:00:26. > :00:32.A full news bulletin at 1pm. Now it Welcome to Dateline London. Are we
:00:32. > :00:39.at a turning-point in Syria? The Olympic Games begins in a few days
:00:39. > :00:46.faced by a possible strike. And Nelson Mandela have -- at 94. A
:00:46. > :00:48.model of when to quit. With me are Mustapha Karkouti, the Gulf based
:00:48. > :00:53.writer and broadcaster, Vincent Magombe of Africa Inform
:00:53. > :00:57.International, Henry Chu of the LA Times and David Aaronovitch of the
:00:57. > :01:02.Times. The bomb that struck at the regime of President Assad was seen
:01:02. > :01:07.as a turning-point in the crisis. But diplomatically at the United
:01:07. > :01:16.Nations paralysis remains. Are we at the end game for the regime of
:01:16. > :01:22.and is there anything outsiders can and should do? Mustapha, do people
:01:22. > :01:27.think this is a turning-point? Information I am getting back from
:01:27. > :01:35.three major areas of the country, including the capital, is that the
:01:35. > :01:43.regime is cracking. Last week, the killing of four senior people in
:01:43. > :01:53.the regime, you are talking about half of the regime killed. These
:01:53. > :01:54.
:01:54. > :02:02.were run and the intelligence operations. -- run-in -- and
:02:02. > :02:07.running. 50 % of the regime have been eliminated. Really be tipping
:02:07. > :02:12.point happened 16 months ago, not now, when the people went on the
:02:12. > :02:17.street in the south of the country, in Deraa, that was the tipping
:02:17. > :02:24.point. Even though they risk everything by doing that? Yes,
:02:24. > :02:29.because we are talking about a regime of 40 years of oppression,
:02:29. > :02:35.but still people broke their silence. That was really the
:02:35. > :02:40.tipping point. Since then, the countdown started. What happened
:02:40. > :02:50.last week is of course a major development because the information
:02:50. > :02:51.
:02:51. > :03:01.I am getting from inside Syria, maybe 60 % of the country between
:03:01. > :03:01.
:03:01. > :03:07.5pm and 9 am the regime authorities do not dare to enter. So the regime
:03:07. > :03:14.itself is losing. If you were somebody in the Syrian army, you
:03:14. > :03:18.must think, what am I fighting and dying for? It looks like it is
:03:18. > :03:25.cracking apart. It also looks like it has been done by Syrians
:03:25. > :03:32.themselves, although the result of outside in -- interference. I love
:03:32. > :03:42.that last remark, it is being done by Syrians themselves, but I'd -- I
:03:42. > :03:43.
:03:44. > :03:48.wish that was the case. If I was in the shoes of Assad, I would start
:03:49. > :03:56.packing and going. If I was a dictator in any of the at -- the
:03:56. > :04:02.Arab countries, and Africa as well, I would start to do that. But the
:04:02. > :04:05.remark about doing themselves is very important. I see the
:04:05. > :04:09.determination of people in the Middle East to change things and
:04:09. > :04:17.literally, or whether there is support from outside or not, they
:04:17. > :04:27.will do it. The only thing is, when you talk about Western approaches
:04:27. > :04:27.
