Going on the ground is off to crown Prince Mohammed bin solomon admits his country Washington Post john this Jamal Khashoggi one year ago today the u. S. And britain continue to sell billions of dollars of weapons to saudi arabia coming up in the show irans ambassador to the United Nations fights back against nato nations accusations that its drone attacks saudi arabia causing oil prices to spike 5 percent and he warns britain against following the United States into all out war with the Islamic Republic on the 150th anniversary of his birth what would former british detainee make of the current. Simmering between india and pakistan over kashmir the United Nations former general indian. And as a sex scandal hits a conservative conference and says its final day tories attack germany corporate sponsors scrap welfare changes accused of killing 17000 people we speak to a former minister voted for. Universal credit and ask what twitter has to do with the 77th brigade of the british army the civil war coming up in todays going on the ground 0 1st its a year to the day that one of britains closest allies allegedly killed a Washington Post journalist heres the uns extrajudicial executions investigator agnes kalamata on a channel owned by carter recently blockaded by saudi arabia who is responsible for the matter of Jamal Khashoggi distinct from saudi arabia 1st and foremost i support support from the point amount of Oil Superpower saudi arabia and its defacto watercraft mohamed bin solomon has long been in the sights of Britains Jeremy Corbyn the chief architect of the brutal war in yemen which has killed 56000 people and brought 14000000 to the brink of famine the crown prince is believed to have ordered the murder of john will. Rather than be robust as he promised we learned the Prime Minister told the dictator please dont use the weapons we are selling you in the war you are waging and asked him nicely to investigate the murder he allegedly ordered corbin today damns the new Prime Minister after to raise a man David CameronBoris Johnson what does he think of saudi arabia well within 10 weeks of becoming Prime Minister johnson was forced to send one of his ministers to parliament to apologize for illegal Deadly Weapon parts sales he supported. The apologize for the export licenses that my department issued in our 2015 conservative and liberal politicians have authorized 5300000000 pounds of weapons to saudi arabia even some mainstream journalists let alone n. G. O. S Like Amnesty International have alleged the use of banned u. K. Made cluster munitions joining me from geneva is irans ambassador to the United Nations as well by thank you so much ambassador for coming on the show well get to yemen in a moment 1st of all u. K. Media says that your country is isolated there are some reports of japan and from. Offering lines of credit to iran as donald trump ramps up the sanctions what exactly is the state of irans isolation i think its better to leave it to all the Public Opinion weve countries isolated president rouhani has traveled to new york we could go there he was there he met so many leaders and everyone is concerned about the extremist unilateralist approach by the United States administration i think are the truce which country is isolated and thats a very telling situation do you think the instep system of trying to avoid u. S. Sanctions is going to work i noticed more countries joined in russia this week many conversations in new york about the europeans have been trying to show that they have done what they read the quote to salvage the d. C. P. Way but unfortunately in practice our nothing has moved so far so we are still of a thing to see what would be concrete actions and measures by europeans of course the New York Times is are there doing that your president left strumpet hanging when a call was set up between between them through president of france why did he not come out of his room at the new yorker lemme tell last week they are talking about the new deal and thats what they are trying to achieve but you see the states do not conclude the out of where we more on any poles any agreement is supposed to be based on reliable partners to have a purpose if they are looking for a deal youre going to have a need there is an existing the which has been working well and only one country reneged on its obligation and pulled out but as ambassador you must be aware of the way trump does business apparently in the past 48 hours or be him. Sources close to the white house saying theres going to be new conversations with kim jong un of north korea did you think donald trump wanted to speak to rouhani and claim some kind of diplomatic victory making a deal hes not a fanciful or a statesman do not conclude agreements just for a shake shaking hands or a foot or so of we have been doing this. For more than 12 years right now i think everyone admits that they were not serious in their consent they simply try to find any excuse between a Nuclear Program to pressurise iran otherwise they were not happy left are these very kind of i would not say perfect but a very working. As a. Nuclear negotiator what do you think britains response has been to trumps decision how well do you think