let me out the director of the institute for democracy and cooperation underneath me that i am and the president and c.e.o. of the u.s. russia business council at a round. despite some political spats between moscow and washington that you are getting closer to the u.s. has agreed to help lay the welcome mat for russia at the w t o. russian travelers and business plan to rebuild anticipating the introduction of the extended three year american visas. getting one of the no easy times. hello ed hello underneath thank you very much for being with us on the show and first of all i wanted to to hear your comments on something that we hear through the grapevine laced about michael mcfaul and probably moving to moscow as the new american investor should we expect something from from this and how problems it will be you say. well it's a rumor i think she really believed. but maybe we can speculate on the basis of the rumor. michael mcfaul is. someone who is known to be close to president obama he is a scholar on russia he's an expert field he's worked very closely with members of the administr

examining claims and i'm declared nuclear site in syria but i'm laughlin from the institute for democracy and cooperation says another step another tactic to increase prosperity and damascus i think what we're seeing are the western powers ratcheting up the pressure they're trying to increase their room for maneuver so in the draft resolution you have crimes against humanity you have a threat to international peace and security and in parallel you have cranking up now of pressure from the international atomic energy authority so i think this is a way of increasing the number of cards that the west believes that it holds as far as russia is concerned i think that it's pretty obvious that russia or the russian government greatly regret not having vetoed the resolution on libya which as we can all see it was immediately exploited. to go way beyond the terms laid down in the resolution i mean by that that the western powers immediately started to attack the libyan government launched a war whose goal is regime change whereas obviously regime change is not included in the terms of that resolution so i suspect

with you on what that original un resolution meant but for now don laughlin from the institute for democracy and cooperation thanks for being with us on the line live from paris. nato is continuing its grass ugh libyan capital with reports of several major explosions and it's unlikely there will be any letup soon with the alliance chief calling for more military help to bring about a post era russia which is trying to broker a cease fire between the libyan regime and the rebels as both sides want a non military way out artist response and reports from tripoli. nature continues bombing tripoli we've been hearing heavy strikes overnight as well as during the day this week actually the libyan capital has seen the most intense affair rate since the beginning of the operation in march with nato targeting gadhafi as compounds and command and control centers in an attempt to within the embattled colonel and force him out russia actually wants to see khadafi to step down moscow's envoy has visited libya and has met opposition leaders here and has also. duffy's closest ally and his cousin in cairo and after that mik

have recently been making gains and who to advance on tripoli with more on this we're joined now by john laughlin the director for the institute of democracy and cooperation in paris thanks for joining us here on france is once again of the forefront of nato is campaign in libya now a drop in weapons to the rebels some analysts say the move contravenes the u.n. braga one arm supplies to get there what's your take on that. well obviously it does and it also makes a nonsense of the whole argument in favor of the war in the first place that argument as you know was predicated on the idea of the accusation that the libyan government was attacking civilians well the admission that france is arming the rebels is very obviously an admission that what's going on in libya is a fight between the government and armed rebels and armed rebels are not civilians so any attack by the government on armed rebels in libya is therefore not necessarily a war crime in other words this news is not only incompatible with the case that's being made for war in libya completely contradictory incompatible but are other countries larky to follow in france's footsteps in terms of armi

anything that comes out of the hague ok john laughlin to form the institute of democracy and cooperation in paris or to leave it there for now thank you. thank you. for almost five years he's been the man at the helm of the u.s. military on a sponsible for the billions of dollars of the flowed into the pentagon's coffers from washington now a secretary of defense robert gates is retiring leaving behind three wars and an ever growing defense budget the director of the cia stepping into his shoes critics doubt will be much change in the pentagon's course and teacher counterparts whoever's in the white house in the pentagon it's business as usual robert gates was secretary of defense to two different presidents obama was elected on a promise to end the wars of his predecessor george w. bush but america's worst continued and one more was even added to the plate of the inconclusive campaign levy when administrations change or change between parties there really isn't a great deal of change in the pentagon under robert gates is watch americas and you will defense spending approach the trillion dollars rising at the pace of abo