Hello and welcome to NewsHour. It's coming to you live from the BBC World Service

Studios in central London. I'm Tim Franks. We've got a couple of very strong interviews to bring

you in about 30 minutes on the big news out of the Philippines today. The arrest of the former

President Rodrigo Duterte charged with crimes against humanity during his brutal war on drugs

while he was in office. First, though, there was an extraordinarily meaningless news flash

across my computer a little while before we came on air. It was from one of the news agencies

covering the talks in the Saudi city of Jeddah between Ukrainian and US delegations over how to

bring the war with Russia to a close and how also perhaps to rescue the tattered relations between

Washington and Kiev. The news agency put out an alert quoting a top Ukrainian official.

Ukraine wants peace, they had declared. That statement, so bland, so unobjectionable, only

seemed to underline how fearful Kiev is of saying anything publicly that might further undermine

its case with the White House. So, what can be achieved in these talks today? Our State Department

correspondent, Tom Batemaneman flew into Jeddah

overnight with the US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Tom joins us now from the hotel

where those talks are taking place. Tom, what sense of expectations are you sensing?

Well, the Americans are sounding very upbeat, very positive. Marco Rubio, I spoke to him on the plane before we landed last night, is very much framing this as first an opportunity for, as they would see it, the Ukrainians to show them that they are committed to President Trump's proposals here, plans for a quick truce with Moscow,

but also to assess what the Ukrainian red lines are, frankly, and then to be able to take those

in time to the Russians, see what the Russian positions are, and how big that gap is, and whether or not

it can be bridged. But of course, before they get to any of that point, there are some,

you know, urgent fundamentals that the sides here will address, and that is basically about

after Mr. Zelensky was thrown out of the White House 10 days ago or a bit more now,

told he was disrespectful and ungrateful and President Trump has suspended that military support and some intelligence sharing.

...