theyve responded to the violation of the Security Council resolution that mandates the nuclear deal concerning iran thats the central point. Unfortunately our show is the response to unilaterally breach of the deal by the Us Administration has been at best totally in effect short and at worst i should say. Their approach has been wholly submissive the and even i dared to say very acquiesce and that has emboldened the Us Administration to go ahead with their radical real laterally them be to respect to not only the respect to j. C. T. Way but also with respect to many other International Agreements well the u. K. Foreign secretary dominic rab says hes confident that iran was responsible for increasing oil supply prices by 5 percent because it drone bombed the around co facilities in saudi arabia pointing fingers has been unfortunately a pattern going to call habit by. Statement by the east want change of realities the realities on the ground is that 5 years into this conflict which has been fueled by suppliers of or principally u. S. And u. K. The people have been killed in main then a start to this on a daily basis now there has been simply a defense by these poor people after 5 years and there is no evidence of iran having anything to do with this that i can dance or facilities well its not only dominic of course the arabias mama been told or an interviewer in the United States that it shows iranian stupidity that it even did carried out this drone attack on iran go and might bump a u. S. Secretary of state called the actions of iran an act of war this is an outrageous distortion of facts and i think they should big. Not accusing iran of killing. I guess but have they tried their best to do the same you just speak to the heinous act so where do you think the British Foreign office is getting his information obviously the saudi spokesperson conal maliki stopped short of directly blaming iran but showed the Iranian Missile parts when it came to the attack on saudi arabia which youre saying was actually by a yemeni who the Community Forces are officials of being very clear that iran had nothing to do with. But you see they have to recognize that people under such a very difficult circumstances in yemen after 5 years of bombardment and relentless attack by the very few are supplied by u. S. And u. K. They simply reacted and these has been their weapons of. Britain of course continues as you say to sell arms to saudi arabia for use in yemen thats just by a year ago this Washington Post journalist shoji being killed by saudi arabia thats admitted by mom had been 7 do you think there is an information war about iran today that has been a kind of or really young pattern of misinformation disinformation distortion of facts about iran and we have had to deal with that for a long time so this is not new just distorting the naked truth about iran and about what is going on in our in our region has now been proven beyond doubt but of course the sanctions are in place israel just in the past few weeks is bombed gaza lebanon syria iraq can iran really defend itself from israel there have been assassinations on the streets of your capital after all and of course israel allegedly has Nuclear Weapons on fortunately this regime has been left on unfettered in our atrocities against palestinians for more than 7 decades against. The neighbor neighboring countries even beyond that thats really beyond disgraceful that these entity using or rather im using that if you take the money developed of our one of the biggest countries in the born to simply export terrorism thats the thing nation or all kinds of sabotage in our region well the i. R. G. C. Commanders and salami claims israel can be wiped off the map in the face of that kind of action but isnt it the case that there must be voices in your country who say why did you personally ambassador why were you involved in negotiating a j c p o a with these powers who had no interest in world peace why are you talking to neighbors that are folding one by one as regards trade with your country why are you dealing with these countries if they are truthful beyond leaving. We the community or in the community of us states and we have to deal with all the countries in the board there are only 2 countries or rather one country plus one entity that we have no deal are quite. Clear which countries we are not talking to a point from that i think iran has always been for talks then dialogue and through that we have been trying to remove a misunderstanding because there have been certain countries trying to sow division. Among countries in the region and we know we truly believe that it is our region be our future neighbors and we have to result any dispute or any misunderstanding among ourselves there rather than giving any excuse to others to interfere and to simply. Form and conflict or fuel the situation just finally and briefly is the real reason why president rouhani kept donald trump waiting there in his room with on the phone is the real reason because rouhani is responding to the iranian people and his popularity back at home in that he just doesnt want to talk to the United States i think prisoner harney. To speak. For him man and the actions he took