those feel very tiny minority but who believes that this is very doable and i can really give it up i could give john i did john is not in the same position as saddam hussein. but he had to go hide it that's why he developed it in the first place to trade it away for security guarantees it seems logical to me exactly. exactly let me explain that point also you know what is a nuclear weapon the focus of a nuclear weapon is to call unacceptable damage to their adversary he already can do unacceptable damage to their adversary by trashing seoul with this conventional guns and therefore a nuclear weapon over and above that is something that he can leverage and he can bargain and which is exactly what he is doing and therefore i would say that this is doable this is a great opportunity but what we have to do also is this cannot be a process which gets out over many years in a decade and it's action for action with five hundred steps which then breaks down

after twenty steps this has to be a big grand bargain a kind in a truncated where they're going to define time period and i think it's doable let me go to look at let me go to john john you're on the negotiating team for the united states what would you tell your boss dollars trying to do in forty seconds go ahead hey i what i would tell him to do is just have good vibes in the in the meeting apparently that was the case when pompei went there i think. it's different this time around is that the negotiations are not being run through a bureaucratic process and a lot of people are criticizing trump on this score it's it's a crisis situation and people forget what we were talking about last fall we're talking about the imminent prospect of war on the peninsula so i think things are moving in a good direction i am concerned about the asymmetries. also we're going to have

one possible drop out in this process prime minister is in deep political trouble i'm not sure if he's going to be able to survive or not but yeah i think we we just have to hope that the intercooler goes well ok and in a way moon isn't playing big advance gentlemen we have run out of time and very rarely do we end on a positive note many thanks to my guests in washington and in new york and thanks to our viewers for watching us here at c.n.n. and remember. it was one of the most controversial products of our time it's a vegetable that's. twenty seven production grew to sixty three.

that rapid growth in international demand for oil has led to the massive expansion . which is the destruction of. more than ten million pounds of unique rain forest has been destroyed it's a process that just keeps going. for a world cup twenty eight team coverage we've signed one of the greatest goalkeepers of all time but there was one more question and by the way who's going to be our coach. guys i know you are nervous he's a huge star and the huge amount of pressure you have to the center of the beach but probably with you and we'll show you all the great british you are the rock at the back nobody gets past you we need you to get down the left go.

alone. and i'm really happy to join the fall of two thousand and three in the world cup in russia meet the special one. needs to. be arty teams latest edition to make up a bigger. book. in the heart of the swiss alps this is a place probably more secretive than the pentagon more mysterious than the cia and better guarded than for knox swiss customs are here permanently all the site is controlled by them and they impose the opening times. it is from the procedures in place of the strictest in all europe masterpieces by artists like pecan so and modigliani can't boards and sold inside this warehouse that's where the report comes in it covers up deals which are naturally discreet commercially discreet but

also discreet because they concern fraud. some of those paintings are linked to dark secrets nobody knows how many of these secrets a kept inside the geneva freeport system you'll never obtain an inventory of all the works in the freeport who knows how many there are three hundred three thousand three hundred thousand is it a matter of confidentiality only is it the world's black box of the art business. i'm. not. going to. do i do not have. enough time to.

headline stories in the czech presidency as his country develop. a nerve agent similar to the. former russian intelligence officer and his daughter in the u.k. . also ahead in the program this hour there are conflicting claims about the u.n. chemical weapons watchdog. was. its chief. one hundred. days of. demonstrations a long border with israel enter there are six. hundred thirty two journalists

killed during the great march return protest campaign but the debts of the journalists failed. from the u.s. state department spokeswoman. freedom day. we urge accountability for the murder of journalists in baltar mexico russia and. i don't have to have all the details of. china interfere. with us military operations in the foreign office and directing blinding lasers at a church. live from our international news center in moscow this is r.t.

good to have your company my names you know neal our top story the international chemical weapons watchdog the o.p.c. w. has published a statement clarifying comments from its own director general who claimed that up to one hundred grams of nerve agent were used to poison surrogate scripts in march for research activities or protection you would need for instance five to ten grams or so but even in seoul is free it looks like they may have used more than that without knowing the exact quantity i'm told it may be fifty one hundred grams or so which goes beyond research activities for protection the o.p.c. w. would not be able to estimate or determine the amount of the nerve agent that was used in seoul's bree on the fourth of march twenty eighth the quantity should probably be characterized in milligrams. well let's go live now to london to see a churkin who has been following developments throughout the day first nastia hello

to you what do we know here bring us up to date on what's coming out. well you know it's quite curious with this story that's now been unraveling since march fourth we can see more backtracking it seems than real evidence when it comes to this poisoning scandal but create is the created the biggest diplomatic row between russia and the u.k. for starters yes we do have this example of the organization for the prohibition of chemical weapons chief saying it looks like from fifty to one hundred grams must have been used in salisbury this had prompted lots of questions about whether this could have been potentially enough to kill all of cells very we've also seen questions about what that much of a nerve agent piled onto a door handle would look like given we're talking about one hundred grams of a liquid or gel this was something that was asked by the russian embassy here in london in a tweet in reaction to all of that given this spread throughout the world's media

