Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Live At Daybreak

Today's News Topics

Aired July 25, 2002 - 05:50   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.
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: For an inside look at some of the international stories CNN will be following, let's go to senior international editor David Clinch, who like Barbie the Scribner (ph), lives at his desk here in the CNN news room.

What's going on there today?

DAVID CLINCH, CNN EDITOR: Good morning, Anderson.

Well, lots of things going on. We still have some Middle East stuff we're looking at. We have a piece we're working on today looking at this Israeli policy of targeted assassinations, they call it, which by the their own admission went wrong in Gaza the other day with a one ton bomb being dropped on an apartment.

They got their target, but they also killed a lot of civilians. We're going to look at that policy in a general sense and see whether it's achieving its purpose from Israel's point of view and whether it can survive this, the international outcry following this particular attack.

And, you know, one of the other tasks that we have on the international desk in regard to the Middle East and all the other stories is so many different things happen and we have to find ways to bring them all together in a way that the audience can understand. And we also have very many different audiences -- CNN International in Asia, Europe, the United States, everywhere else. And for our U.S. audience on this Middle East story, we're always looking for ways in which we can clearly bring the U.S. audience to the story and make it clear to them how the United States is involved or not involved in the story.

And today we've got various disparate events going on around the world which clearly show that the U.S., willingly or unwillingly, is involved in the story here in the Middle East. We've got obviously the fallout from the attack itself with the Americans calling it heavy-handed for a start. But then you've also got the State Department yesterday pointing at, not really warning as such, but pointing out to Israel that it has certain obligations under U.S. law in regard to how it uses American weapons. The American F-16 that was used, paid for and bought with money supplied from the United States. It's a very difficult issue for the U.S. They've, you know, there's no prospect of U.S. money not continuing to go to Israel, but they are clearly reminding the Israelis of their obligations of how they use those weapons.

On the other hand, you have in Israel in the media there, in the newspapers in Israel today they're pointing out something that's probably not as high of a profile here, that part of this homeland security bill that's going through Congress at the moment is hidden within -- or not hidden, but within there is $200 million in extra money for Israel.

So there are sort of all sorts of aspects of that story. The U.S. ambassador to the U.N. last night speaking out again against the Israeli action in Gaza, but also pointing out to the Arab nations that called that U.N. debate to debate the Gaza attack why aren't there these debates whenever there's a suicide attack against Israeli citizens?

So the Americans are involved and it's our job to make sure that we bring in all of those elements, make sure that they're understood and then allocate them in terms of reporters, whether we do that from the Middle East, from the State Department, from the White House, wherever else, and make sure that all of those issues are covered.

COOPER: All right, David Clinch, thanks very much for that update. We'll be checking in with you a little bit later on. Thanks very much.

CLINCH: No problem.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com