E.U. Leaders Considering U.K.'s Request for Delay; Trump Defends Syria Strategy as Putin and Erdogan Make a Deal; U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper is Interviewed about Syria Strategy.
JOHN VAUSE, CNN ANCHOR (voice-over): Hello and welcome to our viewers in the United States and around the world. I'm John Vause, live from Studio 7 at CNN World Headquarters. Ahead this, hour it was a moment in history and then it wasn't. British Parliament approves a Brexit deal that votes no to passing a Brexit deal. And hands the E.U. responsibility for what happens next. Redrawing the map: Russia and Turkey dividing up territory seized in northern Syria. In real time, it, seems Vladimir Putin filling the power vacuum left behind by America's retreat. And the phone calls are coming from inside the House. Another senior official from within the Trump administration delivers damning testimony to Congress over Ukraine.</s>VAUSE: The very latest this hour on Brexit is brought to you by the word flextension, a combination of flexible and extension, which is what the E.U. is now considering after the British Parliament put the brakes on their withdrawal from the E.U. For the first, time lawmakers actually approved terms of a withdrawal deal. But they are snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. The House of Commons voted against fast tracking the process to meet the October 31st deadline.</s>JOHN BERCOW, SPEAKER, BRITISH HOUSE OF COMMONS: The ayes to the right, 308; the nos the left, 322. So the nos have it. The nos have it. Unlock.</s>VAUSE (voice-over): The prime minister is legally obliged to apply to the E.U. for an extension or, more precisely now, a flextension, which could see the Brexit deadline pushed back early next year. But the delay will be terminated if the deal is ratified before then, putting the flex into flextension. The process is on hold with Boris Johnson warning the U.K. could still crash out of the European Union.</s>BERCOW: Order.</s>BORIS JOHNSON, U.K. PRIME MINISTER: The government must take the only responsible course and accelerate our preparations for a no deal out. But certainly I will speak to E.U. member states about their intentions until they have reached a decision. And until they have reached a decision I must say that we will pause this legislation.</s>VAUSE: British journalist Josh Boswell joins us now from Los Angeles. So. Josh clearly in many ways a historic moment, finally an agreement on an exit package but the opposition voted down the fast-track process. I think they want to rewrite parts of the deal. Listen to Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.</s>JEREMY CORBYN, LEADER, U.K.  LABOUR PARTY: The prime minister is the author of his own misfortune. So I make this offer to him tonight. Work with us -- work with us, all of us to agree a reasonable timetable. And I suspect this house will vote to debate, scrutinized and I hope immense the detail of this bill. That would be the sensible way forward.</s>VAUSE: So clearly the concern for Johnson is this just opens the door to endless negotiations and renegotiations and pilgrimages to Brussels. But riddle me this, Batman, did they actually agreed on a new deal? Do they like what's in this or do they just agreed to this deal so they could try and change it later on?</s>JOSH BOSWELL, BRITISH JOURNALIST: It's pretty much the latter, yes. They -- the vote and that one majority of 30 in the House of Commons was merely putting forward this deal to the next stage of the process. And that's a stage where MPs can tack on amendments, as you say, and those amendments are ones that could sink this bill. We're talking about adding a second referendum on the end of it so that it will be put to the British public again. Another amendment that might bring the whole of the U.K. into the customers union, something that the hardline Brexiteers in Boris Johnson's party would not be able to stomach and that would ruin any majority for the deal and would also make it something different to what Boris had actually negotiated with the E.U. So really, the tough times of this bill are yet to come. And I think that we shouldn't take this majority that it's got for the first -- the first vote in Parliament too strongly. Really, it's the -- it's the second bill that was voted on today that actually gives us stronger sense of the majority in parliament and that is against Boris Johnson.</s>VAUSE: And while he -- Boris Johnson made it clear he does not want this Brexit extension.</s>VAUSE: Here he is in Parliament. He seems to be drawing a red line. If there is an extension -- an extension, how long it should. Be here is.</s>JOHNSON: I will in no way allow months -- no wait -- allow months more of this. If Parliament refuses to allow Brexit to happen and instead gets its way and decides to delay everything until January or possibly longer, in no circumstances can the government continue with this. And I with great regret, I must direct to the point that the honorable gentlemen raises. With great regret, I must say that the bill will have to be pulled and we will have to go forward much as the honorable gentleman we may not like it, we will have to go forward to a general election.</s>VAUSE: I guess the feeling is that Brexit delayed is a Brexit denied. But on the issue of a general election, nothing is as easy as it sounds he says in Parliament because what Johnson needs to support within the house to call an early election?