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DIPLOMATIC LICENSE

Current Events at the United Nations

Aired October 9, 2004 - 02:30:00   ET

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

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: My task was not to find weapons of mass destruction. My task was to find the truth.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I will bet either my left arm or my right arm, whichever you like that this resolution will not pass.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It was a paper tiger. It was a leaky sieve. It enabled Saddam to get $4.4 billion. It was a joke.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

RICHARD ROTH, CNN ANCHOR: Do you ever feel left out of something everybody else is in on? I began feeling my usual pangs of anxiety this week with the latest revelations about the very oily Oil For Food deal between Iraq and the members of the United Nations.

Welcome to DIPLOMATIC LICENSE. I'm Richard Roth.

Yes, no official charges yet, no jury verdicts, no arrests, but the web of suspicion grew as politicians, U.N. employees and governments were listed as receiving bribes, and this was in that been CIA weapons report of mass destruction.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHARLES DUELFER, WEAPONS SURVEY LEADER: Once Saddam elected to begin the Oil For Food Program because of the devastation on the Iraqi population and because of the threats that that caused to his own regime, once those Oil For Food Programs began, it provided all kinds of levers for him to manipulate his way out of sanctions.

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ROTH: The day before that hearing, one of the many United States Congressional Committees conducting an Oil For Food investigation pummeled the Oil For Food Program.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS (R-CT): How was a well-intentioned program, designed and administered by the world's preeminent multi-national organization so systematically and so thoroughly corrupted?

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ROTH: The United Nations has its own independent probe now underway, headed by Paul Volcker. The Secretary-General Kofi Annan told me this week we have to wait for that report, but in till then Oil For Food is red meet for U.S. congressmen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TIM MURPHY, (R-PA): How is it that the United Nations could allow the terms of a program meant to punish a tyrannical leader while offering assistance to the very people that suffered under him to be dictated by that very tyrant? It is because the current nature of the United Nations is to be soft on terrorism and the world leaders that support it.

The spineless United Nations produced paper tigers in the form of resolutions that had no teeth.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROTH: Who really was the paper tiger in Oil For Food? Joining me, Ed Luck, long time U.N. watcher, director of the Center on International Organization, School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. And with us on Capitol Hill in Washington, the congressman who may have the U.N. tiger by the tail, Tim Murphy, a representative from the state of Pennsylvania.

Ed, you've testified before another congressional committee, or maybe the same one. What is your response to the allegations that the United Nations has really blown it on Oil For Food?

ED LUCK, U.N. ANALYST: Well, it's no question, it was a mess. And there's no doubt there was corruption all around.

But on the other hand, it did serve a purpose. It served the purpose of the member states on the Security Council, including the United States, which voted for it, and that is it allowed the extension of the sanctions against Saddam Hussein to prevent him from getting weapons of mass destruction. And it did feed the Iraqi people.

ROTH: Congressman, a lot of people missed that point. I mean, in your statements on Capitol Hill and everywhere else, it's blaming the United Nations, the United Nations, the United Nations, the U.N. officials, but nobody seems to say -- to attack the United States, which had the power there -- we heard Ambassador Danforth threatening a veto on the Middle East, using his left or right hand. The U.S. ambassador at the time could have stepped in.

Why don't you have State Department people there and put the onus on them?

MURPHY: Well, let's take first the comment the professor made with regard to weapons of mass destruction. It appears now that the program of WMDs was wither are for Saddam Hussein. He recognized that, because his country was in economic collapse.

He also recognized that the Oil For Food Program, with terms also negotiated and supported by the Russians and French, to make it weaker, which the United States opposed, allowed him a system that he knew he could use to bolster his WMD program.

He knew that he couldn't perhaps bring them to the level he wanted, but he also knew that what he could do was have dual-use facilities and scientists that could wait. And one of the things that this report also said was that it shortened the time it would take Saddam Hussein to bring WMD programs back up to speed.

ROTH: Well, that's where the Bush administration especially would like to put the focus, but we've done many programs here on Oil For Food. At your hearing, what is the purpose of all of these investigations when the United Nations has its own? Do you not trust Paul Volcker's probe, a man who headed the Federal Reserve Bank and has handled other international issues?

