Browse content similar to 20/02/2016. Check below for episodes and series from the same categories and more!
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reported dead. The government has declared a state of natural disaster | :00:00. | :00:00. | |
across the island and a curfew remains in place. Now it is time for | :00:00. | :00:08. | |
Hello and welcome to Dateline London. | :00:09. | :00:24. | |
Russia says it does not bomb hospitals and Syria. | :00:25. | :00:34. | |
My guests today include a Russian journalist, | :00:35. | :00:42. | |
Janet Daley from the Sunday Telegraph. | :00:43. | :00:48. | |
David Cameron told us he is battling for Britain | :00:49. | :00:50. | |
Can he wind a referendum on how far above the EU have to change | :00:51. | :00:58. | |
Has it failed to live up to the hopes? | :00:59. | :01:13. | |
It is the most significant thing about the EU, that it took all this | :01:14. | :01:18. | |
agony, this week, and three days of solid arguing to get this result. | :01:19. | :01:29. | |
That means that this opportunity that many of us thought existed | :01:30. | :01:32. | |
to reform the EU through this renegotiation of the UK position, | :01:33. | :01:38. | |
If it took them all that hassle and all that discussion, | :01:39. | :01:49. | |
how much of this was pantomime and pre-scripted? | :01:50. | :01:52. | |
It is difficult to say, but the point was that they tried | :01:53. | :01:55. | |
to give the impression that this was the most contentious thing that | :01:56. | :01:59. | |
had ever been presented to them, and then they finally agreed | :02:00. | :02:02. | |
on something, that hardly causes a ripple. | :02:03. | :02:07. | |
Most of these are rhetorical changes. | :02:08. | :02:13. | |
At his press conference David Cameron was saying things | :02:14. | :02:16. | |
He said that we would never be a member of the euro, | :02:17. | :02:27. | |
but no one has suggested that we should join them. | :02:28. | :02:29. | |
The idea that we have created some special status within the EU, | :02:30. | :02:35. | |
The one concession that he did achieve is about benefits | :02:36. | :02:47. | |
Working tax credits are going to disappear | :02:48. | :02:51. | |
because they are introducing the living wage. | :02:52. | :02:53. | |
This will not make any difference to the EU migration. | :02:54. | :03:06. | |
There are so many countries not willing to do it. | :03:07. | :03:14. | |
The hope that this will lead to a more competitive EU | :03:15. | :03:17. | |
was expressed 50 years ago in Lisbon. | :03:18. | :03:21. | |
Everyone agreed to make Europe the most forward-looking | :03:22. | :03:26. | |
The Italians and French are sticking to somewhat rigid mechanisms | :03:27. | :03:35. | |
On the other hand, what is he going to say to his people? | :03:36. | :03:47. | |
Say it wasn't enough and we cannot accept it as a deal, | :03:48. | :03:51. | |
Perhaps he will say what Alex Salmond says he should say | :03:52. | :04:00. | |
- if he campaigns on the deal he will lose. | :04:01. | :04:03. | |
This is good for national security, good for economic security, | :04:04. | :04:10. | |
he has to move it from the specifics to a bigger picture. | :04:11. | :04:13. | |
Note how the issue of security is coming more and more to the fore. | :04:14. | :04:18. | |
Everyone singing from the same hymn sheet, increasing threats in this | :04:19. | :04:21. | |
world, we can't go it alone, we need a larger family to be more | :04:22. | :04:26. | |
effective in containing the dangers arising. | :04:27. | :04:30. | |
Somewhat wobbly, and this is the status of Britain. | :04:31. | :04:38. | |
It's always been separate from the continent. | :04:39. | :04:46. | |
It has never been in doubt we would do things differently, | :04:47. | :04:49. | |
never been in doubt that Britain is not like that about Europe. | :04:50. | :04:53. | |
He said he did not like Brussels when he was just there and he talks | :04:54. | :04:57. | |
like that - it's amazing how you let him get away with it. | :04:58. | :05:01. | |
You've given him a presumed deal and the guy has the nerve to say | :05:02. | :05:04. | |
I was asked by Russian television, while Cameron was debating | :05:05. | :05:12. | |
at the summit, to forecast what was going to happen. | :05:13. | :05:17. | |
I said the package would be very unexciting. | :05:18. | :05:24. | |
That basically nobody thinks that Britain will ever leave the EU. | :05:25. | :05:30. | |
