blair when asked about the need for a further inquiry into the circumstances of his apparent suicide the attorney general on the greens expected to make an announcement today as to whether there should be a new inquiry into the death of dr david kelly and that i think you've written some of that has weighed heavily on your mind over over the years would you welcome and . i think i'll let him make his statement on this i mean there was all the was an inquiry which went for six months headed by a senior law lord so. i mean he loves to make a statement i really don't know what the president answered sufficiently at the last incline well as far as i know they were but maybe he has different information but frankly i doubt it but i'll wait and see what he says and i honestly don't know i have no information that is different from the information given to that inquiry that went as i say for six months the man supported by jeremy corbin's opponents today johnny blair defending the widely derided hutton inquiry into the

circumstances surrounding the death of dr david kelly but british was characterized as wars of aggression by the critics of a continued since iraq in libya and in syria so when will the u.k. be held accountable for perceived guilt at the hague well in the past few days u.k. prime minister drazen may has defacto tried to block legislation that could have either prevented the iraq war or maybe arguably brought tony blair to justice lack of international agreement over the crime of aggression led to a verdict on a private prosecution this time last year the high court in london has attempted or rejected an attempt to prosecute former prime minister tony blair over the iraq war the high court said blair's de facto acquittal was in part because of no formalized crime of aggression well now there is one and one of its architects is christian when i say he's lichtenstein's ambassador to the u.n. and joins me now from the u.n. in new york city ambassador thanks so much for coming on the show as a what is. a crime of aggression and this is related to the allied powers of

nuremberg nine hundred forty five well the crime of aggression the. criminal responsibility of an individual. or ship position for committing. forms of illegal use of force by state against another state so that. that's the short answer so it's a leadership crime it's only people in their military or political leadership positions who can commit it and it is only relevant with respect to the most serious forms of the legal use of force those of course go back to nuremberg because the. tribunal the nuremberg that was the first time persons were held accountable for this crime was a different definition. and so has nothing to do with those who are just following orders which hasn't been quantified anyway into international law well just following orders that you're talking about like no ordinary soldier you know that

that type of person is by definition not capable of committing that crime because it's only the people that have ultimately the authority and the responsibility for the fact that the crime was committed just tell me a little bit about your role in creating this offense how it started back in uganda maybe in twenty down well that's when we adopted the definition of the crime and the other provisions that were included in the rome statute had been working on for years before because this was really a bit of an exercise of squaring the circle because there were very difficult definitional issues to be resolved and also political issues so compilable was the culmination of that though that's when we agreed on. the definition by consensus in uganda and right there at the beginning presumed to be with you by the end of the nation state key all the way to. then in twenty ten was the idea of the sovereignty

of the nation state well that's you know that's of course it still exists it's also a concept on the go on you know different shifts in interpretation let's put it that way in different areas but the concept of sovereignty obviously. is still there why do you think britain is the way isn't happy with the way it is being drafted by. yourself and others obviously you have to ask that question what i can tell you is that u.k. was part of the consensus that we adopted in kampala. was a very important partner in their fortune the agreement a couple of it was adopted by consensus and they accepted it and this is retrospective no it is not easy we've had inquiries here into britain's role in the war in iraq so in a sense we've had a retrospective inquiries. obviously without any perceived justice is regards the

leaders do you think that could be concerning some nations like britain for the future you know i don't want to speculate about that i'm familiar with that this question of course i think it's important to have that discussion i think every state should have a serious discussion of decisions to go to war galatea of use of force is one of the most grave and serious decisions that he can take so it's important to have you know respect of the situation talking about. it to the mass the discussion i hope people of course look at the kampala definition also as part of that discussion because that is the one international. definition that we have now so when lawyers like yourselves so. others. do you speculate perhaps on why it could be the un permanent un security council members would oppose this kind of law you know the use of force. it's an issue that we

look at differently depending on who we are so i represent one of the smallest states at the u.n. small states always look for the protection of the law because that is the protection that we have so be invest a lot politically in international law and in the respect for the rule of law larger states you know have sometimes also other consecrations permanent members see the u.n. security council as the ultimate arbiter of these things not the i.c.c. at the hague well i mean yes and no you know the compiler agreement. security council has on the charter. to see states committed an act of aggression against state b. but the compiler agreement does not touch that but it also says that if the security council does not come to the conclusion the court can do that independently from what the what the council may or may not have said there are a number of states that have. there should be an exclusive competence of the

security council to say this was an act of aggression in kampala most states strongly disagreed with that and more importantly. be adopted it does not say that if we disregard algeria mooches for the desire for crimes of aggression on the part of those states what do to codify this do you know believe and do you another lawyers not believe that this crime of aggression good hinder the ability of peace brokers to grant amnesty as at peace talks between rivals well you know that's a larger issue that has not so much to do with the crime of aggression only that's been. that's been the discussion ever since we have had the i.c.c. . you know our view is that there are on the current international law for certain crimes there cannot be amnesties it cannot be amnesty for genocide it's the. crime . against humanity and that's the state of international law today so you know that

