Ambassador Riyad Mansour at the un in new york, welcome to hardtalk. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Its a pleasure to have you on the programme. Ambassador, do you have any hope left that talks can achieve a stop or at least a suspension to the war in gaza . I still have hope. And thats what drives me to work harder with all of my colleagues, to succeed in putting an end to this war, to have a ceasefire, and to be able to send humanitarian assistance up to the needs of the people in the gaza strip and to prevent a forced Mass Transfer to egypt. I mean, nobody would doubt that, for the two million and more palestinians who live in gaza and of course the 100 or so hostages who are being held in the tunnels in gaza as well, every day is a day of extreme suffering. The problem is, if one looks at the talks and what is being said about the talks, there appears to be very little ground for optimism. For example, the israelis say no way will they even countenance a stop to their Military
Surf is up. Hello and welcome to todays verified live. Downing street has described as unacceptable remarks alleged to have been made by one of the Conservative Partys biggest donors about the mp diane abbott. The guardian reports that during a Business Meeting in 2019, frank hester said diane abbott made him want to hate all black women and that she should be shot. Mr hester has admitted making comments about her which he described as rude. Mr hester has issued a statement saying that at the meeting in question, he said he abhorred racism. Diane abbott has also released a statement responding to his alleged comments. She said. Government ministers have faced questions from the media and they called his comments unacceptable but stopped short of calling them racist. Well, its clear that what he said was inappropriate. He has, as i understand it, apologised for those remarks. I think the Critical Point here is i dont think what he was saying was a gender based or a race based comment, b
Lets start with the late Boris Nemtsov. Nemtsov had been an ally of putins predecessor, boris yeltsin. When putin emerged from relative obscurity to grab the presidency, nemtsov became a noisy opponent and in 2015, he was shot dead close to the kremlin. Who ordered the assassination . Well, the truth has never come out, but putins opponents have little doubt. In 2011, i went to moscow to meet Boris Nemtsov, who was then putins biggest, highest profile critic. Putin became a successor and became the president because berezovsky was his friend. And berezovsky supported him very much and berezovsky financed his campaign. You know that putin rule is, if you are a friend, you can do whatever you want. If you are an enemy, you will be injail, right . Even if they had just one case of corruption, my corruption, believe me, we will never talk in the hardtalk on bbc. You will came to the prison maybe, maybe not, i dont know. And try to give me some present or whatever. Thats why if you are in t