Such an impossible scenario to envisage. | :05:31. | :05:35. | |
They write it so much they repeat it all the time. | :05:36. | :05:39. | |
My point is, if Cameron was serious about this, | :05:40. | :05:42. | |
He never promised anyone a referendum in 2016. | :05:43. | :05:50. | |
He had all the time in the world to work out a really good package. | :05:51. | :05:56. | |
But is that not because you are assuming this is about the EU rather | :05:57. | :05:59. | |
than the internal politics of the Tory party? | :06:00. | :06:02. | |
If it is about the EU, you could say, let's take three | :06:03. | :06:05. | |
If it is about what will I do for the rest of my term, | :06:06. | :06:11. | |
That would be terrible, let's get it over with. | :06:12. | :06:18. | |
He has moved the dates because he's going to leave soon. | :06:19. | :06:23. | |
Because this referendum committee needs to deliver. | :06:24. | :06:28. | |
He can't just say, I am leaving, you can do this. | :06:29. | :06:33. | |
So my suspicions is that we will see the back of Cameron soon. | :06:34. | :06:46. | |
We don't know how much of the deal he brought back today | :06:47. | :06:53. | |
Will there be referendum calls in other countries in Europe? | :06:54. | :06:59. | |
Will the European Court overrule some of this? | :07:00. | :07:04. | |
And on the other side, possibly more important, | :07:05. | :07:06. | |
we don't know how the European Union itself is going to fare as soon | :07:07. | :07:10. | |
If the migrant crisis is again bad, or worse than it was last year, | :07:11. | :07:18. | |
if the euro begins to show new signs of faltering, you may find | :07:19. | :07:25. | |
that the European Union, one or two years from now, | :07:26. | :07:28. | |
looks much different on its own account | :07:29. | :07:31. | |
I would say the European Union loves this referendum. | :07:32. | :07:40. | |
The reason being that the referendum will seal Britain's membership | :07:41. | :07:42. | |
It's not just the views of British people, or those who don't | :07:43. | :07:59. | |
There's a secret subtext being circulated among people | :08:00. | :08:07. | |
in favour of remaining and that is, the whole thing is going to implode | :08:08. | :08:11. | |
It has become unsustainable and migration is going to split it | :08:12. | :08:18. | |
The euro is going to split it north to south. | :08:19. | :08:27. | |
As we saw with Greece's spectacular threat to veto the whole thing. | :08:28. | :08:31. | |
This is not a sustainable project any longer. | :08:32. | :08:50. | |
So it does not really matter whether we vote... | :08:51. | :08:52. | |
That speaks against Alexander's idea to have left the vote on this | :08:53. | :08:58. | |
issue until next year, the date originally set. | :08:59. | :09:00. | |
He can't have the issue hanging round his neck like an albatross. | :09:01. | :09:03. | |
Secondly, the European Union is apparently unravelling | :09:04. | :09:05. | |
on the fringes, and if you need to do anything you | :09:06. | :09:08. | |
We are being a little dismissive of what Cameron has achieved | :09:09. | :09:12. | |
If we turn this upside down and look at it the other the way, | :09:13. | :09:16. | |
I don't think it was melodrama, the way that some of the smaller | :09:17. | :09:20. | |
countries of Eastern Europe, indeed France and Germany, | :09:21. | :09:22. | |
have resisted some of these changes, very strongly, and required 30 hours | :09:23. | :09:25. | |
of negotiation to achieve what Cameron did. | :09:26. | :09:28. | |
I think that tells us that the concessions they made | :09:29. | :09:31. | |
Particularly those countries in Eastern Europe which have | :09:32. | :09:36. | |
benefited so much by the wealth transfer of being a member | :09:37. | :09:40. | |
They have given up something in the face of strong opposition. | :09:41. | :09:47. | |
The issue was blown out of all proportion. | :09:48. | :09:53. | |
Yet it is in the position, we are talking about it | :09:54. | :09:57. | |
We've also seen in the past week the Leave campaign, whatever | :09:58. | :10:06. | |
the arguments for and against, it has been a bit of a shambles. | :10:07. | :10:10. | |
Now you've got Nigel Farage and George Galloway, | :10:11. | :10:12. | |
They will not be, I promise, the official accredited | :10:13. | :10:17. | |
The respectable one will be the official voice | :10:18. | :10:25. | |
But it is true that this kind of essential image of Nigel Farage | :10:26. | :10:34. | |