headlines the o.p.c. w did in fact release a statement where they said we would not be able to estimate or determine the amount of the nerve agent used in fact and the quantity should probably be characterized in milligrams and of course if you remember before this we've seen other example of similar kinds of backtracking when. the board's more important down came out with a major revelation very much expected to raise lots of headlines throughout the world as well given they were expected to make a big announcement about russia's involvement however we saw them come out and say they can't identify the source and this of course came after boars johnson here in the u.k. had said that they had given him assurances that russia was behind this. of north verify for so you source you have not been able to establish porton down that this was. as i said it's our job to provide each you know the scientific evidence

that identifies. as for the particular narrow feature is that it's not our job to see where that actually was manufactured so to be clear you're not able at portadown to say where it is from we haven't yet been able to do that but when i look at the the evidence from the people from from porton down they were absolutely categorical and i asked the guy so i said are you sure and he said that there's no dogs and of course the latest another latest development as are the statements from the czech president who said that his country had produced and stored and later destroyed novacek which also came as a certainly a major backtrack given that previously russia having said that the czech republic could be among the countries that might have been able to produce novacek was described as a lie by czech ministers. novacek was produced and tested in the czech republic it was

a small quantity though we know when and we know where it was done it would be hypocritical to pretend that such a thing never happened the russians crossed all boundaries when they serve the novacek agent could have come from the czech republic that is a lie. well of course the biggest back tracking of them all it seems that accusations against russia flew immediately was named as the culprit however we are still waiting for the official investigation results that are yet to come on this is here thank you very much. well let's bring in ny philip ingram former intelligence and security officer for his take on the developments to this story and there seem to be philip a lot of developments a warm welcome to you let's just go first what the u.n. chemical weapons watchdogs director general has said we used a quote in the program a little bit earlier saying that fifty to one hundred grams of liquid nerve agent

were used in salt spray what do you what do you draw from not do the injury sustained tally with that quantity of lethal chemical well you were mixing a couple things up here and i think he corrected himself in the statement to say that it was milligrams but it's very difficult to work out the exact quantity that's been used the amount was absorbed into the body of surgery and you look scruple is that. would have caused the damage there would have been an. integrator model of had been spread over the areas that they were potentially going to touch so they got sufficient dose of the didn't to give them the symptoms that they exhibited let me just compare because i'm just looking at varying chemicals of this sort for the little dose of the nerve agent v.x. for for instance if absorbed through the skin is ten milligrams v.x. is less toxic than novacek one hundred grams of novacek would have been at least

ten thousand times more lethal dose so you know a lot of questions over that part at the same time though as you'll know and o.p.c. w. spokesperson says the amount of the nerve agent used can not be established and that it could be in milligrams why this discrepancy. i think we've just got a misinterpretation of the scientific documentation that's coming out and when the statements been made some someone's made. it incorrectly to try to say something clearly when they haven't quite understood what's been read there and that you know the lethal dose that's required as you said for v.x. is small of them the ten milligrams that you're talking about and that is comes and they'll be fifty or two or fifty percent of people who get exposed to that and the dose is absorbed into the body will die we're talking of it with sarin gas it's about the size of a grain of sugar it's worth that has to be absorbed vx that's about the size of

a grain of salt truck and remember the talk is in one ear didn't there are lots of other in the group called the truck. is supposed to be much more powerful but this is probably the first time that a live image and has actually come into the hands of laboratories and been used. to its effect that we saw. just in what the czech republic president said a bite of a child being produced last year in that country russian ice age it's waiting for other nations to reveal whether or not they produce type agents on their soil do you think other nations would come forward if they did. i don't think the missions all readily come forward unless they're going to be exposed but you know you use the right phrase there are no other talk type didn't you these agents the trees all of the world will be manufacturing different chemicals that could fall into this

type. if you've got the right laboratory you've got the right facilities. people will look at them especially the look at them from a defensive perspective if they look at them from a weaponized in perspective that's clearly illegal against the o.p.c. w. the. chemical weapons of rishon treaty for company don but there's two things to this there is capability and there's a lot of laboratories around the world would have the capability of producing this but then to work out who's done it there's intent you put capability and intent together and that's why the fingers are pointing at russia but you need an investigation to do that of course and britain says' and said before the investigation that only russia could have made the novacek nerve agent didn't mention intent until a little bit later how much do you think it the czech president's admission this is the leader of a sovereign nation undermined that i don't think it undermines it in that in the slightest.