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04:23The number one objective at this stage is the end of hostilities and the cessation of the violence.
04:32Lebanon has paid an extremely high price and continues to pay an extremely high price, both in terms of death,
04:39injured, as well as massive displacement.
04:41We want our people, we want the 1.4 million people to go back to their lands, to their homes.
04:46We're counting on the national consensus at this point that nobody wants violence internally.
04:53And we believe strongly that through discussions and negotiations, working with all Lebanese of all sects and all religions,
05:03under the premise that I just mentioned, the two-legged premise of sovereignty of the state and liberation of the
05:11south,
05:11and the hostilities, but at the same time, complete control over the decisions and taking over the arms.
05:18We are all in the same boat at this stage.
05:22And I 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 is Rima Abdul-Malak,
05:37a former French minister for culture who 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 with this historic moment
06:20of 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 leading
06:44to 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 because Israel's war is on
06:54that 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 and give her means to undertake this
07:22law process of reducing Hezbollah's militia and transform it into a more classical political
07:32party.
07:33because Hezbollah won't disappear completely.
07:36But as a militia armed by Iran and funded by Iran, this is not our wish for the future
07:44of Lebanon anyway.
07:45So that's very clear that the Lebanese government wants also to get rid of this Iranian occupation
07:53on our ground.
07:55And I know that you yourself fled Lebanon when you were just 10 years old, shortly after
08:00Israel 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, as
08:29they say, to the Israeli occupation.
08:32So history told us during more than 40 years that occupation leads to extremism, leads to
08:39fanatism, 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, Rima 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.
09:18Pakistan has proposed, as we mentioned earlier, a second round of talks between the US and Iran
09:25after last weekend's negotiations in Islamabad ended in a standoff.
09:29Yesterday, our EU editor, Maria Tadeo, spoke to President Donald Trump's former special
09:35representative to Iran, Elliott Abrams, and started by asking him what would constitute
09:40a good deal for the US in those talks.
09:44The president needs to get a better deal than Barack Obama got in 2015 in the JCPOA, because
09:52he has reviled that agreement, the worst agreement in world history.
09:56So he's got to get better than that.
09:59That 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.
10:21He'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 Gulf.
10:31But again, I think for all sorts of obvious reasons, politics, the US 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 stability do they have?
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.
10:57Yeah, 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.
11:07His son, who is now Supreme Leader, may even be in a coma.
11:10We 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, well, maybe they don't sit at a table because they're afraid a table
11:34will be hit by a bomb, but who talk to each other somehow and figure out how far can we
11:42go here.
11:42I think that's going to be a real problem.
11:45Of course, there's talks now between the Israelis and the Lebanese government, too,
11:49when you talk 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, and the U.S.
12:01was in a war with Iran, not with Lebanon, and Hezbollah, presumably under instructions
12:06from 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.
12:20That is, when he said—
12:22If 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.
12:35Yeah, they may still want to, but they won't.
12:38They have a very close relationship with the United States under President Trump.
12:42Netanyahu and Trump have a close relationship.
12:44In the 12-day war last year, last June, when Trump said stop, they 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.
13:12The relationship is not going to improve much.
13:15He won't get out of NATO.
13:16I don't think he has the ability to get out of NATO legally under U.S. law.
13:21It takes more than a year, and you need Congress.
13:25But the relationship is clearly weakened.
13:27To me, the real question is, who is our next president, and will he try to rebuild that relationship?
13:39Elliot Abrams there.
13:40Moving on now, Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Selensky, is on a whistle-top tour of European capitals.
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 our correspondent, Laura Fleischmann,
13:59who's standing by for us in a sunny Berlin this morning.
14:03Good morning, Laura.
14:04Laura, can you start by telling us what was achieved in that surprise visit by Selensky to Berlin yesterday?
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 that Germany
14:20and 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 one on rebuilding Ukraine's industry.
14:32And those focused on working together regarding air defense, drones and joint development projects.
14:39But this visit was truly important and significant because those were the first government consultations between Ukraine and Germany in
14:47well over 20 years.
14:48Selensky brought a big delegation with him alongside his defense minister.
14:53And they worked together on speaking about the EU loan, the 90 billion euro loan that has been blocked by
15:00Hungary's prime minister, Viktor Orban.
15:02And now with the opposition winning just last weekend, Merz, he sees a window of opportunity opening up to release
15:09this loan.
15:09And 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.
15:20But let's hear it from Selensky himself what he actually had to say during his visit in 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 unlock
15:3790 billion euros.
15:38And 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 chief, Mark Rutte, in Berlin later
15:57today.
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 its war plan on
16:16how 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 for European defence support to Ukraine
16:46as 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, the leader, Pedro Sánchez, has gained a reputation on the international stage for his
17:01critical stance on the wars in Gaza and Iran.
17:04But at home, he faces a tough and polarising political environment as both government and opposition face damning allegations of
17:13corruption.
17:13Jakub Yanis takes a closer look.
17:17As some of you have possibly noticed, Pedro Sánchez is positioning himself as the ultimate progressive hero, famously defying Donald
17:25Trump over the war in Iran.
17:27Esta es la verdadera tragedia.
17:29Porque lo último que necesitaba el mundo es otra guerra.
17:33Y en esta ocasión una guerra ilegal.
17:36And 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 wife, Begonia Gomez, is facing now trial for influence peddling and embezzlement,
17:57accused of using her position to secure funding for her private university projects.
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 alleged bribery.
18:14Then, in November, his former transport minister, José Luis Ábalos, and top aide, Coldo García, were placed in custody over
18:23the Coldo case.
18:24All 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.
18:44And 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 destroy evidence of illegal
19:04financing.
19:05So how bad is the systemic rot?
19:07According to Transparency International, in recent years, Spain has suffered a significant decline.
19:12Looking 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 bottom of the
19:24table,
19:25where you will find Hungary and Bulgaria.
19:28So it seems Sánchez 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.
19:57We'll see you soon.
19:59Bye bye.
20:01See you soon.
20:02Bye.
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