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From Our Own Correspondent: Qatar's quiet contradictions and Faberge's famous eggs

03/07/2013

Qatar's quiet contradictions and Faberge's famous eggs

BBC World Service - From Our Own Correspondent, Qatar's quiet contradictions and Faberge's famous eggs

Frank Gardner on Doha's talent for tactics; Stephen Smith handles some Russian treasures

Frank Gardner explores Doha's complex - even contradictory - alliances and tactics; Stephen Smith handles some Russian art treasures in Moscow and London (very carefully).

Pascale Harter introduces correspondents' insights, adventures and experiences from around the world. In this edition, Frank Gardner revisits Qatar - which he first knew as a sleepy backwater, but which has turned into a regional hub. Its offshore gas reserves haven't just given it energy power, but also soft power (as Al Jazeera television, based in Doha, is beamed into homes around the world) and diplomatic clout, with the tiny Emirate a major player in arming and supporting rebels in Syria. But how far can a small state, shot through with contradictions, reconcile its conflicting impulses? Meanwhile, Stephen Smith's also been mixing with the global super rich - or some of them, anyway - as he traces the story of the world's most valuable eggs: the jewelled masterpieces produced by Carl Faberge for the Russian imperial court in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. As Russia's ruled once again by a remote and fabulously rich elite, where have these treasures ended up? The trail leads to a subterranean stronghold beneath the streets of Moscow ... and a some spectacular villas in the pricier parts of London.

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