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CNN Live At Daybreak

International Stories for Today

Aired December 03, 2002 - 05:53   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: We've got our sights on several other international stories here at CNN. We want to see what is going on and what our international desk is covering now.
Our senior international editor David Clinch joins us this morning.

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

COSTELLO: Lots going on. It finally happened.

CLINCH: Yes.

COSTELLO: Inspectors are in a presidential palace in Iraq.

CLINCH: They went, they went and they left, as Nic Robertson and Rym Brahimi have been reporting all night. They went to one of Saddam Hussein's palaces, this one inside Baghdad. He has, I believe, eight palaces throughout the country.

One of the things that I was talking to Nic Robertson about and we were talking, encouraging our producers to be aware of, is we did see some surprise on the behalf of the guards at the gate here. But we need to make sure that we don't confuse that with a sort of a real, overall sense of surprise that they're coming to these palaces. The U.N. has made it clear they want to come to these palaces in a general sense, and the Iraqis have known that for a long time.

So while we did see some delay and some surprise on behalf of the guards at the gate, this is very much a sort of a scripted thing we're seeing every day. The inspectors are...

COSTELLO: Yes. Well, the inspectors showed up at nine in the morning Iraqi time and kind of knocked on the door.

CLINCH: They knocked on the door and, you know, I suppose if you were a guard, you would be surprised. And they waited for orders. They did, in fact, then, open the gates. The inspectors went in. But then, again, in the sort of scripted sense, very quickly we see Iraqi officials turning up afterwards and allowing the journalists to go inside and to take a look around.

That's part of the story, too, though, whether the inspections aside, seeing these palaces is always interesting, I think, you know, to see inside.

COSTELLO: Oh, yes. CLINCH: Saddam Hussein obviously not living quite at the standard of other Iraqis. So -- and we'll talk a little bit more later, too, about the separate issue, which is this deadline on Sunday for Iraq to issue a statement about its weapons. But we'll talk a little bit more about that later.

One of the other stories we're still following in Kenya, al Qaeda apparently having claimed responsibility for the attack in Kenya on Israeli citizens at the Israeli hotel.

COSTELLO: And they did so on a Web site.

CLINCH: On a Web site and, you know, you can never be a hundred percent sure, but experts are telling us, and officials in the U.S. here are telling us that they certainly put a high degree of credence on that. We are reporting from Israel again today about the awkward situation that creates for Israel. They want to punish the people who did this. They're being asked by the U.S. not to necessarily launch their own separate overall war on terrorism that might interfere with the process the U.S. is involved in. So that's interesting.

And also, you know, later on we'll do a piece, Jerrold is going to do a piece on that system that will hopefully protect planes from this kind of thing.

COSTELLO: From shoulder fired missiles.

CLINCH: Exactly.

COSTELLO: That was fascinating, what he had.

CLINCH: Yes.

COSTELLO: Thank you, David.

We'll let you get back to work.

CLINCH: OK.

COSTELLO: And we'll check back with you in the next hour.

CLINCH: All right.

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 December 3, 2002 - 05:53   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: We've got our sights on several other international stories here at CNN. We want to see what is going on and what our international desk is covering now.
Our senior international editor David Clinch joins us this morning.

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

COSTELLO: Lots going on. It finally happened.

CLINCH: Yes.

COSTELLO: Inspectors are in a presidential palace in Iraq.

CLINCH: They went, they went and they left, as Nic Robertson and Rym Brahimi have been reporting all night. They went to one of Saddam Hussein's palaces, this one inside Baghdad. He has, I believe, eight palaces throughout the country.

One of the things that I was talking to Nic Robertson about and we were talking, encouraging our producers to be aware of, is we did see some surprise on the behalf of the guards at the gate here. But we need to make sure that we don't confuse that with a sort of a real, overall sense of surprise that they're coming to these palaces. The U.N. has made it clear they want to come to these palaces in a general sense, and the Iraqis have known that for a long time.

So while we did see some delay and some surprise on behalf of the guards at the gate, this is very much a sort of a scripted thing we're seeing every day. The inspectors are...

COSTELLO: Yes. Well, the inspectors showed up at nine in the morning Iraqi time and kind of knocked on the door.

CLINCH: They knocked on the door and, you know, I suppose if you were a guard, you would be surprised. And they waited for orders. They did, in fact, then, open the gates. The inspectors went in. But then, again, in the sort of scripted sense, very quickly we see Iraqi officials turning up afterwards and allowing the journalists to go inside and to take a look around.

That's part of the story, too, though, whether the inspections aside, seeing these palaces is always interesting, I think, you know, to see inside.

COSTELLO: Oh, yes. CLINCH: Saddam Hussein obviously not living quite at the standard of other Iraqis. So -- and we'll talk a little bit more later, too, about the separate issue, which is this deadline on Sunday for Iraq to issue a statement about its weapons. But we'll talk a little bit more about that later.

One of the other stories we're still following in Kenya, al Qaeda apparently having claimed responsibility for the attack in Kenya on Israeli citizens at the Israeli hotel.

COSTELLO: And they did so on a Web site.

CLINCH: On a Web site and, you know, you can never be a hundred percent sure, but experts are telling us, and officials in the U.S. here are telling us that they certainly put a high degree of credence on that. We are reporting from Israel again today about the awkward situation that creates for Israel. They want to punish the people who did this. They're being asked by the U.S. not to necessarily launch their own separate overall war on terrorism that might interfere with the process the U.S. is involved in. So that's interesting.

And also, you know, later on we'll do a piece, Jerrold is going to do a piece on that system that will hopefully protect planes from this kind of thing.

COSTELLO: From shoulder fired missiles.

CLINCH: Exactly.

COSTELLO: That was fascinating, what he had.

CLINCH: Yes.

COSTELLO: Thank you, David.

We'll let you get back to work.

CLINCH: OK.

COSTELLO: And we'll check back with you in the next hour.

CLINCH: All right.

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