</s>BOSWELL: That's right, yes. Due to the Fixed-term Parliaments Act, he does need two-thirds of Parliament to start a general election. Now Jeremy Corbyn has come out in favor of a general election. And it's unclear whether his MPs are going to back him on that but certainly, the Leader of the opposition party is pushing for a general election too. It's something that we may seem see fairly soon now. But the reason that a lot of Labour MPs aren't particularly happy about that, aren't looking forward to it is because they're trailing by about 15 points in the polls. And Boris Johnson could well clear up if he manages to have this election on the grounds of I'm trying to put through Brexit, Parliament is stopping me, let me have a majority, British public, so that I can get this through and get Brexit done as his slogan is.</s>VAUSE: Yes. He is very high on the opinion polls at the moment, despite everything. We should remind everybody though, the final call here on any extension is with the European Union. France has been playing the role of bad cop and all this, insisting on some kind of political shake-up before granting any kind of delay or extension. How unified is the E.U. on this?</s>BOSWELL: Well, I think they are very unlikely to say no to an extension or to grant anything that's significantly shorter. I think we're very likely to see a January 31 extension coming out of Brussels because the European Council President Donald Tusk has already tweeted that. That's what he's going to be pushing forward. You've got the French president kind of agitating, but more for domestic political reasons, more to make it a show of things. It's -- I think it's very unlikely he would veto or really push to limit this. So I think we're looking at January 31st and an election beforehand.</s>VAUSE: OK, good times ahead. Josh, thanks for coming in. Good to see you.</s>BOSWELL: Thanks, John.</s>VAUSE: The president of Russia and the president of Turkey had made a deal to try to return calm to Northern Syria and this deal could in fact determine the future of one-time American allies, the Kurds. The two leaders met at Putin's retreat in the seaside resort of Sochi and in Russia, this happened as the cease-fire time basically expired. The talks also came as the U.S. draws down its forces in Syria on the orders of President Trump. Under the, deal the Kurdish YPG fighters who spearheaded the fight against ISIS, are to be moved 30 kilometers away from the Turkish border. To forestall, this Russia is to carry out separate patrols with Turkish and Syrian troops. This is a win for Turkey, viewing the YPG as terrorists and also getting control of the land between Ras al-Ain and Tal Abyad. Turkey's happy and Russia's happy but it doesn't sound like Russia's allies in Damascus are too pleased. The Kremlin said the Syrian president Bashar al-Assad thanked Mr. Putin for the deal but Syrian media reported differently. One channel said Mr. Assad told the Russian president he rejects any occupation of Syrian land. Here is what he told his troops in Idlib province. He uses the word daish, which is the Arabic term for ISIS.</s>BASHAR AL-ASSAD, PRESIDENT OF SYRIA (through translator): What I want to say is that when we say that Erdogan is a thief who stole the factories, stole wheat, stole oil in collaboration with daish, now he is stealing the land.</s>VAUSE: For his, part President Trump is calling the Russia-Turkey deal good news but he is also facing rare bipartisan criticism for pulling out U.S. forces. CNN's Fred Pleitgen has more.</s>TRUMP: Our military was depleted.</s>FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice- over): President Trump continues to justify his decision to withdraw U.S. troops from northern Syria. Russian president Vladimir Putin and Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan have already carved up the area amongst themselves, a triumphant Putin announcing the agreement.</s>PUTIN (through translator): We have managed to reach very important if not fateful agreements to resolve this very acute situation on the Syrian-Turkish border.</s>PLEITGEN (voice-over): While American troops got pelted with rotten vegetables and rocks as they left Syria, Russians will now be taking their place.</s>PLEITGEN (voice-over): Moscow's forces, instead of American troops, will now be patrolling the border, region together with the Turks and the Russians will ensure that armed Kurdish groups, America's former allies in the fight against ISIS, retreat from Turkish territory. "Both sides will take necessary measures to prevent infiltrations of terrorist elements," Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov read from the agreement. America's withdrawal, another major win for Vladimir Putin, courtesy of President Trump.</s>TRUMP: We never agreed to protect the Kurds for the rest of their lives.</s>PLEITGEN (voice-over): It comes as "The Washington Post" and "The New York Times" reported that both Hungarian president Viktor Orban and Vladimir Putin tried to encourage President Trump to take a hostile view of Ukraine. Officials familiar with the testimony of career diplomat George Kent, before House committees last week, told "The Washington Post" Trump's conversations with Putin and Orban reinforced his view of Ukraine as corrupt. These conversations all happening before President Trump asked Ukraine's leader to investigate Joe Biden's son on that now-famous July 25th phone call. Top Democrats, like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, confronting President Trump about Putin's influence in a heated meeting at the White House just last week.