then i mean within. within which we have to operate i think there's an increasing recognition that justice is an important part of a sustainable peace so you cannot have a situation in which atrocious crimes were committed you know let's let's take syria and then say well you know let's ignore it let's move on and let's pretend that nothing has happened it's not going to work so warring parties in syria could be in focus if this legislation had been in place head of the twenty a level war britain obviously has bombed syria without a u.n. resolution and russia and the united states well there are a number of issues but one is what i mentioned before that the jurisdiction of the court began yesterday so anything that happened before that is totally immaterial to what the court may or may not do the other thing is that the court's

jurisdiction at this point is restricted to states that have ratified the rome statute which is certainly not the case not the case for syria as you know. there was an attorney. in two thousand and fourteen to give jurisdiction to the i.c.c. in syria over. the course crimes covered in the rome statute but that was blocked in the security council by russian by china so things as things stand today that is that is still where we are so the court does not have jurisdiction over any crime committed. you see if we look forward by looking back as it were since ninety forty five the u.s. has been trying to career guatemala and easier cuba vietnam libya salvador somalia that's just to name a few countries going forward. the united states of bombed all the countries with this kind of law in place at the i.c.c. we're going to the main thing that happen. do you have

a domestic decision making process. in the us. you have mentioned which you had in other countries to monday decided to resort to the use of force i would think that in the future people in you know in their internal proceedings and the decision making will look at the text we look at this definition because you know most states feel very strongly that they want to move within the parameters of the law so it's taken more than half a century to get this nuremberg kweisi nuremberg legislation crimes. in text do you think it'll take another half century for all these parties who it is relevant to will actually sign up to it you know it's certainly always difficult to get the most powerful states to sign on to certain rules of international law so i don't think it's just going to be. you know this is not going to happen overnight

i think what happened yesterday. the activation of this of this regime is a really really big day it's a very big step it's the first time any international court has just competence. and as you pointed out rightly it has taken us decades to get here and a lot of you know a lot of a lot of people lot of brilliant people have. this is one big step but it's by far the last a massive thank you after the break nato war was on the narcotics industry we ask a journalist on the ground in kabul about the multi-headed hydra that is the afghanistan drug trade is u.k. trade secretary liam fox in the chlorinated chicken coop the director of global justice now gives us the lowdown on what could be a few deals slip through the brics it back door all this and more coming up about two of going on the ground.

right we're all set to start in five yes the studio has no signal. he's not going to talk about the no fly list just renewed right after the mars explorers want to do it would have their new. record. to say last week no. no the last room welcome to sophie until i'm so busy shevardnadze said today we've got lots to talk about in our program and our guest is move good luck little.

hill to. look at its. muscles his. nose if. you could. do it a little bit he. doesn't go to the little united way you know it's. all supposed to well it's only about the looking oh mother of the couldn't fulfill one of the mighty well columns on the old. boy.

people criticize us or they question us and they want to know why we're not more book critical of russia and the real question is how come we're not tooting russia's horn more because they are been genius during this crisis but that would be i think a little bit you know over the top to simply point out all the good things that they're constantly doing so we just try to take a more balanced middle of the road approach that's you know the fact is that they're making all these other economies look stupid by comparison. welcome back in the first half of the show we heard about the crime of aggression but what if the i.c.c. it codified it seventeen years ago would nato nations still be bombing afghanistan where tourism a is just pledged to double numbers of british soldiers after this week's disputed u.s. airstrike on afghanistan which claimed fourteen including women and children are now joined via skype from kabul by journalist ali i'm the t.v.

and the thanks for joining us theresa may announcing a doubling of troops it's eight years since we learned from wiki leaks about drone strikes in your country that would have been the effects of drone strikes in afghanistan. it's actually kind of hard to quantify the effect of a drone strikes in our own son because the issue is that they take place in really remote places they are also places that tend to be under the control of the armed opposition so for anyone to gain access to those areas and a lot of these drone strikes take place at night so by the time anyone hears about them it's already happened in the reports are already out in where into the stands where in the news it gets reported from official sources that it was militants or taliban or die a sure whoever that were attacked and you know it overnight in remote areas so it's very difficult for journalists for rights workers for government officials who care to access those areas and really put numbers and faces to what's going on there. i