MURPHY: Paul Volcker has said he's having trouble getting the information from the United Nations. They have not been cooperative, nor have some of these foreign nations.

It really comes do a picture as well that -- when one is looking at turning to other foreign nations to ask for advice and consent on American policy. I think it really point to it seems that support almost goes to the highest bidder.

In this case, Saddam Hussein worked with the French, the Russians, the Chinese, to bargain for their votes, which the French assured in 2002, assured the Iraqis that they would give veto to any resolution about war against Iraq and that Saddam Hussein personally was the one that approved whether or not nations received oil. The French received a lot of oil in this deal.

ROTH: You think they voted against the war in effect because of the Oil For Food bribes?

MURPHY: I think that there is too many links here to not ignore that it is a strong possibility. In many ways this reads like the thickest plot of a Tom Clancy novel, but there are so many elements that are true here.

ROTH: All right. "The Hunt For October," we're in it. Go ahead.

LUCK: Well, I think there's a question of which is the cart and which is the horse here. Did Saddam Hussein seek to give bribes to the French and Chinese and Russians because he already knew that they were bending in his direction? And that's why he didn't try to do the bribes with the United States and the United Kingdom. You know, which came first here.

The other thing that's worth remembering about the CIA report, the thing that's really moving about it is the testimony it gives to how important removing the sanctions of the United Nations, removing the U.N. inspectors, how important that was to Saddam Hussein, because he realized one of the reasons his economy was eroding -- in fact, the main reason -- was because of the U.N. sanctions. The reason he couldn't acquire weapons of mass destruction was because of the work that the U.N. inspectors had been doing.

ROTH: But, Professor Luck, is the United Nations being unfairly targeted? Yes, there's going to be some blame. Or as someone on Capitol Hill told me, there are no angels in this. But is there too much attention to the U.N. role and not enough to those who could have stopped it and why they didn't?

LUCK: Well, I think it's wrong to focus just on the secretariat. I'm glad to here the congressman saying that we have to look at the French, the Russians, the Chinese, some of the neighbors of Iraq. That's where you have to look at, the individual member states. They happen to come together in the Security Council, and where the Security Council was divided, it doesn't work very well, and it was divided all the time on Iraq.

ROTH: All right. Congressman, you looked pretty angry on Capitol Hill there, about the United Nations being a paper tiger. You wrote a famous book, "The Angry Child." Your called Dr. Tim, you're a radio host there. What about the U.S. responsibility, which you really didn't answer in my earlier question?

MURPHY: I thing the United States has a responsibility to make sure it investigated all levels of this, including it's own role. Check out its votes.

But in this, I think we need to look at the French, the Russians, Chinese, countries that when we asked them for help, they had a choice either to use their diplomatic clout with Iraq to say cooperate with the weapons inspections, open up your country for these inspections and quit hiding or help us militarily.

What they did is they were, it appears, complicit in some of these aspects of what happens with agreeing to you veto power, taking the oil, and some other connections we still have to investigate more, of what was happening with military hardware. Exactly who was involved with the sale of these things? Was it Russia, French, Chinese, Belarus, whoever it was, some of this military hardware that came there too.

Overall, it is clear, the money that went to Saddam Hussein, the over $10 billion he received, helped him prop up a regime that was otherwise falling apart. Helped him use his military infrastructure, which back in the 1990's only had $7.8 million to use for weapons of mass destruction.

ROTH: Don't you get the feeling that people just want this story to go away, no matter what? Even in the U.S., Paris, everywhere, and move on with considering the problems in Iraq? Why is this story so important when there are a lot of scandals in Washington? I'm just asking?

MURPHY: Because right now people are also saying that we out to look towards European nations in the world whenever it comes to deciding American policy. We can't.

Every country decides their own policy, first and foremost, and the United Nations is a collection of countries coming together with their ambassadors there to represent their own interest. This is a time for America to remember that and remember that the French are interested in the French, as they should be, the Russians are into the Russians, as they should by, and the United States has to be first and foremost interested in protecting our interests.

