:00:06. > :00:10.at least 40 billion euros. If you're away from the television
:00:10. > :00:14.and want to keep up to date - you can now watch BBC News live on the
:00:14. > :00:23.web. Go to bbc.co.uk/news and click on the link. There will be a full
:00:23. > :00:27.news bulletin at one o'clock. Now Hello and welcome to Dateline
:00:27. > :00:30.London. The Syrian government has lost all legitimacy - according to
:00:30. > :00:33.the UN Secretary General. But what can be done to stop the killing?
:00:33. > :00:37.Britain and Germany appear to agree on a two speed or multi-speed
:00:37. > :00:40.Europe. With what consequences? And saving young girls from forced
:00:40. > :00:43.marriages - by making them a crime. My guests today are Jef McCalister,
:00:43. > :00:46.the American writer and broadcaster, Agnes Poirier of France's Marianne,
:00:46. > :00:54.Janet Daley of the Sunday Telegraph and Abdel Bari Atwan of Al Quds al
:00:54. > :00:57.Arabi. The massacres in Syria suggest either the direct
:00:57. > :01:00.involvement of the Assad regime or at the very least its utter failure
:01:00. > :01:03.to prevent the killings. But with Kofi Annan's peace plan depending
:01:03. > :01:06.on a ceasefire which does not exist and a big international meeting
:01:06. > :01:09.scheduled in Paris early next month, what realistically can outsiders do
:01:09. > :01:19.to help stop the killing? And does Syria risk turning into another
:01:19. > :01:23.
:01:23. > :01:31.Lebanon? Who is doing what? It is very
:01:31. > :01:37.difficult to know, but deep take at face value that it is terrorists
:01:37. > :01:43.doing that and not the Syrian Government? Without international
:01:43. > :01:48.investigation, we cannot have a complete answer about to who is
:01:48. > :01:57.responsible for the massacres, but it is the fingerprint of the
:01:57. > :02:01.militia, which is very close to the Assad regime. They hour buried
:02:01. > :02:06.pitches, they are very ruthless and the to what they like to do,
:02:06. > :02:15.especially killing children and women and innocent people. It is
:02:15. > :02:19.their fingerprints but beware. The regime is responsible, either it he
:02:19. > :02:27.lost control of the militia or up if the he does not provide
:02:27. > :02:33.protection to his own people. We're facing a dilemma, definitely
:02:33. > :02:39.sectarian civil war. It has already started. How many years with at
:02:39. > :02:46.last in Syria? How many thousands of people will be killed? The Kofi
:02:46. > :02:54.and an initiative come clean the collapse. It is not working, simply
:02:54. > :02:58.because there is no intervention for the reason we mentioned. The
:02:58. > :03:04.Russians and the Chinese are threatening to use their veto if
:03:04. > :03:10.other nations wished intervene, so we are facing a dilemma. How can we
:03:10. > :03:14.stop this killing? Go is that what Americans and Russians are talking
:03:14. > :03:20.about, to find an initiative for Assad to step down and surrender to
:03:20. > :03:24.his deputy and then we have an election. This is the best solution,
:03:25. > :03:33.but whether Assad will support that of whether the Russians will
:03:33. > :03:37.support it is another question. This is a moment when if you were a
:03:37. > :03:45.politician in a democracy and you want to do something, it is very
:03:45. > :03:48.difficult to know what to do. removed Assad, you would presumably
:03:48. > :03:54.removed a major part of the problem, but the danger is he is not
:03:54. > :03:59.complete the in control and then we have anarchy and chaos. Then it is
:03:59. > :04:03.unbridled sectarian that civil war, in which any intervention is pretty
:04:03. > :04:13.hopeless. But there are neighbours to this conflict who really want
:04:13. > :04:18.Assad out, who could be taking more action, like Torquay. Russia
:04:18. > :04:22.recruiting China on its side, to prevent the removal of Assad,
:04:22. > :04:28.because they have a vested interest in maintaining his position. Iran
:04:28. > :04:33.is very much involved in this, because Iran and Syria are very
:04:33. > :04:38.close allies. This has become much bigger than the horrendous
:04:38. > :04:42.massacres latter going on in the country. Francois Hollande clearly
:04:42. > :04:47.wants to take a role, but surely this Paris conference at the
:04:47. > :04:56.beginning of this month, it is very difficult to see how it exactly you
:04:56. > :04:59.can move forward. The ball is in the Court of Russia. Francois
:04:59. > :05:05.Hollande, there are parliamentary elections tomorrow and next Sunday,
:05:05. > :05:10.so he needs to wait for a large majority in order to push, so he is
:05:10. > :05:20.on standby at the moment. That is why we have but her to him recently
:05:20. > :05:23.
