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CNN Live Today

Interview With PLO Leader Yasser Arafat

Aired May 13, 2002 - 10:32   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right now to our Wolf Blitzer, who is doing some excellent work in the Mideast and managed to track town Yasser Arafat, and not only got him to talk, Wolf, but got him to say some things in a way we haven't really heard him say.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Well, you know, he was pretty open Yasser Arafat, we sat down at the beginning of interview, Daryn, and one of his aides said, well, maybe he'll do it 10 or 15 minute. We wound up spending 50 -- 5-0 minutes -- during the course of the conversation, that he got pretty animated and he got pretty feisty.

At one point, I showed him that 100-page book that the Israelis released when Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon visited George Bush at the White House, and a book Israelis claim documents Yasser Arafat's support for terrorism. He grabbed the book and he just threw it across this room where had we set up for this interview, and he was determined to make the case that he is trying to do his best to fight terrorism. He professed ignorance about a lot of specific terrorist incidents, and some of the specifics in that book. But he did go out of his way throughout the interview to try to reach out to the United States, especially to the Bush administration, and most particularly the president himself.

Listen to this excerpt.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

YASSER ARAFAT, PRESIDENT, PLO: He is very active. In this very short time, he became very active, and not only in states, but all over the

BLITZER: So far, he refused to meet with you.

ARAFAT: There is something there, but I am in a contact with him on the phone and with last time I had received...

Is he a fair man? Do you have confidence in President Bush?

ARAFAT: No doubts. No doubt. Not to forget what he has done and in Pakistan (ph) in fulfilled (ph), and what he had mentioned before that in the general assembly, I was there. The general assembly (ph), say (ph) independent Palestinian state.

BLITZER: He's the first president to do so. ARAFAT: Yes.

BLITZER: The first U.S. president.

ARAFAT: For this, I am sending to him through you, again, as I had sent it before, my thanks from my heart to him and to whole the American people, who are supporting us in different ways.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BLITZER: What I pointed out to chairman Arafat was that President Bush wanted Yasser Arafat not only to utter words condemning terrorism, but to actually undertake the deeds to get more serious about fighting terrorists and to prevent the kind of suicide bombings we saw here in Israel only a week or so ago.

On another note, the Israelis keep saying that, at least a lot of Israelis keep saying that they don't believe Yasser Arafat. They don't believe that he's really committed to living in a new Palestine alongside a Jewish state of Israel, because they say that he wants to flood the pre-'67 Israel with millions of Palestinian refugees that would change the demographic, the nature of this Jewish state.

And as a result, I pressed him on this point, and finally, after numerous questions, he did acknowledge that, yes, he supports a Jewish state.

Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ARAFAT: And we hope that we will have this independent Palestinian state side by side with Israeli Jewish state.

BLITZER: That's a significant statement you just made.

ARAFAT: No, for me it's not forget they are our cousins.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: He kept referring to Jews as the cousins of the Arabs, noting that Jews and Arabs have a common ancestor, namely Abraham, and that all Jews and Arabs are descended from Abraham. As a result, they're cousins. And he reminded us that when he was a little boy growing up in Jerusalem, he used to played with his cousins, the Jews, in the Jewish quarter of Jerusalem. It was pretty a interesting night. In the middle of night, Daryn, it was a nice drive from Jerusalem to Ramallah.

KAGAN: I imagine the story behind the story just as fascinating.

Wolf, I want to ask you about a part of your interview that I heard played earlier here on CNN. But you kind of reminisced with Yasser Arafat, and this gets to point of why so many are cynical about what he says, even when he makes a bold statement, like you got him to say in your interview. And that is, I think you flashed back to a time when you both were at the United Nations, and you said, I was a much younger reporter and you were a younger man, and even then, you were waving the olive branch.

Here we are all these years later, and really, not only are things not changing, they have gotten worse.

BLITZER: Well, it's pretty bad right now, but there is a potential. There is a potential out of the chaos and destruction, the devastation, right now that there might be some movement in the peace process. The moderate Arab states, including Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan are pushing along those lines. The Bush administration has left the sidelines, has gotten intimately involved. There is a heated debate here in Israel, as we saw in Likud Party Central Committee between those who favor a Palestinian state, those who were opposed to a Palestinian state.

And Yasser Arafat is going to have to decide right now, does he try to reach out and fight terrorism, or does he get back into the old ways and let this perhaps, this fleeting moment -- and it's going to be a fleeting moment -- disappear?

There is a critical moment right now that this situation can go in either direction.

KAGAN: Wolf Blitzer in Jerusalem, we could talk all day. Fortunately, for our viewers, there is much more Wolf ahead. We'll see you later.

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