:04:27. > :04:32.to the situation, the West, the way it relates to Africa, forget about
:04:32. > :04:40.Libya, which is almost an Arab country, but the way it relates to
:04:40. > :04:44.African countries, I belong, I can now declare my interest, I belong
:04:44. > :04:50.to a broad movement that has been fighting for democracy in my
:04:50. > :04:55.country, in Uganda. I have been part of delegations going to the
:04:55. > :04:59.British Foreign Office. The first thing they will tell us is, we will
:04:59. > :05:04.only talk to you if you are going to be completely peaceful. You are
:05:05. > :05:10.not going to do anything else. When I look at the way the British and
:05:10. > :05:17.the Americans and so on, the Foreign Secretary here, look at
:05:17. > :05:25.what is happening in Libya first of all, and now in Syria, they are the
:05:25. > :05:30.first wants to encourage violence. So I think we need the people to do
:05:30. > :05:36.these things themselves but we need a common international standard in
:05:36. > :05:40.terms of outside perceptions. don't think anybody watching would
:05:40. > :05:44.be entirely shocked by the idea of diplomatic double standards, but I
:05:44. > :05:48.wonder if you feel that all these diplomatic meetings that are going
:05:48. > :05:52.on, I talked to a member of the Syrian resistance he said, we don't
:05:53. > :05:56.care what you say, we are going to get on and fight this war by
:05:56. > :06:00.military means. It seems that whatever happens in the United
:06:00. > :06:08.Nations or the Foreign Office or Whitehall, that is the way it is
:06:08. > :06:12.going to be. Because it was an unexpected success to get the
:06:12. > :06:18.Security Council resolution on Libya, allowing the no-fly zone and
:06:18. > :06:22.so on, it has led people to think that, whereas we read it as being
:06:22. > :06:30.successful by and large, people like the Russians breaded in a
:06:30. > :06:35.completely opposite way and were very alarmed by what happened. It
:06:35. > :06:40.has been absolutely impossible for Kofi Annan or anybody else to get
:06:40. > :06:45.any concerted international position on how to reach a
:06:45. > :06:50.political solution in Syria. Impossible. It has been impossible
:06:50. > :06:54.to get them to do it. It has therefore been impossible to
:06:54. > :06:59.pressure the Assad regime. In the early stages of the uprising, to
:06:59. > :07:03.begin to do the things that might be necessary to itself, to make
:07:03. > :07:08.possible any kind of resolution, and gradually, and that is why I
:07:08. > :07:12.agree with Mustapha, the turning point was a long time ago. Since
:07:13. > :07:17.then we have had a slow progression through the various stages of
:07:17. > :07:22.regress -- of repression, to the civil war. The civil war could have
:07:22. > :07:28.been prevented but now, as we do have it, if you are a serial rebel,
:07:28. > :07:31.a course you are going to say, we are going to do it now. For when I
:07:31. > :07:36.think of the international co- operation of lack of it towards
:07:36. > :07:42.Syria, it is because it is a very different kettle of fish to Libya
:07:42. > :07:45.and other countries. We might want the Assad regime gone, but what
:07:45. > :07:50.will be in its place and what geopolitical strategy will other
:07:50. > :08:00.countries have? The US has not decided, Israel has not decided how
:08:00. > :08:01.
:08:01. > :08:10.to approach the situation. Turkey and 11 and. -- the Lebanon.
:08:10. > :08:19.Trying to get everybody on board in any camp or other... I think,
:08:19. > :08:22.whatever outside powers wished to see in Syria, they will not
:08:22. > :08:29.determine the final situation. It is the people inside who will do
:08:29. > :08:36.that, certainly. It was only officially declared by the Red
:08:36. > :08:46.Cross but now we have a civil war situation. There is no civil war
:08:46. > :08:49.
:08:49. > :08:59.situation yet. Sunni mack are not killing she are and so on. -- the
:08:59. > :09:01.
:09:01. > :09:08.Shi'ites. There are a lot of Christians and Sunni Muslims and
:09:08. > :09:15.Alawites supporting the opposition. Two key figures in the opposition
:09:15. > :09:20.movement are Alawites. Do you think being Syrian, which is a question
:09:20. > :09:26.we asked about Iraq over the years, do you think being Syrian is the
:09:26. > :09:34.most important defining characteristic? Certainly. Syria,
:09:34. > :09:41.since independence, has always been a secular state. There is this
:09:41. > :09:47.common bond amongst certainly the people and at the Cern -- the same
:09:47. > :09:52.time the Syrians in general, like the Egyptians and the Tunisians
:09:52. > :09:59.before them and the Libyans, they are learning politics now. They are
:09:59. > :10:04.learning how to proceed in fighting the regime. You have exile's
:10:04. > :10:11.outside, rebels outside, and this happened in the case of Lidiya
:10:11. > :10:14.inside -- previously, but there is a lot of infighting and nobody
:10:14. > :10:18.acknowledges a supreme authority. am a bit sceptical about the
:10:18. > :10:28.Western support for the country. It takes a long time to build a
:10:28. > :10:28.