:05:23. > :05:26.and also about the euro crisis, but we will come to that later. At the
:05:26. > :05:34.beginning, the Turkish where saying they wanted to play a major role,
:05:34. > :05:40.but now they have gone very silent. Now we do not hear them.
:05:40. > :05:44.silence does not necessarily mean you're not doing anything.
:05:44. > :05:50.course, but the US sent a top official on Friday and at the end
:05:50. > :05:57.of the meeting, Moscow said, we are backing the Syria as a matter of
:05:57. > :06:03.principle. A matter of principle? What? Massacres are a matter of
:06:03. > :06:07.principle? That is at such a risky strategy that Russia is doing.
:06:07. > :06:14.Obviously Russia is enjoying its moment, it is holding the West, it
:06:14. > :06:18.is very powerful, but in the end, it is extremely risky. Also, Moscow
:06:18. > :06:25.being a traditional part there to Arab countries, it is not going
:06:25. > :06:30.down very well with the Arab world. But they do not had very many Arab
:06:30. > :06:34.allies left, they have their Iran, they have Syria, at least there is
:06:34. > :06:43.something to play with fire them in the Middle East. I did not think
:06:43. > :06:52.there is really anything else, the notion that that countries can be
:06:52. > :06:59.deposed because the United Nations wants it. It is a disaster.
:06:59. > :07:03.could it be a disaster? Syria is a mess, at so severe is a mess.
:07:03. > :07:07.If Francois Hollande is going to be very quiet for a week until the
:07:07. > :07:13.parliamentary elections are finished, you can see where I'm
:07:13. > :07:17.going with this. He might be completely silent until November.
:07:17. > :07:24.Were his successor. This is one of those problems which does not been
:07:24. > :07:29.very inviting, any more than any other capital, you can imagine the
:07:29. > :07:33.drone and comes in. We have a decapitation of the regime, at
:07:33. > :07:43.least the USA has the technical capacity to do it, but it does not
:07:43. > :07:49.want to do that. The question of the Turkish, the Turkish have a
:07:49. > :07:53.Kurdish problem in their border, so if their sectarian civil war or
:07:53. > :07:59.spilled over it to the Turkish, it would be a disaster for at their
:07:59. > :08:04.economy. They would lose everything. Especially since the core of
:08:04. > :08:09.Turkish foreign policy has been for years 0 problems with our
:08:09. > :08:15.neighbours. Now they have this problem spilling over their border.
:08:15. > :08:21.When you have Arabs as your neighbours, definitely. Do you see
:08:21. > :08:27.this as a sectarian conflict now? Yes. I have spoken to Syrians who
:08:28. > :08:35.say they be the hope it is not. Do you think it is a sectarian? Yes,
:08:35. > :08:39.it is. In certain areas, you have the mixture of religions living
:08:39. > :08:45.side by side for years, but now there are a lot of weapons coming
:08:45. > :08:51.from the outside, asking people to rebuild against the regime. They
:08:51. > :08:56.are armed to the teeth by the Government, by Assad himself. This
:08:56. > :09:06.is a recipe for a sectarian war, not just in Syria, but to spread to
:09:06. > :09:08.their neighbours. It will turn to sectarian violence inevitably.