LUCK: But the other thing we have to remember is not to throw the baby out with the bath water here. The only reason sanctions worked at all was because they were multilateral because they involved many countries.

(CROSSTALK)

LUCK: The only reason you had inspections is because you had a United Nations. The United States can't do this on its own.

MURPHY: But the French and the Russians are undermining. The French and Russians were deceiving us. They were making agreements with Saddam Hussein to undermine the inspections, to use their veto power.

You can't have inspections when you have other nations stand in the way of that. So this is really an fa‡ade. This is not a chorus of angels, the United Nations, nor is it a chorus of angels, the French, Russians, Chinese and Syrians in this. They have their own self-interest and it went to the highest bidder.

LUCK: But you have to remember -- but the U.N. inspectors, under UNSCOM, destroys more weapons of mass destruction than the United States did in the Gulf War.

MURPHY: That's great. I'm talking about the French, the Russians and the Chinese and other countries that were saying stay out of Iraq. They didn't want us to know what they were doing.

LUCK: Yes, but the problem may be the French and the Russians and the Chinese and the rest of the world, but don't confuse that with the United Nations potentially being extremely helpful and the need to try to bring countries on board.

(CROSSTALK)

LUCK : It's absolutely essential to get the job done.

MURPHY: I think it's important in this investigation to find out what the United Nations knew and who was involved in that. Certainly we want to have an opportunity for nations to describe and express their concerns with other nations. One needs the United Nations for that. And any time you have any sort of a governmental body, you have to make sure the people in it are operating honestly and ethically. And I think in this case you have a lot of questions about that.

ROTH: Well, Congressman Murphy, what should happen to people like Benon Sevan, the former head of the program, now accused of cashing in in this report, oil vouchers worth millions?

MURPHY: I think if that is found to be illegal and there is some world court that can hold him accountable for that, so it should be.

ROTH: Well, the United States doesn't want a world court, though. President Bush doesn't like the International Criminal Court.

MURPHY: Well, but as part of the United Nations, they can handle that as well.

It depends on whether the United Nations wants to be seen as an organization that operates in an ethical way.

ROTH: We have to leave it there. Congressman Tim Murphy, of Pennsylvania, thank you very much for appearing from Capitol Hill, on one of the congressional panels looking into Oil For Food. And Professor Ed Luck, at Columbia University. He's also been working with the United Nations over the years and is pretty much an expert on it. Thank you both.

The French ambassador called the charges against the former French interior minister listed in this report unacceptable. Syria said there are loopholes in any system. And the Russian ambassador, Andrei Denisov, well, he was saved by the British.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANDREI DENISOV, RUSSIAN AMB. TO U.N.: This is history. Let's focus on what is going on in Iraq currently.

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(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DUELFER: The analysts who were forced to make judgments about this were actually in a very poor position. They didn't have any ground truth. They spent a lot of time looking at computer screens and not a lot of time talking to Iraqis, not a lot of time walking around Iraqi plants and getting a feel for it.

I mean, for example, if someone associates a particular vehicle with a chemical weapons program, as was done, something called a (UNINTELLIGIBLE) vehicle. Well, if you spend much time in Iraq, you realize the Iraqis could be selling ice cream out of those vehicles.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROTH: The CIA's weapons survey leader Charles Duelfer, who used to be the deputy weapons inspector for the United Nations. He said in Washington this week American intelligence didn't have a good feel for what was on the ground or maybe in those mobile trucks on the ground in Iraq.

At the United Nations, we know there is smoke it the air, but when I want to know what's on the ground I call two of the United Nations best in the press corps. Colum Lynch, of the "Washington Post," and his office roommate, separated by me for strictly television purposes, Philippe Bolopion of Radio France Internationale.

Colum, Hans Blix, further vindication for him and the weapons inspectors. Can you first maybe give us your overall impression of the Duelfer report, which included weapons and Oil For Food.

