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office, he was met by israel s new prime minister. mr biden will also meet the palestinian president. that s it for me for now, i will be back later in the evening. now on bbc news, hardtalk with stephen sackur. welcome to hardtalk, i m stephen sackur. 25 years ago, almost 1.5 million christians lived in iraq. now there are around a quarter of a million. and after years of war and sectarian violence, many of them have been displaced from their ancestral homes. can anything be done to reverse this trend toward extinction? well, my guest is archbishop bashar warda of erbil, home to the largest remaining christian community in a country, a region where christianity has deep roots. does it have a future? archbishop bashar warda, welcome to hardtalk. thank you. welcome, thank you. it s a pleasure to have you here, but i have to ask you, archbishop, how demoralising is it for you as the chaldean archbishop of erbil to see your christian community getting smaller and smaller y ....
home to the largest remaining christian community in a country, a region where christianity has deep roots. does it have a future? archbishop bashar warda, welcome to hardtalk. thank you. welcome, thank you. it s a pleasure to have you here, but i have to ask you, archbishop, how demoralising is it for you as the chaldean archbishop of erbil to see your christian community getting smaller and smaller year after year? yeah, i would say it s dangerously low in number. challenging, because i ll be honest with you, there is no one reason for our family to stay. i cannot convince them unless we do something for them. yes, we live in a safe environment in kurdistan, in erbil and duhok, but still, challenges, it s everywhere and especially when it comes to the whole region as middle east, christians have lost trust. it s notjust about iraq. speaking about syria, lebanon and the number of the christians declining. so everyone is thinking how to get out safely, while as church l ....
welcome to hardtalk, i m stephen sackur. 25 years ago, almost 1.5 million christians lived in iraq. now there are around a quarter of a million. and after years of war and sectarian violence, many of them have been displaced from their ancestral homes. can anything be done to reverse this trend toward extinction? well, my guest is archbishop bashar warda of erbil, home to the largest remaining christian community in a country, a region where christianity has deep roots. does it have a future? archbishop bashar warda, welcome to hardtalk. thank you. welcome, thank you. it s a pleasure to have you here, but i have to ask you, archbishop, how demoralising is it for you as the chaldean archbishop of erbil to see your christian community getting smaller and smaller year after year? yeah, i would say it s dangerously low in number. challenging, because i ll be honest with you, there is no one reason for our family to stay. i cannot convince them unless we do something for the ....
does it have a future? archbishop bashar warda, welcome to hardtalk. thank you. welcome, thank you. it s a pleasure to have you here, but i have to ask you, archbishop, how demoralising is it for you as the chaldean archbishop of erbil to see your christian community getting smaller and smaller year after year? yeah, i would say it s dangerously low in number. challenging, because i ll be honest with you, there is no one reason for our family to stay. i cannot convince them unless we do something for them. yes, we live in a safe environment in kurdistan, in erbil and duhok, but still, challenges, it s everywhere and especially when it comes to the whole region as middle east, christians have lost trust. it s notjust about iraq. speaking about syria, lebanon and the number of the christians declining. so everyone is thinking how to get out safely, while as church leaders, we are trying our best, really, to hold to everyone, especially the needy, the qualified, because ov ....
Security. the difficulties between baghdad and erbil, you could tell, you could tell. it is a country in chaos. it s also a country where it seems christians who even dream of recovering their homes, because tens of thousands were forced to flee and were displaced from their ancestral homes, if they attempt to go back, for many of them, it is impossible to reclaim their properties. it s already been sold three or four times. so with whom you are going to deal? and there are lots of mediators, corruption. and so, yeah, it s, we ve lost over 10,000 properties and some people would say more of this. you said in 2019, christians in iraq are, your quote, close to extinction . is that a trajectory which is now inevitable, extinction? if we do not do something as a government and people, ....