:09:08. > :09:11.British Prime Minister David Cameron held a convivial meeting
:09:11. > :09:13.with the German Chancellor Angela Merkel and appeared to agree that
:09:13. > :09:16.the answer for the eurozone's problems was "more Europe" as
:09:16. > :09:19.Chancellor Merkel puts it - at least for those in the euro. But
:09:19. > :09:22.the implications are obvious - a multi-speed Europe with an inner
:09:22. > :09:25.core, some on the outside, and others - including Britain -
:09:25. > :09:30.circling from a distance but still within the EU. Is this really the
:09:30. > :09:36.future? And is it simply a recognition of reality? It is funny
:09:36. > :09:45.to have this conversation in London, an offshore territory. That is why
:09:45. > :09:51.we can be so objective about it. What is amazing is that Angela
:09:51. > :09:57.Merkel should talk about what effect is a political union. We're
:09:57. > :10:02.talking about something going back, at the moment I'm reading a book
:10:02. > :10:11.written in 1849, where he talked about their United States of Europe.
:10:11. > :10:18.And look where that got us? We're talking about fiscal union, banking
:10:18. > :10:28.union, but soon we will have to elect the president of Europe. This
:10:28. > :10:28.
:10:28. > :10:34.is not fantasy. It is quite clear that Angela Merkel talks about more
:10:34. > :10:40.Europe and she thinks about germinate running Europe.
:10:40. > :10:50.question is is it possible, but can we be one federation? Do people
:10:50. > :10:50.
:10:51. > :10:56.want it? A referendum in any European country, try holding one
:10:56. > :11:02.in Germany and see what they said. The French people are very French
:11:02. > :11:09.and Germans are very German. could say that in the United States,
:11:09. > :11:15.then New Yorkers are very New York. We're talking about a federation.
:11:15. > :11:22.It sounds fantastical, but you cannot talk about achieving all
:11:22. > :11:28.these economic targets and not talk about a Europe without am leader.
:11:28. > :11:31.The analogy with the United States is completely wrong. The colonies
:11:31. > :11:36.of the United States and the stage which formed into a federation were
:11:36. > :11:42.not hundreds of years old with ancient hatreds and long histories
:11:42. > :11:52.and linguistic differences. I am sorry, but it is not the same. They
:11:52. > :11:57.
:11:57. > :12:00.all existed by it 20 minutes by comparison to that. David Cameron
:12:00. > :12:05.and George Osborne are advocating fiscal union of a kind that no
:12:05. > :12:09.British politician would ever advocate for Britain. Any British
:12:09. > :12:15.politician who advise such a thing would be vaporised. They would not
:12:15. > :12:20.be a politician, they would be a stand-up comedian. It is ridiculous
:12:20. > :12:25.to say that other countries which have quite strong, it slightly
:12:25. > :12:30.shaky, democratic histories, but for the most but Beazer very old
:12:30. > :12:34.democracies, the idea that they should pull their sovereignty and
:12:34. > :12:39.pool their debts, with the idea that Germany should pay for
:12:39. > :12:45.everything. You would have to put paid 10 any notion of democratic
:12:45. > :12:48.accountability, because the pupils of those countries to not want it.
:12:48. > :12:52.The genius of the European Union was to prevent a war between France
:12:52. > :12:59.and Germany, and it has done that very successfully, but the other
:12:59. > :13:04.bits added on at causing problems. But to achieve that major aim, to
:13:04. > :13:08.prevent a war between Germany and France, and to Germany and Britain,
:13:08. > :13:15.you have to sacrifice some things and you have to be patient. The
:13:15. > :13:20.Germans are saying, we do not want a federation, we once our identity.
