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00:19Europe Today.
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05:18We are all in the same boat at this stage.
05:22I think if we present it that way, there will be a consensus eventually on this.
05:27The Lebanese Economy Minister, Amir Bissat, there.
05:31Joining us live now from Beirut for more on the situation in Lebanon
05:35is Rima Abdul-Malak, a former French Minister for Culture,
05:39who is now Executive Director of L'Orient Le Jour,
05:42one of Lebanon's leading daily newspapers and its English equivalent, L'Orient Today.
05:47Rima, welcome. Good morning. Great to have you on the show.
05:50Good morning.
05:51So can you start by describing to us the feeling there on the ground in Lebanon this morning
05:56after, I think, what is now seven weeks of Israeli bombardment?
06:02Yes, after seven weeks of war, we're really exhausted.
06:06And there's a lot of anger and despair here.
06:11But we have this very slight glimmer of hope since yesterday evening
06:18with this historic moment of first step of talks.
06:23I can't even say negotiations so far because it looks like more a staging of negotiations
06:28rather than real negotiations with timelines and objectives and mediators.
06:33But still, it's such a historic occasion.
06:36And it's maybe our last chance to start on the good path for a future process
06:44leading to maybe peace and stability for the future.
06:47Rima, you speak of a glimmer of hope.
06:49But I guess the elephant in the room in these talks is Hezbollah
06:52because Israel's war is on that militia group.
06:56But it's negotiating with Lebanon.
06:58And does the Lebanese government have any cards to play in these talks?
07:04Of course.
07:05But the Lebanese government needs the support of the international community.
07:10France, Europe, the Gulf countries.
07:13We need support to the army to re-legitimate the army
07:17and give her means to undertake this law process
07:24of reducing Hezbollah's militia and transform it into a more classical political party.
07:33Because Hezbollah won't disappear completely.
07:36But as a militia armed by Iran and funded by Iran,
07:41this is not our wish for the future of Lebanon anyway.
07:45So that's very clear that the Lebanese government wants also to get rid of this Iranian occupation on our ground.
07:55And I know that you yourself fled Lebanon when you were just 10 years old,
07:59shortly after Israel occupied the south of the country.
08:03Do you fear that we could see a repeat of history here?
08:08Because we have seen Israel trying to expand what they call the buffer zone in the south.
08:14Behind me you have old editions of Lorient Le Jour from 1978 when Israel invaded the south.
08:23And actually Hezbollah was created in 1982 in reaction, in opposition, in resistance,
08:29as they say, to the Israeli occupation.
08:32So history told us during more than 40 years that occupation leads to extremism,
08:38leads to fanatism, leads to war and violence.
08:41So this is why we are very much concerned about what is going on now.
08:46No ceasefire, but the negotiations are starting.
08:50No guarantee that Israel will not occupy the south again.
08:54So this is really not reassuring, because if we start by the same vicious circle again,
09:03no peace is possible.
09:05Okay.
09:05Rima Abdul-Malak, thank you so much.
09:07And I know the reporters of Lorient Le Jour are doing important work there on the ground
09:11documenting what is happening in Lebanon.
09:13Thank you for joining us this morning.
09:16Now, moving on now, Pakistan has proposed, as we mentioned earlier, a second round of talks
09:23between the U.S. and Iran after last weekend's negotiations in Islamabad ended in a standoff.
09:30Yesterday, our EU editor Maria Tadeo spoke to President Donald Trump's former special representative
09:35to Iran, Elliot Abrams, and started by asking him what would constitute a good deal for the U.S.
09:42in those talks.
09:44The president needs to get a better deal than Barack Obama got in 2015 in the JCPOA,
09:51because he has reviled that agreement, the worst agreement in world history.
09:56So he's going to get better than that.
09:58That deal put off for maybe 10 years or so the Iranian nuclear program, but it said nothing
10:06about support for proxies.
10:09And it said nothing about the ballistic missile program.
10:13So I think Iran has got to be willing to give on those, or else the president will be forced
10:20to do something more.
10:22He's got now the blockade.
10:24What he has not done, and might be a next step, would be taking an island in the Persian
10:31Gulf.