and George Galloway is damaging to the campaign. | :10:35. | :10:39. | |
People ask themselves, what will this say about me? | :10:40. | :10:42. | |
And this could have a significant negative effect on the potential | :10:43. | :10:44. | |
The prospect of a ceasefire and humanitarian help for besieged | :10:45. | :11:00. | |
towns in Syria, the bombing of hospitals by Russian planes | :11:01. | :11:05. | |
or not, depending who you believe, the threat of Turkish or Saudi | :11:06. | :11:09. | |
troops invading Syria or not, and terrorist bombing in the capital | :11:10. | :11:14. | |
And more talk of the new Cold War between Russia and the West. | :11:15. | :11:21. | |
The challenge for everyone around the table is to expand | :11:22. | :11:24. | |
I think the problem is those divisions between the West | :11:25. | :11:36. | |
and Russia are basically fuelling this conflict even more, | :11:37. | :11:41. | |
because until you have some sort of agreement between the major | :11:42. | :11:47. | |
players, you cannot really sort out this situation. | :11:48. | :11:50. | |
The problem for the Russian side is that they are trying to convince | :11:51. | :11:53. | |
the Western partners, whatever you call them, | :11:54. | :11:57. | |
that Assad is not the issue at the moment. | :11:58. | :12:01. | |
Let's make Isis and other terrorist groups the main issue. | :12:02. | :12:06. | |
Unfortunately the Americans are saying one day, one thing, | :12:07. | :12:10. | |
probably we will keep him for a while, the next day they say, | :12:11. | :12:13. | |
And that is causing disruption and misunderstanding. | :12:14. | :12:20. | |
Putin has been basically offering to create the united anti-terrorist | :12:21. | :12:25. | |
operation for how long, months, and no response. | :12:26. | :12:29. | |
We had an agreement in Geneva to stop the bombing | :12:30. | :12:38. | |
And as that was announced the bombing continued. | :12:39. | :12:44. | |
You can't demand a ceasefire in a situation in a week's time | :12:45. | :12:51. | |
when nobody knows who is who and who is doing what. | :12:52. | :12:58. | |
You have to give them at least a month or two. | :12:59. | :13:01. | |
Just a way to show, we are doing this... | :13:02. | :13:06. | |
Why have a ceasefire if you think it won't work? | :13:07. | :13:11. | |
They could not not agree but the terms were | :13:12. | :13:17. | |
Putin's top priority is to keep Assad in power. | :13:18. | :13:26. | |
They don't want to lose their proxy in that region. | :13:27. | :13:32. | |
They want to make sure that their sphere of influence | :13:33. | :13:36. | |
His point is that Assad is irrelevant at the moment | :13:37. | :13:48. | |
because there are much worse people than him. | :13:49. | :13:51. | |
Assad is pushing Syrians and Iraqis and people in the region | :13:52. | :13:54. | |
Until you get rid of the Assad regime you will never stop the flood | :13:55. | :14:02. | |
Assad is a genocidal tyrant and the Russians support him | :14:03. | :14:10. | |
for their own reasons I agree on one point, | :14:11. | :14:12. | |
the isolation in Washington has been absolutely fatal to this process. | :14:13. | :14:19. | |
And it has allowed Putin to occupy the vacuum that has been left | :14:20. | :14:22. | |
None of us around this table like Mr Putin very much, | :14:23. | :14:34. | |
but of all the international leaders to have engaged with this problem, | :14:35. | :14:38. | |
the one who seems to know what he is doing, however | :14:39. | :14:42. | |
much we may dislike it, is Mr Putin. | :14:43. | :14:47. | |
And he has, in less than three months, rewritten the map. | :14:48. | :14:51. | |
And we don't know how far that his going. | :14:52. | :15:00. | |
But along with the bombings of the hospitals and the other | :15:01. | :15:03. | |
outrages committed by Russian air power... | :15:04. | :15:06. | |
Remember that the Russian media is much more present on the ground | :15:07. | :15:18. | |
The Western media comes in and out, the Russian correspondents | :15:19. | :15:23. | |
If you watch Russian TV you would see their reports | :15:24. | :15:28. | |
You mentioned the Obama administration. | :15:29. | :15:37. | |
Is part of the problem not that the Obama administration sees | :15:38. | :15:41. | |
the Kurdish fighters on the ground are doing a lot of the ground | :15:42. | :15:44. | |
fighting, but that the Obama administration is in Nato | :15:45. | :15:47. | |
with the Turks and the Turks are bombing the Kurds? | :15:48. | :15:50. | |