:13:20. > :13:26.But he did not have British cars or British buses, none of that is
:13:26. > :13:35.there any more. What I want to say honestly is that there should be a
:13:35. > :13:38.lot of sacrifices in order for this European federation to work. It is
:13:38. > :13:46.true that as in the Mediterranean are the lousy ones and this union,
:13:46. > :13:54.because we love drink and we love dancing, but why not? You have to
:13:55. > :13:58.be patients and you have to it pool money for them. The political union
:13:58. > :14:06.worked well enough to accomplish the goal of no bloody wars in
:14:06. > :14:11.Europe, but the question is what is the direction of travel. The euro
:14:11. > :14:17.was at political project with an economic loss, but now comes the
:14:17. > :14:26.question, is it going to be the political union that there creators
:14:26. > :14:31.of the EU know wanted? All the list entreaty efforts, nobody really
:14:31. > :14:34.cared about the mechanics. Now we have people having to get to the
:14:34. > :14:40.European Union through the misery of a potential depression and
:14:40. > :14:45.banking crisis. There is no enthusiasm. You feel European, you
:14:45. > :14:55.feel proud to be European, but in Britain, I do not detect any of
:14:55. > :14:56.
:14:57. > :15:02.I have a solution for Britain, joined the Arab League. I tell you
:15:02. > :15:06.what, it might happen. In terms of, if you ask the people, the people
:15:06. > :15:10.violence, for example, they gave what they call the right answer
:15:10. > :15:16.last week. In previous referendums, they give the wrong answer. That
:15:16. > :15:24.would be the same in France. depends what is on the table. And
:15:24. > :15:29.what is the alternative? Bankruptcy, aback to the Frank? Why not? We
:15:29. > :15:34.have to be logical. We cannot have fiscal banking, eurobonds, etc, and
:15:34. > :15:37.have nothing on the political side. That is logical. He will not have
:15:37. > :15:43.Euro bonds. Germany will not accept that and for good reason. Is that
:15:43. > :15:47.logical? Is the logic, as everyone says, that you cannot have this.
:15:47. > :15:51.Yes, that is why the whole thing has been logically flawed from the
:15:51. > :15:55.outset. What was possible for political leaderships and political
:15:55. > :16:02.elites to decide among themselves was not going to be acceptable to
:16:02. > :16:05.the democratically accountable. The electorate will not accept it and
:16:05. > :16:09.cannot accept it because the constitution of Germany does not
:16:09. > :16:13.permit the kind of money printing that everybody is now demanding.
:16:13. > :16:16.They cannot underwrite the debts. Next weekend, the people of Greece
:16:16. > :16:23.will vote and maybe Greece and Britain and a few others will end
:16:23. > :16:26.up joining the Arab League. They are faced with the prospect of a
:16:26. > :16:33.government which says that we have to renegotiate the terms, and some
:16:33. > :16:37.people think that means that you are out of the new role. Why not? -
:16:37. > :16:40.- out of the Euro. You cannot say we will take Greece and then
:16:40. > :16:47.suddenly wanderer troubles, we do not want them any more and it was a
:16:47. > :16:53.mistake. -- when there are troubles. We have to be patient. We have to
:16:53. > :16:57.stand by them and encourage them to integrate. Without threatening them
:16:57. > :17:06.of not being in, you are the bad boys, your corrupt, you do not pay
:17:06. > :17:10.taxes. You don't! It they have received 1.5 times their GDP in
:17:10. > :17:15.European aid in the last two years. The Europeans have not done nothing
:17:15. > :17:19.for Greece. It still does not solve the fundamental problem. But hold
:17:19. > :17:25.on, we have had the President of the US telling the Europeans had to
:17:25. > :17:29.get their house in order, which seems a bit odd. Really? The night
:17:29. > :17:35.estates does that all the time! the President is running for re-
:17:35. > :17:41.election. He is preparing to spend money. It is a trick, loved by all
:17:41. > :17:46.sorts of leaders! It is inherent to blame Europe for the fact that
:17:46. > :17:51.America's economy is in the tank, just as Gordon Brown blamed America.