:10:28. > :10:35.fighting force within the opposition. Leaving the West on one
:10:35. > :10:45.side, what you think about regional involvement? Turkey, Saudi Arabia
:10:45. > :10:46.
:10:46. > :10:55.and Iran. Of course there is this important access in the region,
:10:55. > :11:00.Iran, Hezbollah and Syria. -- axis. Powers in the Gulf see Iran as a
:11:00. > :11:05.threatening power in the region. Iran has always been, God knows
:11:05. > :11:12.since when. It is not because of the Islamic religion but even under
:11:12. > :11:18.the Shah of Iran, Iran was treating the other Gulf states as
:11:18. > :11:28.insignificant little states here and there. They deal would the
:11:28. > :11:31.
:11:31. > :11:35.region with a lot of arrogance. There are two things are would like
:11:35. > :11:45.to say. One, let's not always doubt, when the people are fighting and
:11:45. > :11:49.trying to do their own staff -- staff, I take issue with people who
:11:49. > :11:59.say, they are fighting but America has decided what will come after.
:11:59. > :12:05.They know what will come after! It is true, for a country that has
:12:05. > :12:10.suffered a lot, and we see this in many Third World countries, if you
:12:10. > :12:16.don't study what happened in Iraq very carefully, you may go to
:12:16. > :12:22.nothing. In Iraq, they said that the Ba'ath Party would have no jobs
:12:22. > :12:26.afterwards. In Syria, you have to make sure that you kicked out the
:12:26. > :12:33.forces who are killing everybody and stealing things, but maybe --
:12:33. > :12:38.make sure you keep some of them as friends. Whenever the Olympic Games
:12:38. > :12:43.are held there are always complicated arrangements. Border
:12:43. > :12:46.guards are threatening a strike and the private security company G4S
:12:46. > :12:50.has messed up so badly that thousands of soldiers will have to
:12:50. > :13:00.help with security. Once the Games begin, we'll all have that be
:13:00. > :13:02.
:13:02. > :13:06.forgotten? David. -- will all have that. Yes. Tomorrow, God willing,
:13:06. > :13:11.deck -- Bradley Wiggins will win the Tour de France, which is a
:13:11. > :13:14.perfect curtain-raiser for the Olympics. All this stuff about the
:13:14. > :13:19.Olympics before the Olympics, everybody gets fed up with the
:13:19. > :13:21.constant hype. When the thing actually begins and the athletes
:13:21. > :13:30.start to the form and we get stories and pictures of
:13:30. > :13:35.extraordinary people who have trained for so many years. -- start
:13:35. > :13:42.to perform. In this country we will begin to get the first gold medals
:13:42. > :13:52.etc, and all of this will be forgotten. Anybody who continues
:13:52. > :13:55.
:13:55. > :14:01.You have obviously not travelled in a taxi it lately. London taxi
:14:01. > :14:06.drivers are not happy. Yucel Athens at the peak of there performance
:14:06. > :14:12.doing things the rest of us could only dream about, but I had a
:14:12. > :14:16.cautionary tale from my own country, which hosted the Olympics. There
:14:16. > :14:20.were a number of problems that happened during the games,
:14:20. > :14:25.including problems with transport and security. People might be
:14:25. > :14:30.caught up in the events and the gold medals, but if something goes
:14:30. > :14:35.wrong with that the Underground in London or or with security, that
:14:35. > :14:41.will throw and damper on the Games. But not if you are sitting at home
:14:42. > :14:47.watching it on television. There is one thing I do not understand. I do
:14:47. > :14:52.not see why people are moaning about it. You have something
:14:52. > :14:57.celebratory, something really delightful coming to your town. Why
:14:57. > :15:02.all the fuss? Because it is a great tradition, as you well know. The
:15:02. > :15:07.New York Times did a piece this week, they went and talk to people
:15:07. > :15:17.moaning about it and asked why you wear a moaning about it? Visit a
:15:17. > :15:19.