COLUM LYNCH, "WASHINGTON POST": Well, it was another sort of nail in the coffin in terms of the Bush administration's sort of justification for the war. I mean, he really shredded this whole notion that the Iraqis had really made any great advances under U.N. inspections over the last 12 years in terms of developing their program, that there were no weapons stocked. This of course had been previously sort of mirrored the judgment of David Kay, who was Duelfer's predecessor.

But as you said, it sort of vindicated the world of the inspectors, and as you mentioned earlier, Duelfer was one of those inspectors and it sort of suggested that the work that they had been doing over the years had achieved enormous gains in eliminating Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program.

PHILIPPE BOLOPION, RADIO FRANCE INTERNATIONALE: But what's amazing, Colum, is that you saw that in the report, but what I read today in the press, it's more about the Oil For Food so-called scandal, and that's amazing to me.

I think some of the people in the administration are the biggest magicians ever. Here is one of the biggest lies that the U.N. Security Council has ever heard, the fact that Iraq had stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, anthrax, mobile laboratories, all these scary things, threats of mushroom clouds, and the news today is that, well, some bad French guy, bad Russian guy, bad Chinese guy may have had some illegal business in Iraq.

LYNCH: Yes, but one of the issues is that the basic findings of the report, that there were no weapons of mass destruction, have been reported in the press over the last couple of weeks. A lot of reporters were hearing details about what was in that report before it came out. So the concept.

(CROSSTALK)

BOLOPION: It's doesn't stick with them. That's what is amazing. It doesn't stick and you can look, the Bush administration is even saying today that this report is giving a lot of proof that they had good reason to go to war, and it's not embarrassing them.

LYNCH: Yes, but if you look at the main coverage in all the major papers in the country, the main focus was not the Oil For Food Program in the initial news stories. It was on the lack of -- the failure to identify weapons of mass destruction.

BOLOPION: For one day. For one day, Colum. Today the "New York Times" is.

(CROSSTALK)

LYNCH: If I can finish, Philippe. That has also been at the top of the debate -- the presidential debate. That's the issue that Bush and Kerry are continuing to debate every single day and that's.

ROTH: I think overall, Oil For Food is not going to be a big issue going up to November, but it is very easy for those that hate the United Nations or want to focus on the United Nations' problems, like the "New York Post" and other publications like that. Their headline was "U.N. Stooges Ripped Us Off" while the weapons findings was lower down.

BOLOPION: And what do you see today? You look at the "New York Times," the front page story, it's about Oil For Food. If you look at what is happening in the Congress, it's not investigations to know how could Colin Powell go to the United Nations and say such incredible accusations and they are wrong and what do we do about that.

ROTH: Because it's, like, already been discussed and the press is always -- we're looking for something new, and new might be did the U.N.'s Oil For Food man take oil vouchers and cash them in -- Colum.

LYNCH: And also, I think the notion that there is like a cabal of right-wingers that are trying to discredit the United Nations and are trying to use this as a way of doing that, the Oil For Food crisis, there's probably a lot -- there's a lot to say about that and there is probably an element of this that is true, but that is not a reason why reporters shouldn't be pursuing some of these elements. And there is a lot of new detail that comes out on the manipulation and abuse of the program, and that seems to me to be a fair target.

ROTH: France is saying it's asking for patience, right? Is that the mood down there? Are they investigating -- are they doing their own investigation?

BOLOPION: Not for patience. They are asking for clues or proof. That's the problem, Colum. These allegations are very serious and it's very important to investigation them, but if you look in the report, there is nothing to back them, and if you look in the report, the names of the American companies and the American individuals who are accused of doing the same, they are not even there. Only the other countries have public names put there with huge accusations and the American ones, for legal reasons, we cannot say.

LYNCH: I'm afraid I agree with you on that.

(CROSSTALK)

ROTH: On that, let's move on to terrorism. The Security Council didn't really discuss Oil For Food, I mean, that's old business as long as Paul Volcker is conducting his report. They did move on Friday, Philippe, a little bit, not defining what is a terrorist, but now it says, what? This resolution, all kind of killing is bad, but there is still a loophole in there that if you're a freedom fighter or a resistance fighter you still are OK.