:17:51. > :17:55.And George Osborne blamed Gordon Brown. Thank Gordon Brown for not
:17:55. > :17:59.being in the Euro. All one thing he got right. I'm sure, having
:17:59. > :18:02.listened to this conversation, you would like Britain to be a full
:18:03. > :18:09.member of the central speed lane of the Euro. 0 I would like Britain to
:18:09. > :18:13.be part of it. I think that was a historical mistake. -- I would like.
:18:14. > :18:21.He said he wanted the United States of Europe. He had good reasons to
:18:22. > :18:27.be reluctant after what happened. Either we go back or we go forward
:18:27. > :18:32.but we cannot stay where we are. It does not make any sense. We cannot.
:18:32. > :18:36.It is logically impossible. But you cannot go forward without scrapping
:18:36. > :18:45.the Democrat accountability of European governments. That is the
:18:45. > :18:51.choice. What about universal suffrage? At least the British do
:18:51. > :18:55.not ridicule the French any more as they used to do. We leave that to
:18:55. > :19:00.the American's! I think the British ridicule the French all the time.
:19:00. > :19:03.On that note, let's move on. There are between five and 8000 forced
:19:03. > :19:06.marriages involving British people every year according to the Home
:19:06. > :19:12.Office, mostly involving girls whose families come from south-east
:19:12. > :19:16.Asia. The British Government wants to outlaw the process, but will
:19:16. > :19:19.this place more pressure on young girls to report their families to
:19:19. > :19:24.the authorities. It is agreed that this is a terrible thing, forced
:19:24. > :19:27.marriage, but some say criminalising it is a mistake. What
:19:27. > :19:30.do you think? I am not sure I understand the point of the
:19:30. > :19:33.legislation. Forced marriages a form of slavery which has been
:19:33. > :19:37.banned for a couple of hundred years in this country. Physical
:19:37. > :19:42.coercion and threats are also grim acts, so what is different about
:19:42. > :19:47.this? Saying that forced marriage is illegal just makes it extremely
:19:47. > :19:51.difficult to legislate because how do you legislate between force and
:19:51. > :19:54.arranged marriage? A lot of women are taken back to Pakistan and
:19:54. > :19:58.introduced two cousins who were 20 years older and the families get
:19:58. > :20:06.together and there is more on the emotional pressure put on the woman,
:20:06. > :20:11.is that a range or forced? Obviously, if she is beaten up or
:20:11. > :20:18.her something, that is different, but that is already illegal. I know
:20:18. > :20:23.you have family experience of this. Yes, I have cousins who were forced
:20:23. > :20:29.to marry. It is a disaster. It is very painful. It is a miserable way
:20:29. > :20:33.of life. It is a tradition, unfortunately, but when we talk
:20:33. > :20:37.about Britain, it is not the same. We're talking about the first
:20:37. > :20:41.generation of immigrants to this country, but now with a second and
:20:41. > :20:45.third-generation, actually it is different. It is very small, a very
:20:45. > :20:52.small percentage of people who are actually indulging in this.
:20:52. > :20:57.Personally, I'm against criminalising this kind of process.
:20:57. > :21:02.There is no clear cut to order between arranged and false marriage.
:21:02. > :21:11.We have to talk to these people and solve this problem. In these
:21:11. > :21:18.education, not just the sort of criminalising this and that, we
:21:18. > :21:21.have to be patient, it is not a perfect institution, or whether it
:21:22. > :21:25.is a range or forced or Elle of marriage. It is a huge problem. We
:21:25. > :21:31.have to be patient and saw that with scientific ways and with lots
:21:31. > :21:35.of talk and effort. But where are the Imams and community leaders in
:21:36. > :21:43.this? Surely if it is people who have arrived recently, there are
:21:43. > :21:46.people who should be able to say that this is not the way we do this.
