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CNN Live At Daybreak

International News Desk

Aired September 30, 2002 - 05:33   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.


CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: It is a busy time for our international desk. They are in over drive these days. Still, we're going to interrupt their fine work to see what's filling their plate today.
Our senior international editor David Clinch joins us now.

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

COSTELLO: Well...

CLINCH: Lots of stuff going on.

COSTELLO: Yes.

CLINCH: I wanted to talk about Iraq today, though. Surprise, surprise. But still, there are lots of places where we're covering the story today and I wanted to try and outline what's happening and to some degree give a time line of how we're expecting this story to play out over the next few days.

As you've been reporting, we are in Vienna today for the U.N. weapons inspectors talking to the Iraqis. To cut it down to basics there, what they're talking about is all of the agreements and resolutions that exist already, will the Iraqis basically sign on the dotted line and say we'll do everything we previously agreed to? That's all the resolutions about unfettered access plus the little addendum that Kofi Annan and Tariq Aziz came up with, which gives these special procedures for presidential sites. They're not blocked, but it's just a lot more difficult, a lot more complicated for the U.N.'s...

COSTELLO: They have to give them a warning before they're going in and...

CLINCH: Some kind of advance notice. And then the inspections teams, if they ever were to inspect a presidential site -- it hasn't happened -- but if they ever were to do that under this addendum or agreement, they'd have to have weapons inspectors plus international diplomats.

Now, even if everything in Vienna goes well and they agree to all of that, the United States is saying that's not good enough. That's not unfettered access. These presidential sites are huge. The...

COSTELLO: Well, and just to make it clear, the United States wants some sort of resolution passed before weapons inspectors go back to Iraq...

CLINCH: Right.

COSTELLO: ... no matter what they talk about in Vienna.

CLINCH: Right. Agreed. So Vienna goes well, we assume.

COSTELLO: Yes?

CLINCH: Everybody says we're ready to go. Then we switch to Washington and New York, where, first of all, the Bush administration with Congress has to come to an agreement on exactly how powerful they want their version of a U.N. resolution to be. Then they have to go to New York and get everybody else on the Security Council to at least not disagree with them. Then that new resolution comes into place. Then it goes back to the weapons inspectors and the Iraqis to say the bar has been moved. Those old resolutions, the old addendum doesn't matter anymore, this is what we want to be agreed to before inspectors go.

COSTELLO: And one final thing, just so the viewers understand, if the weapons inspectors decide to go back into Iraq before a resolution is passed, the United States will interfere with that, won't it?

CLINCH: Right. I mean there's a lot of rhetoric here. I mean effectively the weapons inspectors go when they're told to go and the Security Council really will tell them when to go. So you're not really going to see a situation where Hans Blix says, right, we're going next week and then the Americans physically block them from going. You may see a situation where they go into the region and they're prepared to go and they're ready to go.

But the weapons inspectors are not going to fly into Baghdad without the Americans saying OK. I don't believe so, anyway. But you certainly may see some tension on the ground there with the weapons inspectors and at the U.N. itself in regard to this tension between the inspectors saying we're ready to go, the other members of the Security Council saying well, let them go, and the U.S. saying not until we get an agreement on this new resolution.

COSTELLO: Interesting.

CLINCH: So that's the time line. I can't tell you when that new resolution is going to go before the U.N., but that's the next thing in the sequence. Vienna might not even go well. We may end up with a mess there that needs to be sorted out. But if it does, then we switch to Washington and New York. We wait to see what happens there, then we go back again and start all over again.

COSTELLO: OK.

I'll let you get back to it.

Thank you, David Clinch.

CLINCH: All right.

COSTELLO: We'll check back with you tomorrow.

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






Aired September 30, 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: It is a busy time for our international desk. They are in over drive these days. Still, we're going to interrupt their fine work to see what's filling their plate today.
Our senior international editor David Clinch joins us now.

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

COSTELLO: Well...

CLINCH: Lots of stuff going on.

COSTELLO: Yes.

CLINCH: I wanted to talk about Iraq today, though. Surprise, surprise. But still, there are lots of places where we're covering the story today and I wanted to try and outline what's happening and to some degree give a time line of how we're expecting this story to play out over the next few days.

As you've been reporting, we are in Vienna today for the U.N. weapons inspectors talking to the Iraqis. To cut it down to basics there, what they're talking about is all of the agreements and resolutions that exist already, will the Iraqis basically sign on the dotted line and say we'll do everything we previously agreed to? That's all the resolutions about unfettered access plus the little addendum that Kofi Annan and Tariq Aziz came up with, which gives these special procedures for presidential sites. They're not blocked, but it's just a lot more difficult, a lot more complicated for the U.N.'s...

COSTELLO: They have to give them a warning before they're going in and...

CLINCH: Some kind of advance notice. And then the inspections teams, if they ever were to inspect a presidential site -- it hasn't happened -- but if they ever were to do that under this addendum or agreement, they'd have to have weapons inspectors plus international diplomats.

Now, even if everything in Vienna goes well and they agree to all of that, the United States is saying that's not good enough. That's not unfettered access. These presidential sites are huge. The...

COSTELLO: Well, and just to make it clear, the United States wants some sort of resolution passed before weapons inspectors go back to Iraq...

CLINCH: Right.

COSTELLO: ... no matter what they talk about in Vienna.

CLINCH: Right. Agreed. So Vienna goes well, we assume.

COSTELLO: Yes?

CLINCH: Everybody says we're ready to go. Then we switch to Washington and New York, where, first of all, the Bush administration with Congress has to come to an agreement on exactly how powerful they want their version of a U.N. resolution to be. Then they have to go to New York and get everybody else on the Security Council to at least not disagree with them. Then that new resolution comes into place. Then it goes back to the weapons inspectors and the Iraqis to say the bar has been moved. Those old resolutions, the old addendum doesn't matter anymore, this is what we want to be agreed to before inspectors go.

COSTELLO: And one final thing, just so the viewers understand, if the weapons inspectors decide to go back into Iraq before a resolution is passed, the United States will interfere with that, won't it?

CLINCH: Right. I mean there's a lot of rhetoric here. I mean effectively the weapons inspectors go when they're told to go and the Security Council really will tell them when to go. So you're not really going to see a situation where Hans Blix says, right, we're going next week and then the Americans physically block them from going. You may see a situation where they go into the region and they're prepared to go and they're ready to go.

But the weapons inspectors are not going to fly into Baghdad without the Americans saying OK. I don't believe so, anyway. But you certainly may see some tension on the ground there with the weapons inspectors and at the U.N. itself in regard to this tension between the inspectors saying we're ready to go, the other members of the Security Council saying well, let them go, and the U.S. saying not until we get an agreement on this new resolution.

COSTELLO: Interesting.

CLINCH: So that's the time line. I can't tell you when that new resolution is going to go before the U.N., but that's the next thing in the sequence. Vienna might not even go well. We may end up with a mess there that needs to be sorted out. But if it does, then we switch to Washington and New York. We wait to see what happens there, then we go back again and start all over again.

COSTELLO: OK.

I'll let you get back to it.

Thank you, David Clinch.

CLINCH: All right.

COSTELLO: We'll check back with you tomorrow.

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