have been just a photo op or shaking hands without any purpose i think it would be simply. Something that no one no responsibility statement can really agree to ambassador thank you thank you so much after the break as it emerges that a top twitter executive is an Information Warfare soldier in the british army we talked this information with one of David Camerons ministers in the conservative liberal democrats go allision norman baker and can Boris Johnson for just. Trade deal with india destroyed by british colonialism indian m. P. And former u. N. Secretary general shushu through iran johnsons hero Winston Churchill one thing Mahatma Gandhi dead is the Worlds Largest democracy today celebrates the 150th anniversary of the book of the civil rights icon. Coming up but to a going underground. Join me every thursday on the alex simon show and ill be speaking to guest on the world of politics sports business im showbusiness ill see you then. Welcome back join me now to go through some the weeks top stories former liberal democrat m. P. And former minister of state for Crime Prevention norman bank of nova welcome back to the show thank you new book out again i can differ among themselves of the 15th of october its cold and what do you do its about the royal family will have you on about that thank you serialized in a National Newspaper we can talk about it here anyway lets talk about the Tory Party Conference which actually is related to the queen and the monarchy room is that the queen has been asking advice about how to remove Boris Johnson as Prime Minister how do you think the conference has gone well i think its a bit bizarre to be perfectly frank with you weve had 10 years of austerity and George Osbornes colleagues times will have been telling us we counsel for to spend money we have to save money out for the system here we are with a forest of money for us to suddenly appear to money everywhere buses Police Offices roads because of the previous Tory Administration the administration. Isnt allowed britain to do this. No i think i think it looks to me like a classic preelection bribe the. Lets go to this story from the express yes the express coburns plot to actually develop a credit would be devastating says Ian Duncan Smith the quiet man of politics is now turning up the volume no doubt a different universe of credit which most people arguably say has killed people in this country well i took it seriously and thats that allegation and undoubtedly 17000 is not well i dont believe 817000 undoubtedly is not being well handled and there are issues with the structure of it need to be replaced but the concept of it seems to me to be correct the concept being that you should never be worse off in work the new when youre on benefits is for majority leader seems to be saying yes the under blair and brown it was terrible these anomalies showed up but i mean while people might accept that you cant possibly say that it was a credit to un special rapporteur as in poverty have said the introduction of this is been a catastrophe for these doctors has not been well handled but the principle is right this is why you voted for it well i was a coach it was part of the Coalition Agreement ok lets go to the japanese owned Financial Times yes interesting story twitter executives british army Information Warfare unit reservist and people dont know so you know that the british army has had a policy of having information put out in a way that influences Public Opinion did you know about it when i got home i was a minister im a member of the 77 brigade the british army out there and we just didnt know a freemason so i mean i knew about this from my days an opposition and i found fault with doing that and what did they do in these using british Army Techniques but look i think i think every government in the world whether its the british or the americans of the russians or the chinese have got people who are pumping out messages and information to social media or through friends in the press that they want to have communicated something new thats why we have Dominic Cummings thats why we had Alastair Campbell yes good friend other tony blair is yes and thats why the. Why the answer is 1st of all are Diverse Press so the doctor much power in a few hands and secondly the freedom of information act improperly so you can follow whats going on down the answers on the safeguards for that situation now theres nothing more with the british army potentially putting out messages theres nothing wont be worked leave this is it has to be well i know i know but its all in the can find out about them hes been tweeting if it is indeed this guy against Jeremy Corbett yes massively hands are leading politician well i dont know that but if he has been lost all right and quite clear theres a potential conflict of interest between his position working for the british army and what might be happening on twitter and thats not why situation with the army should not be allowed to occur you dont think this means that there needs to be some going to review well i do think you need to be reviewed i do think that needs to be examined and i think its unwise when somebody could be seen to have a potential conflict of interest