So to go back to your summary, it is a mess. | :15:51. | :15:57. | |
The situation is probably insoluble certainly by Western forces. | :15:58. | :15:59. | |
The trouble is if the Western forces give up and leave the region | :16:00. | :16:03. | |
to Russia and Assad to carve up the region, that would be | :16:04. | :16:06. | |
The tension between Russia and Turkey is appalling. | :16:07. | :16:12. | |
And there is a seriously dangerous situation. | :16:13. | :16:19. | |
It threatens to be the big picture - the Nato mission in conflict | :16:20. | :16:22. | |
with Russia over an area disputed in northern Syria, | :16:23. | :16:24. | |
perhaps to keep going in to clean up... | :16:25. | :16:31. | |
If Turkey goes into northern Syria, if it doesn't do so as a member | :16:32. | :16:34. | |
of Nato, it does so to protect its national interest. | :16:35. | :16:37. | |
You don't have to call up paragraph five, say, | :16:38. | :16:47. | |
when one member of Nato is in conflict, the others must come | :16:48. | :16:50. | |
It's the same in the North and the South. | :16:51. | :16:55. | |
If Saudi Arabia and Turkey go into this, this is what we hoped | :16:56. | :16:59. | |
would happen, the neighbouring Arab states would actually take matters | :17:00. | :17:01. | |
It seems to me we need to move beyond the hubris of thinking that | :17:02. | :17:12. | |
foreign leaders from far away, particularly Western leaders, | :17:13. | :17:14. | |
You said that Russia was changing the map. | :17:15. | :17:24. | |
I'm not approving what they are doing, I'm saying is a fact. | :17:25. | :17:30. | |
If Western leaders withdraw that leaves the field open for Russia | :17:31. | :17:32. | |
It seems to me this matter will have to be settled on the ground in Syria | :17:33. | :17:38. | |
and with the influence of other Arab powers in the region, | :17:39. | :17:40. | |
and the best we can do with our money and armed forces | :17:41. | :17:43. | |
is to support everything we can do in mitigation. | :17:44. | :17:49. | |
You had the chance in Libya, and look what is happening now. | :17:50. | :17:53. | |
The Americans have just bombed again. | :17:54. | :18:01. | |
That is what you want to do now with Syria. | :18:02. | :18:08. | |
It may involve nation-building, staying for a decade, | :18:09. | :18:17. | |
but you cannot go in, remove the leadership and walk away. | :18:18. | :18:21. | |
When everyone says, we have no role in the desert, why do | :18:22. | :18:40. | |
You must call their bluff, and the Turkish government | :18:41. | :18:44. | |
Pedalling her own interests in that area. | :18:45. | :18:58. | |
So the adjacent countries have a duty to tell the intervening | :18:59. | :19:01. | |
We will make our own attempt at sorting out this. | :19:02. | :19:08. | |
We will see the results of that local intervention. | :19:09. | :19:15. | |
Including trying to constrain the Russians. | :19:16. | :19:20. | |
We do have influence, but for goodness sake we should have | :19:21. | :19:25. | |
learned after how many years, 12 years of military intervention | :19:26. | :19:27. | |
Military force is not going to solve this problem. | :19:28. | :19:34. | |
But I wanted to ask you, the Russian Prime Minister said | :19:35. | :19:43. | |
Is that how things are seen in Russia? | :19:44. | :19:48. | |
At the same time as that meeting in Munich last week, | :19:49. | :19:51. | |
John Kerry was talking about new investment in defence | :19:52. | :19:53. | |
We know there has been more hardware strengthening Nato there. | :19:54. | :20:01. | |
I've just been to Moscow and spoken to some of the officials there. | :20:02. | :20:05. | |
I think frustration would be the word that they feel | :20:06. | :20:08. | |
Because every attempt, as mentioned already, | :20:09. | :20:16. | |
to something together, in Syria, fails. | :20:17. | :20:20. | |
Nobody responds, nobody talks in a constructive way. | :20:21. | :20:24. | |
And the Russians are still saying that the West doesn't want to accept | :20:25. | :20:30. | |
one important point - that the invasion of Iraq triggered, | :20:31. | :20:35. | |
what they were saying then to the Americans would trigger this | :20:36. | :20:41. | |
chain reaction across the Middle East and even further | :20:42. | :20:43. | |
Obama, as one official noted, made a crucial mistake | :20:44. | :20:49. | |
by pulling out American forces to early from Iraq. | :20:50. | :20:51. | |