:15:19. > :15:25.British decision to flinch? It is an Olympic sport. They had been
:15:25. > :15:29.talking about the weather, saying there is no good weather. We will
:15:29. > :15:35.have good weather, it will be 30 degrees and then they will warn
:15:35. > :15:40.that it is too hot. I have just read the title, our
:15:40. > :15:45.greatest team. One of the problems, and this is for me very
:15:45. > :15:54.philosophical, going back to colonial and Imperial times. This
:15:54. > :16:00.idea of Great Britain, all the countries out great. Our greatest
:16:00. > :16:08.team. They always do that. They always do it before, not
:16:08. > :16:15.necessarily afterwards. I do not think many Northern Ireland,
:16:15. > :16:23.Scottish or Welsh people do this. It is the England team.
:16:23. > :16:28.But we're not blowing it up, we er just quiet.
:16:28. > :16:33.The incredible pleasure there is also in seeing the athletes from
:16:33. > :16:39.Uganda and other countries here. The fact is, the last Olympics held
:16:39. > :16:45.in this country were before I was born. It is an extraordinary,
:16:45. > :16:50.exciting thing to think they're here. I might be able to go down
:16:50. > :16:55.and see the marathon, which you would not meet tickets for. To
:16:55. > :17:00.think that all that is happening here. We have seen on the
:17:00. > :17:10.television from Beijing and Sydney and Athens and even from Atlanta,
:17:10. > :17:20.which was a spectacularly poorly organised games. Everybody agrees.
:17:20. > :17:25.
:17:25. > :17:29.But the good holds on the Times, we got feedback from readers. Readers
:17:29. > :17:36.were contacting the paper and asking, why are you morning like
:17:36. > :17:44.this? It is you journalists who are moaning about this.
:17:44. > :17:52.I think one of the real worries I look at as a person coming from a
:17:52. > :18:00.poor country. I do not Colet poor, we are rich in resources, but our
:18:00. > :18:04.countries, it means the way the Olympics is going right now a
:18:04. > :18:12.making all this billions of money that has to be spent for a country
:18:12. > :18:17.to hold the Olympics. Secondly, the militarisation of the Olympics. The
:18:17. > :18:23.fascination of all the things going on right now and he means that the
:18:23. > :18:30.chance of a country like Uganda or South Africa or any of our
:18:30. > :18:37.countries in the Third World or developing world buyer being
:18:37. > :18:45.reduced. Until fairly recently, people would have described Brazil
:18:45. > :18:51.as a developing country. They have the next Olympics. It is true that
:18:51. > :18:56.this is a scaled-down Olympics from Beijing. That was much bigger.
:18:56. > :19:02.Think about how the streets were cleaned of the undesirables in
:19:03. > :19:08.Beijing before it started. You have not had that happen in Britain. It
:19:08. > :19:18.is the sort of thing that irritates us. Going back to the great days
:19:18. > :19:18.
:19:18. > :19:23.when it was a global event. You have to stage it, China has to
:19:23. > :19:31.stage it and we cannot say it in Africa, because you're making it
:19:31. > :19:34.too expensive. Let's move on. Nelson Mandela
:19:34. > :19:37.celebrated his 94th birthday this week and remains something very
:19:37. > :19:40.strange - a living hero. What is it about him that connects with people
:19:40. > :19:43.around the world? Is it perhaps that he had power and voluntarily
:19:43. > :19:46.gave it up, unlike, for example, Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe or even
:19:46. > :19:56.many democratically elected leaders who cling to power until forced
:19:56. > :19:56.
:19:56. > :20:02.out? He is 94 and has had problems with his health, but it was good to
:20:02. > :20:09.see him celebrate this week. He is a great man. Having said that,
:20:09. > :20:15.some South Africans would say things that he did, like arranging
:20:15. > :20:19.global strategies to bring in piece, you cannot take that away from him.
:20:19. > :20:25.But many South Africans today feel he could have done much more on the
:20:25. > :20:35.economic front, but he decided to do one little thing he could do. He
:20:35. > :20:36.