:21:46. > :21:52.Surely they could say that this is not how we do things in Britain and
:21:52. > :21:58.this is unacceptable? I in a a community very well. -- I know the
:21:58. > :22:05.community. There are huge efforts to teach the people that this is
:22:05. > :22:12.not the way. And now we have younger generations who do not
:22:12. > :22:18.believe in arranged marriage. I cannot tell my daughter that I have
:22:18. > :22:21.found her a nice grim. It is out of the question for her. Now they are
:22:21. > :22:25.highly educated, Westernised people and they do not accept the
:22:25. > :22:33.traditional ways of their families. We have to be patient. It is going
:22:34. > :22:40.to disappear very soon. Is this a problem in France? As you mentioned,
:22:40. > :22:43.forced marriages take place in the South Asian community mostly, and
:22:43. > :22:48.you have a bigger proportion of people coming from that region in
:22:48. > :22:54.the UK, so we do not have as much of their problem at all. But what
:22:54. > :22:59.is interesting is the perception. I was struck 15 years ago when I
:22:59. > :23:05.first came to London that we were talking about honour killings.
:23:05. > :23:10.There was so much, compared to France, of cultural relativism. In
:23:10. > :23:15.Britain, things that are just crimes are considered, well, it is
:23:15. > :23:20.cultural. You do this in your country, fine. And I thought there
:23:20. > :23:24.was this tolerance for something that should not be tolerated.
:23:24. > :23:27.terms of the secular French Republic, on an your traditions,
:23:27. > :23:32.and how you view the hijab and other things, it is totally
:23:33. > :23:37.different. It is. Perhaps we consider universal values. It was a
:23:37. > :23:42.crime before. I do nothing we need a lot, because it was a crime
:23:42. > :23:44.before and it still remains a crime. Calling it by another name...
:23:44. > :23:51.British have this tolerance for something that should not be
:23:51. > :23:55.tolerated. British tolerance is not admirable in that way. Many things,
:23:55. > :23:59.it is cultural, so therefore I wash my hands of it, but actually
:23:59. > :24:03.culture is political as well. You need to do something about it.
:24:03. > :24:07.agree that fundamentally the problem is cultural. This is a
:24:07. > :24:11.cultural marker that says that we do not permit this. If you are in
:24:11. > :24:15.trouble, you can get help. In the same way that when domestic
:24:15. > :24:21.violence was not taught about, and the police would not go after a has
:24:21. > :24:26.been to beat his wife, or a guy who beat his girlfriend, everyone now
:24:26. > :24:31.knows that this is illegal and wrong. -- a husband who beat his
:24:31. > :24:34.wife. If he set up another cultural marker who says -- that says that
:24:34. > :24:41.this is a line we do not cross, it is part of the educational effort.
:24:42. > :24:45.I am all for it. Even if nobody is prosecuted? They probably will be
:24:45. > :24:49.high profile cases interpreted in their own way. It will be difficult
:24:49. > :24:52.for a child to bring her own parents into prosecution, or maybe
:24:52. > :24:56.a cousin. But sometimes this happens and if it does, it will
:24:56. > :25:00.send a message. But the domestic violence analogy is appropriate.
:25:00. > :25:04.You did not have to make a new crime out of wife beating, you just
:25:04. > :25:08.have to get the police to enforce the law. But symbolically, you're
:25:08. > :25:12.saying that we are taking this seriously. It is a symbol for the
:25:12. > :25:17.Government. But making law is not about sending signals, it is about
:25:17. > :25:24.making laws that can be properly applied. The law was changed about
:25:24. > :25:27.rape. I think these things made a difference. All the things that are
:25:27. > :25:33.happening connection with forced marriage are already illegal and
:25:33. > :25:39.all it takes is proper enforcement. It might make the Muslim community
:25:39. > :25:46.feel more or... These are very small cases. If thousands a year,
:25:46. > :25:51.8000 this year. We should not talk about it as if it is a disaster.