What happened afterwards, which people don't talk about, | :20:52. | :21:00. | |
is that Americans, when they pull out, they leave those bloodthirsty | :21:01. | :21:03. | |
private security companies in those countries. | :21:04. | :21:06. | |
Which turn all the people against them because these | :21:07. | :21:10. | |
That is what happened in Iraq, when they were pulled out and those | :21:11. | :21:20. | |
I am sorry that you are changing the topic. | :21:21. | :21:28. | |
That is water under the bridge, 12 years ago. | :21:29. | :21:31. | |
When you came back from Moscow, I think that was crocodile tears | :21:32. | :21:34. | |
and not understanding what the Russians were doing. | :21:35. | :21:38. | |
We cannot accept cluster bombs on people. | :21:39. | :21:41. | |
You are quoting the one person who makes all these claims. | :21:42. | :21:52. | |
Let's forget the hospital, although the Russians are bombing | :21:53. | :21:55. | |
There is such chaos there that the Western press | :21:56. | :22:03. | |
Excuse me, but Peter Byrne has just returned from Aleppo | :22:04. | :22:13. | |
You know the main thrust of his reports? | :22:14. | :22:19. | |
The locals say, why it is the British government | :22:20. | :22:22. | |
supporting terrorists and not helping to fight for them? | :22:23. | :22:25. | |
This is not a Russian correspondent saying this. | :22:26. | :22:30. | |
Read his reports and you will see what the locals think | :22:31. | :22:33. | |
about the Russian bombing campaign and the Russians helping Syria. | :22:34. | :22:38. | |
All the evidence we've seen on our television screens, | :22:39. | :22:45. | |
apart from Peter, who have got there, is that there's a widespread | :22:46. | :22:49. | |
anger against the Russian air force for its bombing campaign. | :22:50. | :22:52. | |
Just a few minutes left, you cannot say what happened in Iran | :22:53. | :23:02. | |
The point is, we are where we are and we must start | :23:03. | :23:09. | |
The Obama administration treading on its red line in Syria was just | :23:10. | :23:18. | |
a signal to Putin that he could have his way in that region and he's | :23:19. | :23:22. | |
This is an appalling situation and we now have to decide how | :23:23. | :23:28. | |
If that means backing up Turkey as a Nato country, | :23:29. | :23:33. | |
the difficulty there is with the Kurds because they are fighting | :23:34. | :23:35. | |
Isil and the Turks don't like the Kurds. | :23:36. | :23:39. | |
This is a very, very messy situation. | :23:40. | :23:41. | |
No point in trading preposterous stories | :23:42. | :23:42. | |
You raised the question about the European Union | :23:43. | :23:51. | |
These two stories are connected - do you think there is a case that | :23:52. | :23:58. | |
migration will be on the minds of many British people | :23:59. | :24:01. | |
when they vote on the EU referendum on June 23. | :24:02. | :24:05. | |
May it be to Mr Cameron's benefit to say that it is better | :24:06. | :24:09. | |
that the European Union acts in concert, which it hasn't done | :24:10. | :24:11. | |
I'm quite negative about the likely effect of the worsening refugee | :24:12. | :24:21. | |
situation in Europe impinging on the referendum. | :24:22. | :24:26. | |
It might make David Cameron's job more difficult because of the chaos | :24:27. | :24:29. | |
created by the Syrian situation in Europe. | :24:30. | :24:39. | |
Even more exodus from that country. | :24:40. | :24:41. | |
Some said it was Project Fear if Britain was no longer in the EU? | :24:42. | :24:51. | |
The French can say, we will happily let everyone travel | :24:52. | :24:59. | |
The refugee crisis is one of the aftermaths of the Syrian | :25:00. | :25:03. | |
problem which causes great anger in the mind of people in Europe, | :25:04. | :25:08. | |
because we think Russia is instrumental in increasing | :25:09. | :25:14. | |
As far as the referendum is concerned, yes, it might make it | :25:15. | :25:18. | |
harder, but Britain is safe behind the hallowed wall of | :25:19. | :25:21. | |
Do you feel, Thomas, that if Schengen is abandoned | :25:22. | :25:31. | |
for two years it will never come back? | :25:32. | :25:33. | |
We are coming to that crunch time very soon. | :25:34. | :25:38. | |
You can contact us online, we will be back at the same | :25:39. | :25:44. | |
Thank you for watching. | :25:45. | :26:11. | |
It will remain quite unsettled, certainly on Sunday. | :26:12. | :26:21. | |
Outbreaks of rain thanks to this huge arc | :26:22. | :26:24. |