:20:36. > :20:44.is a great man. That thing you talk about where he went from power when
:20:44. > :20:50.people wanted him to stay, that is something. One of the biggest
:20:50. > :20:59.problems for Africa is leaders who want to say for too long. When
:20:59. > :21:06.somebody asked him about it recently, he said, I know the
:21:06. > :21:12.problem is leaders who do not have a vision. Rubbish! Nelson Mandela
:21:12. > :21:19.has given us a principle that if African leaders were to forelock,
:21:19. > :21:26.would help. British readers, remember what happened to Margaret
:21:26. > :21:32.Thatcher. She was kicked out from the party, from the Government,
:21:32. > :21:36.from Downing Street. She cried when she left Downing Street. As in
:21:36. > :21:42.David said, they all think there is no one better than them to run the
:21:42. > :21:52.country. This even happens under democracy. In Africa, it is even
:21:52. > :21:56.
:21:56. > :22:03.worse. Look at some Bambury. That great revolutionary man Mugabe, as
:22:03. > :22:10.a symbol of change in the world, look at him. It is the greatest
:22:10. > :22:20.disappointment of my life, to see people turning over and clinging to
:22:20. > :22:24.
:22:24. > :22:28.power in this way. I cannot describe it. With Mandela, what is
:22:28. > :22:34.remarkable is that here is a man who was imprisoned by a regime with
:22:34. > :22:42.absolute power and then take to the heart that absolute power corrupts
:22:42. > :22:45.absolutely and was willing to spare the country what happened to him.
:22:45. > :22:50.You have the 22nd amendment, which means you can get rid of precedence
:22:50. > :22:57.after eight years, the matter what happens. But some people stay in
:22:57. > :23:03.the Senate for decades. We have dinosaurs, yes. There are other
:23:03. > :23:11.things to deal with, but it is not quite the same. Was Mandela and
:23:11. > :23:15.inspiration to you? One of my absolute earliest political
:23:15. > :23:20.activities was anti- apartheid about South Africa. Mandela was in
:23:20. > :23:26.prison and was this extraordinary figure. When he comes out, what
:23:26. > :23:30.could have been a man who was very bitter, absolutely sod that the
:23:31. > :23:38.problem was constructing a peaceful transition and that had to include
:23:38. > :23:44.the people who had been enemies. This is the absolute necessary
:23:44. > :23:50.prerequisite to getting a peaceful and democratic solution. He is the
:23:50. > :23:54.complete and continuing inspiration of being able to do that process.
:23:54. > :23:58.I mentioned the economic issue. One of the biggest problems South
:23:58. > :24:02.Africa will face in the future is if they're just too comfortable to
:24:02. > :24:12.say, we had all these white people killing us, we have make peace with
:24:12. > :24:14.
:24:14. > :24:18.them and that is good for our society. But I think they will have
:24:18. > :24:23.to Bedi strongly confront the issues of distribution of wealth,
:24:23. > :24:28.which means some people will be unhappy, but the need to do it in a
:24:28. > :24:31.civilised and humane way. Within the rule of law.
:24:31. > :24:36.Many South African white people must be aware they have to share
:24:36. > :24:46.what they have, because what I have been heeding from South Africa at
:24:46. > :24:49.this moment, the majority of people keep getting cruder. I think the
:24:49. > :24:53.Government that will succeed will be the Government that has the
:24:53. > :24:58.courage to deal with it. The other thing that is
:24:58. > :25:03.inspirational is that Mandela is someone who suffered for what he
:25:03. > :25:09.did. There was also an armed struggle, but it was that suffering
:25:09. > :25:16.which gave him a legitimacy which other people did not have.
:25:16. > :25:22.great thing about this great man, if at given needed just steps back
:25:22. > :25:29.and looks at what he or she has done, have I done enough, so I quit
:25:29. > :25:33.Government? What Mandela did, he stepped back on the day he was
:25:33. > :25:40.released, on the last day of the four years in which he was
:25:40. > :25:45.president, and he said, I have done enough. What he did in prison, that
:25:45. > :25:49.was the greatest achievement ever, not the four years in office.
:25:49. > :25:52.That's it for Dateline London for this week. We'll be back next week