</s>REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA), HOUSE SPEAKER: I also pointed out to the president that I had concerns that all roads seem to lead to Putin.</s>PLEITGEN (voice-over): In Syria, all roads now lead to Vladimir Putin -- Fred Pleitgen, CNN, Sochi, Russia.</s>VAUSE: Jill Dougherty is a CNN contributor and global fellow for the Woodrow Wilson Center. She was also CNN's Moscow bureau chief for many years and she is with us this hour from Washington. Jill, good to see you.</s>JILL DOUGHERTY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hey, John.</s>VAUSE: OK. Talk about the optics here. I mean, this is the president of Russia, inviting a NATO ally to his retreat in Sochi where you know, for six hours, they redrew the map of the Middle East. They said</s>DOUGHERTY: There's so many ways that he could, John, because you're right, the optics are one thing. But I mean, you're going to have, if his plan works, you're going to have Turkish troops and Russian troops patrolling together and Turkey an ally, a NATO ally of the United States really astounding. But I think, you know, you'd have to say that right now Russia is depicting Vladimir Putin and Vladimir Putin is definitely playing that role, of a person who was loyal to his friends, talks to any country, does not demand anything from anybody else, is an honest broker. And look at the way he's improved relations. And now you have Turkey and not only Turkey, but just a week or two ago, he was in Saudi Arabia with an amazing reception. He has good relations with Iran. He has good relations with Israel. So he really now is becoming, you could say, the power broker in the Middle East as the United States pulls out.</s>VAUSE: With regards to the U.S. point of view on you know, the recent events with the Kurds, the U.S. Defense Secretary has defended this decision for a troop withdrawal, essentially saying it's a question of priorities. Here he is.</s>MARK ESPER, SECRETARY OF DEFENSE, UNITED STATES: That's one of the challenges I face as Secretary of Defense trying to implement our new national defense strategy is how do I reposition our forces to deal with the threats of the coming decades, which is China, number one and Russia number two. As I look around the globe, I see our forces tied down in multiple locations. Man, if you step back, you'd see American forces easily in 80, 90 countries around the world.</s>VAUSE: OK, so if Russia is, you know, the number two challenger or threat, if you like, you know, the other context here is that for the past 50 years, American foreign policy was focused on keeping Russia out of the Middle East. It seems that you know, as Donald Trump was walking out of Syria, he held the door open for Putin to walk right in.</s>DOUGHERTY: Yes. And Putin is re-establishing ties that actually go back much further. You know, the Soviet Union had many ties with the Middle East that kind of dissipated after the end of the Soviet Union and he's simply going back. I mean, Syria is a place that Russia and the Soviet Union had a relationship going way back to Assad's father. So all of these connections he is reestablishing and at the very same time the United States and President Trump says, we don't need this anymore, we don't need to be there. But those troops that we were just talking about, it wasn't a whole lot of troops that it sounds good to say the national security strategy says that it's China and Russia.</s>DOUGHERTY: But actually, there are places that the United States, even with small numbers of troops has to be if the United States is to play a leadership role. If the decision is not to be -- to play a leadership role, then pull out. But you can see already that a precipitous pullout can be very, very destabilizing.</s>VAUSE: You can be in favor of the policy, but you know, critical of the way it was executed. The view though, from the U.S. president and many others seems to be that the Russians and the Turks have just won custody of a quagmire. Others have argued that Syria is just a disaster. It's a broken country and no one wins out of this. I guess there's some truth in that in part, but it seems very -- you know, not the big-picture view, if you like, instead of focusing on the immediate and the small picture.</s>DOUGHERTY: You know, it couldn't get any worse really, John. You know, quagmire, it's already a quagmire and they're in it. So I don't think that argument holds up. It says bigger picture. It's not just, you know, Syria, it's the Middle East. And again, what we're just going through, all of these places of Vladimir Putin is reestablishing relationships and depicting himself in playing the role of a leader playing a bad hand very, very well, actually. So it's not to Syria. And I think that the -- if you look long term, this is a major decision. It will have ramifications that will go on for years.</s>VAUSE: There have been a series of those sort of decisions coming from this White House that you know, will have ramifications for many years to come. And this, of course, is up on the top 10, I would say. Jill, thank you. Good to see you.</s>DOUGHERTY: Thank you, John.</s>VAUSE: A top U.S. diplomat's testimony about Ukraine has left some U.S. lawmakers seriously rattled. What he said and the implications for President Trump's impeachment inquiry. That's next. Also, President Trump is furious at Bill Taylor's testimony and he continues to slam the impeachment inquiry and is now comparing it to a lynching and that is a whole new controversy. Back in a moment.