10:32But again, I think for all sorts of obvious reasons, politics, the U.S. economy, the elections
10:38in November, I don't think he wants to do that.
10:42The question, I think, is who's making decisions in Tehran, and how much responsibility do they
10:48have?
10:49And that is a good question.
10:51So who do you think that person is?
10:52And of course, this is all playing out big time in the energy market.
10:56Yeah, I don't think there is one person.
11:00There was in the late Supreme Leader.
11:02He could actually make a decision, one person, and make it stick.
11:06His son, who is now Supreme Leader, may even be in a coma.
11:11We don't know.
11:12Even if he is not in a coma, he's not able to enforce his rule.
11:20He's too new, too young.
11:23So I think it's probably a ruling group, a group of three or five or seven or ten people
11:30who sit at a table.
11:32Well, maybe they don't sit at a table because they're afraid a table will be hit by a bomb.
11:36But talk to each other somehow and figure out how far can we go here.
11:42I think that's going to be a real problem.
11:45Of course, there's talks now between Israelis and the Lebanese government, too, when you
11:49talk about the proxies.
11:50What is the calculus that Israel is making?
11:55The Israeli calculus, I think, is, look, they were attacked by Hezbollah.
11:59They were, and the U.S. was, in a war with Iran, not with Lebanon.
12:03And Hezbollah, presumably under instructions from Tehran, attacked Israel.
12:09So the Israelis are pushing back.
12:11The Lebanese government, the Lebanese army are doing nothing.
12:13So the Israelis are pushing back.
12:16On the Iran front, they will follow President Trump.
12:21If President Trump says that's a good deal, will they accept it?
12:24You believe they will accept it?
12:26Absolutely.
12:27Yeah.
12:28And what makes you believe that?
12:30Pardon?
12:30What makes you believe that?
12:32There's many who think Israel will still want to continue.
12:35No, they may still want to, but they won't.
12:38They have a very close relationship with the United States under President Trump.
12:43Netanyahu and Trump have a close relationship.
12:44In the 12-day war last year, last June, when Trump said stop,
12:49is stopped.
12:50And I think they will here, too.
12:52We've heard now the U.S. president repeat it multiple times.
12:54NATO did not help.
12:56NATO countries say this is a defensive alliance.
12:59He keeps saying NATO, and the Europeans in particular, it's a paper tiger.
13:02What ramifications in the medium term is this going to have?
13:07On the medium term, I would take to be three years, meaning the Trump years.
13:11You've got three years to go.
13:12So the relationship is not going to improve much.
13:15He won't get out of NATO.
13:17I don't think he has the ability to get out of NATO legally.
13:20Under U.S. law, it takes more than a year.
13:23And you need Congress.
13:25But the relationship is clearly weakened.
13:27To me, the real question is, who is our next president?
13:32And will he try to rebuild that relationship?
13:39Elliot Abrams there.
13:40Moving on now, Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Selensky, is on a whistle-tops tour of European
13:46capitals.
13:46He'll be in Rome later today after visits to Germany and Norway yesterday.
13:52To debrief us on his talks with the German chancellor, Friedrich Metz, we can bring in
13:56our correspondent, Laura Fleischmann, who's standing by for us in a sunny Berlin this morning.
14:03Good morning, Laura.
14:04Can you start by telling us what was achieved in that surprise visit by Selensky to Berlin
14:09yesterday?
14:12Good morning to you, too.
14:14And the main headline to come out of this visit is likely going to be the strategic partnership
14:19that Germany and Ukraine want to work on that goes well beyond military aid.
14:24There were multiple agreements signed, one on working together in defense and another
14:29one on rebuilding Ukraine's industry, and those focused on working together regarding
14:35air defense, drones and joint development projects.
14:39But this visit was truly important and significant because those were the first government consultations
14:45between Ukraine and Germany in well over 20 years.
14:48Selensky brought a big delegation with him alongside his defense minister, and they worked together
14:55on speaking about the EU loan, the 90-billion-euro loan that has been blocked by Hungary's prime
15:01minister, Viktor Orban.
15:02And now, with the opposition winning just last weekend, Merz, he sees a window of opportunity
15:07opening up to release this loan, and he pushed hard on releasing it.