know it will use to a u.s. planes or u.s. drones bombing afghanistan do you think the numbers of those killed by drones civilians killed by drones is very very small despite i don't think that they're not in or i don't i don't think it's very small there are because if you talk to people in the areas after there have been drunk strikes and i'm talking even years after their interim train. you know they will say that there were children in the area that there were women in the area that they were i mean there were i think it was the last august in two thousand and seventeen there were two back to back drone strikes in the eastern province of law at it and in the western province of here art and the un did a really good analysis of that like they went to the geo and figured out what went on and they found that every single victim of dad both of those strikes were civilians women children and at civilian men since the britain started bombing your gun dream twenty zero three we now have the numbers of civilians killed reaching

a record high for the first half of twenty eighteen i think that those figures for the past decade because many more were killed obviously in two thousand and three what why is it a record high this year. i mean we have to remember that these get these numbers include not just you know airstrikes not just. casualties inflicted by the government but also casualties inflicted by the armed opposition and the reason it's much bigger is that the attacks have gotten much bolder much more common much more frequent and they're purposely targeting big cities i mean in the last month the city of jalalabad which is actually if you go into any you actually see it is actually a very tight compact space full of a million people in a very small area so that one attack in one area of the city affects so many people because everything is packed into such a small space and this is something that's in the leading to

a lot of civilian casualties because they're purposely picking you know major cities and they're picking areas where civilians are you know they make claims that these groups taleban told on our day or make claims that they're attacking say a ministry or they're attacking military or this or that but in reality you know these are main streets main areas that there are telling i mean arguably british soldiers failed in their objectives in iraq and libya and the and say syria don't you think that four hundred forty more british soldiers helping your government to combat those atrocities is a good thing. well i mean that in the issue is that it's seventeen years later right and they are they withdrew the bulk of their forces in two thousand between two thousand and thirteen and two thousand and fourteen as it almost all the other international forces and what we've seen from then until now is that the

war isn't getting better it's actually you know if you train since unlike the u.s. civilian casualty report it's actually getting worse socialist leads a question of you know can foreign forces or even our own forces bring peace and the thing is if you look at statements may even by the u.s. government even by the u.n. even by other bodies including the ads on government they all say that there's no longer a military solution to this war there needs to be some kind of a negotiated peace so more and then you know sending more troops who are you know as they claim are only training and advising our soldiers the question is what can be done to pressure the safe havens you know or to pressure governments that are supporting the taliban so we're talking about but started talking about russia we're talking about iran you know what can really be done to put pressure on these countries to keep from funding supporting and arming the armed opposition in this

country ok i'm sure the russian federation and the iranian government would deny that they're funding the shell about there's obviously a lot of money being made out of the arms trade but a lot of money is also being made by the drugs trade parts of britain have the highest numbers of drug deaths in the whole of europe what is the state of the afghan drugs trade that ends up on the streets of britain. i mean end up on the streets and homes on to it's growing you know if you look at you when numbers in terms of opium cultivation it grew as dramatically last year and count it seems like it's going to continue to grow. and the issue with it is that it's an it is a it's a multifaceted issue so as much as the government and you know western. allies want to say that you know this is benefiting the taleban or you know this this is mainly in taliban controlled areas the truth is that drugs affect every sector of the society because as much as yes you know the taliban are making money off of the

hope the drug trade we can say that you know if you cut off the drug trade that they're finding in their support from those other countries that i mentioned earlier well you know that that makes up for whatever they would lose in terms of the drug trade and the other issue is that it's not just the taliban that's involved in the drug trade so we have a massive drug mafia that's an international mafia you know you always see sonny nationals you know any nationals. being arrested sometimes you even see. the nationals being arrested. so this is something that that's multi-national and also you know there are elements within the government itself starting from police on the streets to m.p.'s who have been arrested or accused of being part of the drug trade and i want to stop for instance the western province of hit up where i went a couple times over the last month there airport police commander was arrested last

year on charges of drug smuggling ten years ago high level police commander in the western province of need all of which borders in on. was also arrested on charges of drug smuggling and still. government and its western allies in canada don't get real about it the fact that every one of the involved in it and the bad of the. to really attack it from all of these different angles and very little change in terms of the direction of the thank you. well even halliburton oil services company which used to be headed by george w. which is all vice president dick cheney must agree that oil trade through a pipeline in afghanistan is nothing but a pipe dream but here in britain your liberal pipe dreams are arguably actively being driven even before today's second jaegers away day to debate breaks it would to resume her trade secretary liam fox has apparently been very busy joining me now is the director of global justice now nick did in the thanks for going back on what