loan back thank you well as india celebrates the 150th anniversary of the birth of Mahatma Gandhi a global icon for civil rights the people of the disputed Jammu And Kashmir region continue to have their rights denied him its an ongoing Indian Military enforced shut down joining me now is former u. N. Undersecretary general and Indian NationalCongress Lok Sabha m. P. Thanks for coming on the show before we get into any of that do you think basically the electoral success of. The b j p they signal the end of these dream of a secular india not really 1st of all because of course these victories are always temporary the 5 years because though most of these party and his ideological forebears in the hindu thought movement have historically been very critical even contemptuous of mark but. He has moved in a different direction to try and appropriate the gandhian legacy for his own government and hes actually gone out of his way to. You know in a startling repudiation of everything is his Movement Stands for in the past hes got. No there was way to hail mug on the to celebrate the 155th 150th anniversary big time to make mug on these glasses the symbol of us can India Campaign and so on i would agree that he really cares about the symbol and not the substance but numberless the fact that we have now a Prime Minister from that political background which was historically hostile to gandhi and some of whose fault was notoriously celebrated the assassination of my gun the by distributing londons indian sweets on the occasion other that the movement is now embracing Mahatma Gandhi inhaling him as the father of the nation is a slightly encouraging signs are you getting that old to mizzen because the muddy quickly cracked down on fellow look. At the core who had praised gun these assassination or these gun these assassin is an indian patriot in about 3 months as one person cracked down upon the crackdown is a bit much because the she continued to be a candidate of his party won the election and is now a member for his party another gentleman another m. P. Who actually said that every statue Mahatma Gandhi in the country ought to be replaced by statues of his assessment not only remains an m. P. Was reelected this year and chairs a Parliamentary Committee and is often asked to lead his party in debates so i have to say that they really can get away from the historical dislike of mug on the whom they found to be too namby pamby for their taste but his fondness for nonviolence himself his emphasis on truth and truth force. His modernism and above all is includes his his entire approach of inclusiveness when it came to indias minorities particularly our very substantial Muslim Minority and all of those things are are elements that the hindu 12 movement dislikes and dislikes passionately and to the bone. And thats something we simply cant get away from we have a Prime Minister who wants to play down that legacy but it is legacy of course today these shares Parliament Square with Winston Churchill the hero of our present Prime Minister for a while Boris Johnson what do you make of the fact that churchill wanted to gandhi dead in the fact that it was worth johnson called churchill a romantic imperialist not much romance i can tell you to imperialism a view to the receiving end of it as we were in his gun he was churchill amongst his other denied for pronouncements wanted gandhi trampled to death by elephants he also when he presided over the deaths of 4300000 people because of his decisions churchills in the grid being told famine of 94344 when conscience stricken british officials wrote to him as Prime Minister asking him to reverse these decisions all he could bring himself to do was to write in the margins of the file why hasnt done the died yet i dont consider mr churchill here of anything other than oppression racism and slavery and certainly not a man of any more own but you fit to be mentioned in the in the same breath as mouth my gandhi and in that probably b. J. Pm beings would share your opinion so do you think ironically then gandhi as a is a unifying figure even today or do you think that neo fascists are goal welker and so walker ideologies are going to shape the constitution Going Forward well that was my fear and i expressed that fear some years ago and im beginning to think theres some hope now because the r. S. S. The party that russia so im sort of sung the the the organisation of which going welcome presided has just really should a collected works of which have been completely exposed to that as more outrageous pronouncements and this kind of editing down of their own group is quite a startling indeed. Of their willingness to change attitudes to conceal some of the worst and most unsavory things of their past we find that more and more people in mr move these on to russia appreciate the value of Mahatma Gandhi as if you like a symbol of india abroad the soft power benefits that accrue to those who hail Mahatma Gandhi and so i think there is a willingness to come around indeed to see him as you suggested as a sort of unifying symbol rather than somebody on whose whose life and record there was a division of opinion between the mainstream Political Parties and what was