15:11And Selensky, during his visit, he stated that he still wants to join the EU.
15:16He wants to join NATO.
15:17He doesn't want a light EU or light NATO membership.
15:19But let's hear it from Selensky himself, what he actually had to say during his visit
15:24in Berlin.
15:28We simply do not have enough money.
15:30But today we have already talked about it.
15:32And we hope that Germany, as one of the leaders of the European Union, will help us to quickly
15:36unlock 90 billion euros, and we will be able to replenish our Ukrainian products with investments.
15:42And then, the total use of products on the battlefield will be even greater.
15:49And the German defence minister, Boris Pistorius, will also host guests, including the NATO
15:55chief, Mark Rutte, in Berlin later today.
15:57Laura, what can we expect?
16:00Well, today the Ukraine Defence Contact Group is coming together.
16:04It's a group consisting of well over 50 member states.
16:07They work on coordinating military aid for Ukraine.
16:10And what's likely going to be most interesting about today is that Ukraine plans on presenting
16:15its war plan on how to push Russia further towards peace.
16:19And this plan consists of three key elements.
16:21The first one is air defence.
16:23The second one, drone expansion.
16:24But the third one I find most fascinating, it's data exchange.
16:28Ukraine plans on exchanging real combat data with technology and with funding.
16:34So it wants to support its supporters.
16:37And yesterday and today showed that Berlin is cementing itself as the coordination hub
16:42for European defence support to Ukraine as the US steps down and the EU steps up.
16:49Laura in Berlin, thank you so much for bringing us up to speed there.
16:53Now, moving on to Spain now.
16:56The leader, Pedro Sánchez, has gained a reputation on the international stage for his critical stance
17:02on the wars in Gaza and Iran.
17:04But at home, he faces a tough and polarising political environment, as both government and
17:10opposition face damning allegations of corruption.
17:14Jacob Yanis takes a closer look.
17:17As some of you have possibly noticed, Pedro Sánchez is positioning himself as the ultimate
17:22progressive hero, famously defying Donald Trump over the war in Iran.
17:35And his international popularity seems to be rising.
17:39But at home, the Spanish prime minister is fighting a completely different war.
17:44A massive wave of domestic corruption scandals.
17:47So what is going on there?
17:50First, the prime minister's wife, Begonia Gómez, is facing now trial for influence peddling
17:56and embezzlement, accused of using her position to secure funding for her private university
18:01projects.
18:02But to make matters worse, Sánchez's inner circle is collapsing.
18:07Last June, his former senior aide, Santos Cerdán, was placed in a pretrial detention for
18:13alleged bribery.
18:14Then, in November, his former transport minister, José Luis Ábalos, and top aide, Caldo García,
18:21were placed in custody over the Caldo case.
18:25All right, all right, but in plain English, these officials allegedly took secret cash payouts
18:30for awarding lucrative government face mask contracts during the COVID pandemic.
18:35So they might have been in the business of covering people's faces.
18:38But if these accusations proved true, they did a terrible job of covering their own tracks.
18:45And naturally, the opposition Partido Popular is demanding the prime minister resign immediately.
18:51However, their outrage is complicated by their own historical scandals.
18:56Most notably, the Kitchen case, now in trial, where the party allegedly used state police to
19:02destroy evidence of illegal financing.
19:04So how bad is the systemic rot?
19:07According to Transparency International, in recent years, Spain has suffered a significant decline.
19:13Looking at the latest EU data, Spain is placed firmly in the lower half of the 27-member bloc.
19:19They are still doing better than Italy and Poland, but they are drifting uncomfortably close to the
19:24bottom of the table, where you will find Hungary and Bulgaria.
19:28So it seems Sanchez might be standing up to Washington, but his greatest challenge is surviving Madrid.
19:39Jakub Yanis there.
19:41And that brings this edition of Europe Today to an end.
19:43Thank you so much for tuning in.
19:45And if you have tips for us, you can get in touch on EuropeToday at Euronews.com.
19:50We'd love to hear from you.
19:52We'll see you same place, same time tomorrow morning.
19:56See you soon here on Euronews.
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