is dr fox being up to he's been very busy his trade bill scraped through the commons on tuesday night and the next morning he announced the consultations on four new trade deals and two of them we're particularly worried about one is joining up to the t.p. the trans pacific partnership is a bit strange for a country so far away from the pacific and the other is of course the major trade deal with the united states that we know he's absolutely desperate for and we think both of those frankly fly in the face of to reason may's proposals for what we call the checkers plan now for frictionless trading because this is all under the radar because mainstream media is all about the soap opera of divided cabinet all of these things this is been bubbling underneath the surface well i think people like flocks of very good actually creating facts on the ground just simply outmaneuvering the prime minister i mean several members of a government government a very good outmaneuvering her and i think that's what he's done here he's just push this forward as if it's something completely uncontroversial of course we need

these wonderful trade deals and so all get on with it without actually anybody noticing that these things really fly in the face of a lot of what reason may have been planning in her because you told your global justice people they must have details of it someone must have details of what will it mean for the national health service or the transportation of the railways what it was he negotiated so first of all we got the t. p.p. . the a lot of people thought the t.p. was dead when dodging the us out of it but actually the remaining countries are preparing to ratify the t.v. no real there is going ahead but it's still a free trade area and of course what we've talked about many times is that trade today is not just about reducing tariffs it's essentially about setting a whole load of new rules which dictate the way your economy can operate can do that they don't need to be for that it all helps and one of the things that's particularly important in your trade deals is around standards protections things like workers' rights food quality how we can protect the environment all of these

things are up for grabs in trade deals how much we pay for all medicines where we are allowed to have a national health service that remains fully bought back into into full public ownership all of these things are up for grabs in ukraine given what you know. to private versus public arguably because there are contradictions that would talk to folks do you think put on the table the idea that the national health service is a monopoly could be broken i think what we've seen in the past whenever dr fox talks about public services is a deep skepticism towards them and he would much prefer they were run by the private sector and therefore i think a trade deal would likely denies that i have to say he does but you know there are quotes from the past if you look and we know certainly that some of the backbenchers who are supporting his version of brakes are very dubious about public services so a trade one of the reasons these people are so obsessed with trade deals is essentially trade deals are vehicles for deregulation and liberalisation nowadays

and they are vehicles for that wrapping paper that sounds quite nice we all love trade so you put something in a trade deal and that makes it in forcible under international law it's an international treaty and it also means it kind of happens under the radar you know m.p.'s as we found this week when we tried to back an amendment that caroline lucas was putting down to give members of our green with our over trade. they wouldn't accept any of it so all of this talk about parliamentary solvency actually are in peace have no power to stop toxic trade deals so they are nice vehicles for deregulation and liberalization and that's why i think fox is on the front foot over this putting out a consultation that will be fairly below the radar unless we make it otherwise which we intend to do that will essentially allow him to sign away all sorts of standards and protections on our right to control our own public services so on and so forth to slip these into a trade deal with the united states and at the end of it to say well it's what they insisted upon the united states insisted upon this we can't do a trade deal with them unless we give into this and of course we know that trump is

going to be arguing a very american first agenda we know he does not like. public national health service in this country we know he does not like the prices that we pay for our medicines in this country and he thinks they should be far more like the united states system. so many people are priced out of decent health care we're worried that all of this could come in via a trade deal with the united states because the gondry view one of the only ben would argue rather than talk to folks i suspect would be that actually it is these individual trade deals of far more democratic control at the moment is that conservatives were already conservative government future labor government and the big macro globalization trade deals that you seem to be favoring one of those big problems with that too that you want to reform. the way here is dead we have campaigned against the world trade organization for the last twenty years and the types of rules as double transfers but the difference is we don't simply want to rip up all international rules and the most powerful country dictate absolutely

everything i mean trump doesn't like it not because he cares that it's bad for mexicans it was bad for garner or whatever he simply thinks it means that he has the big man in the world can't do absolutely anything that he wants our point is of course we need multilateral rules but actually what we want to do is take the power of the bully out of that is give all countries and. equal a profit equal say in how these rules are set and not simply allow them to become vehicles for deregulation and liberalization they didn't thank you but that's it for the show we'll be back on wednesday to speak to one of the world's greatest social geographers professor danny dorling about his new book peak inequality britain's ticking time bomb till then he would touch my social media with you on wednesday eight years to the day that we publish classified documents about the war in afghanistan one of the largest leaks in u.s. military history has highlighted the role of drones in nato nation assassination policy.

four men are sitting in a car when the fifth gets shot in the head. all four different versions of what happened one of them is on the death row there's no way he could have done it there's no possible way because the us did not shoot around a corner. in

the regions was standing five hundred meters away they could easily see that civilians were around a few minutes later they began bombing the area and killing people and deadly yes trying to kill. fourteen in afghanistan with children among the victims marty speaks to witnesses at the scene. be launching a new twenty four seven four c. language t.v. channel that will span not only television but radio digital and social media format. after withdrawing from the a wrong nuclear deal and threatening new sanctions the u.s. now launches a media campaign against tehran. and investigative journalist group redfish shine a light on germany's a just secretive on straight.