once a Fringe Movement in the hindutva politics espoused by mr moody today mr movie center stage he is the is the is the ruling ideology of the ruling party which has a majority in the indian house of parliament and is heading for one in the upper house and therefore suddenly a lot of people who have spent their political lives assailing Mahatma Gandhi have the respectability of high office and high influence in the ruling party and that is the other side of the coin thats what many of us on my side of things politically worry about ok here with more optimistic about the constitution what about kashmir how extreme is the b j p imran khan one of the Un General Assembly of the threat of a nuclear war between pakistan and india and do you think youll change his mind to allow trump to mediate over kashmir and dont trump has offered neither of those i think has been has gone over very well in india with all shades of political opinion imran is somebody have known of the boston i think he was ill advised to make the speech he did because i dont think the world is ready to hear this kind of talk about a Nuclear Armageddon being unleashed because of whats happened in kashmir on the indian side of kashmir particularly since it merely mirrors. What had already happened in the past on the pakistani side of kashmir where not only is is is the constitutional status of good bond no the the question of direct federal rule in the pakistan occupied part of the mir long since settled by the authorities as lama but the demography of pockets on occupied kashmir according to pakistans own census is no 97 percent punjabi speaking there isnt much kashmir left in pakistani kush me or so i think it is behoves mr khan my good friend imran to speak as he does and i think that was an unfortunate and not terribly statesman like speech on his part ok i asked for i have to say that i have to say that no fed as. He does sometimes tend to blunder in where perhaps angels fear to tread and mediation between india and the neighbor which was once a possible india and with whom there is no linguistic beria and not to mention other means of communication is never been has never been a particularly welcome aid in india india feels that. We dont need anybody to help us talk to pakistan as long as baucus on puts the gun down well of course we invite the pakistani ambassador on the 2 again to try and refute that but just finally then obviously theres another anniversary this week the 70th anniversary of communist china a country that brought 850000000 people out of poverty do you think its gone these fault that india still has a subsaharan rates of poverty 30 percent of all the worlds extremely poor children are in india today well i wouldnt blame gun because he passed a wizard he was shot in assassination just a few months often dependency he had no room in the decisions and policies that followed had he not be assassinated he had announced a decision to go and live in baucus and say he might have had a greater influence on that country than it would have had with the policies of this one who knows whats what for face might have had in store for them but as far as. They cannot make policies are concerned we were going through a rather good phase for 10 years before the present government came to us in which i am proud to say over 100000000 people were pulled out of poverty well short of the chinese figures but well on the right path a number of disastrous decisions have been made in the last 55 years and a bit which have set the Indian Economy back but i do believe that it would take an even greater degree of incompetence and folly to to prevent india from pulling its poor out of poverty theres a tremendous tremendous commitment across political divides and that all sections of India Society has to fight poverty and overcome it and i believe its just waiting for sensible policies of the kind that dr Manmohan Singh pursued for 10 years to help india come out of its recent rut so if you throw a thank you. Thank you option thats it for the show were back on saturday with a going underground World Exclusive we fly to berlin to speak to mama get out the spokesperson music and bring him now in the Green Resistance Movement 8 years to the month since his need it was murdered in the u. K. Back destruction of africas which is because of the country and be sure to subscribe to you joe johns you dont miss it c. N. N. 70 years ago this week china started down the path of communist rule over the past few decades china has emerged or rather really emerged as a leading world power rivaling the us the communist party can rightly claim a string of stunning successes challenges remey whats next for chinas extraordinary revolution. And says the russia will interfere in the 2020 us president ial election. Its just the job. Yes we will indeed do that so we could cheer you properly but dont tell anybody ok. Tell the truth thats the plea from locals in the city on through on after a massive fire at a chemical factory amid fears of a coverup over the threat to their. Scientific journal withdrawals a study that challenges the claim the Syrian Government was to blame for a chemical attack in 2017 after the article attracted fierce criticism