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CNN Live At Daybreak

International News Focus

Aired August 21, 2002 - 05:33   ET

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


CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: And we want to continue to focus on international news. As always at this time, we want to check in with our international desk to see what's going on.
Our senior international editor David Clinch joins us now -- good morning.

DAVID CLINCH, CNN INTERNATIONAL EDITOR: Carol, good morning.

It never stops for us. Today's installment, as we've been advertising, of Nic Robertson's special on the al Qaeda tapes features some very scary pictures and information about the training that the al Qaeda were going through before September 11. Those how to take hostages, how to raid houses, most frighteningly, I think, is the apparent training in the use of air, surface to air missiles, that kind of thing.

Frightening to see. And, of course, one of the main questions then that remains is where are these people now? Are any of them left? Are there people training to do this kind of thing elsewhere in the world? One of those questions, of course, relates to the idea that some al Qaeda people may have ended up in Iraq. This is something that senior U.S. officials, it's an idea that they've been suggesting, now saying outright that they believe some al Qaeda people are inside Iraq.

We know a few days ago there was a suggestion that they were going out to some al Qaeda linked people in northern Iraq, outside of the control of Saddam Hussein. Donald Rumsfeld and some of the other officials now apparently giving the impression that they believe some other al Qaeda leaders could be inside Iraq proper. Now...

COSTELLO: We're talking about second or third tier al Qaeda members?

CLINCH: Well, I don't know. I mean he says top people. We don't know. He says it's not the right time to get the details out. Perhaps in the future. But we'll see. But, of course, this is key relating to the whole idea that the United States might take military action against Iraq. The link there is the important factor in terms of justifying that kind of an attack. So we'll be watching that closely and our reporters in Baghdad are looking into that, as well.

COSTELLO: We've been talking a lot about the flooding in Europe. But there's flooding in other places, as well.

CLINCH: Right. We mentioned yesterday, I mentioned yesterday the flood in China, or the potential, the threat of flood in China. There already is some flooding. It's not apparently threatening 10 million or more people in the Hunan region of China. Already thousands and thousands, hundreds of thousands of people participating in trying to prevent that flood from happening. And we have the question of whether to dispatch a team up to Hunan to cover this.

But, you know, in China it's not quite as simple as it is in the Czech Republic or Germany. You can't just hope on a bus and go up there or rent a van. You have to get permission to go everywhere. And even when you do get permission, when you get up there, you know, what access can you get, how close can you get, what will the Chinese allow us to do?

Generally speaking, they're quite cooperative. But the whole atmosphere around flood covering in China or coverage of any story in China is quite different than it is elsewhere in the world. They take on a kind of a, revert to the Maoist atmosphere of, you know, the whole country banding together to protect themselves. And it's, it takes a kind of a different coverage plan to cover floods in China than it does in Europe.

COSTELLO: Understood.

OK, you have this strange story out of India?

CLINCH: Well, we do. It's very strange. It's funny in some ways. I don't know if you remember a couple of years ago there was the monkey man scare in India and thousands of people were afraid because they were rumored to be seeing a monkey man.

Well, now the current scare is that there is an apparent, some people are calling it a UFO, some people think it might be a big insect, some people think it might be a monster of some kind. They're calling it the face scratcher.

COSTELLO: The face scratcher.

CLINCH: And there are a number of people, you can see, some of these people here who claim to have been scratched by this unidentified thing. Scientists say it might be an insect. Some others say it doesn't exist at all.

But the key factor really is that it's causing panic throughout this part of India, as the monkey man did. We never saw the monkey man, but it caused panic.

COSTELLO: But there was a picture of the scratching thing.

CLINCH: Well, there was a picture of an insect which scientists theorize might be the thing. But, you know, in these parts of India -- I was in India a couple of years ago, and I mean this is abject poverty throughout these places. And, you know, people get scared by lots of things. And when it happens, it causes real panic.

So it's funny in some ways but what isn't funny is that a couple of people have died already. Some gentleman killed his mother by accident apparently the other day shooting at her because he was afraid the monster was coming. So it's...

COSTELLO: No kidding?

CLINCH: So it's amusing in some ways, but the panic is serious.

COSTELLO: Oh, definitely.

OK, we'll continue to follow that.

David Clinch, thank you, as always.

CLINCH: All right.

COSTELLO: We'll check in again tomorrow.

CLINCH: OK.

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