BOLOPION: Typical U.N. stuff. It's not really saying it, but it starts to define it. The Arabs and the Pakistanis in the Security Council were very uncomfortable with giving a definition to terrorism that might include the Palestinians, who they think are struggling for their freedom and have a right to do so.

I think the United Nations Security Council is very ill-suited to deal with terrorism. Because it doesn't have a real definition. It doesn't have a policy. It doesn't have any real investigative force. So I think it should stay out of it as much as it can.

ROTH: The vote was 15-0, Pakistan and Algeria had reservations, obviously, regarding who could attack who.

Colum, final comment on terrorism in the United Nations Security Council?

LYNCH: I don't know. I don't know that the Security Council has been terribly effective at fighting terrorism, but I don't know that that necessarily leads to the conclusion that they shouldn't make an effort to try and deal with an issue that is an important threat to international peace and security.

The whole issue of the debate, I think Philippe is right, that essentially this fight on what constitutes a terrorist is going to be put off. This new Security Council resolution creates a committee that's going to explore these ideas and try to define who should be on a list of terrorists in the future and that's going to be, you know, if there are any sort of Middle East people, like Palestinian militant groups, they.

ROTH: And this is separate from the list they're keeping on al Qaeda, Taliban subjects, also.

LYNCH: Right. So if those groups come up for discussion, the groups like Algeria -- countries like Algeria and Pakistan, are going to resist the definition of those groups as terrorists, so I think that you're going to see this fight playing out for the next couple of years in the Security Council.

ROTH: All right. Well, we have to leave it there. The odd couple. They're office roommates but they agree to disagree at times. On the left of your screen is Philippe Bolopion of Radio France Internationale, and on the right is Colum Lynch, of the "Washington Post." We thank them both.

LYNCH: Thanks for having us.

BOLOPION: Thank you.

ROTH: How long does it take to recognize genocide? These people have three months. Secretary-General Kofi Annan at the United Nations this week appointed this international panel of legal experts to form the Darfur, Sudan Commission of Inquiry requested by the Security Council.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REPORTER: Any comment from St. Louis losing?

JOHN DANFORTH, U.S. AMB. TO U.N.: On what?

REPORTER: I heard St. Louis is behind today.

DANFORTH: They won 8 to 3.

REPORTER: Oh, they won?

DANFORTH: Of course. Yes. What do you expect. Yes. Well, it was a great day.

REPORTER: I wasn't watching the game.

DANFORTH: Very bad rumor.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROTH: There are a lot of things that can upset the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, but don't tell him incorrectly that his beloved St. Louis Cardinals baseball team has lost the opening game of the playoffs leading to the World Series.

Ambassador Danforth a big fan of the Cardinals, and they should beat the Los Angeles Dodgers, a team which plays at a lovely stadium famed for Dodger Dog Frankfurters.

Welcome back to DIPLOMATIC LICENSE. No, you're not watching the Food Channel.

Updating our United Nations dog story, remember those new bomb- sniffing dogs introduced to the media at the United Nations? There will be up to eight of them on patrol. However, sources say one of them left his own opinion, you might say, of the Security Council, inside the private consultation room.

Believe me, there are enough leaks coming from that room to begin with.

The U.S. secretary of state had a dog story of his own, which he explained in Atlanta last week. Colin Powell took a break from the U.N. General Assembly mayhem, strolling the streets, when he approached a New York institution.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

COLIN POWELL, U.S. SECY. OF STATE: I stopped on the corner of 62nd and Madison to get a hotdog at one of those great stands on the corner with that unique red onion mixture that you can only get on a New York hotdog. And so I'm standing there with the guy who owns the pushcart. He's an immigrant. Speaks no English. He looks at me. I'm not sure if he thought I was either Colin Powell or Amre Moussa, the head of the Arab League. I think he even said -- and he was jus standing on the corner, happy as can be, safe as can be, far away from wherever he came from.

But he was making his way in this world, in America. Where else in New York City, where else in America, where else in the world -- I should say only in New York City, and maybe Atlanta, can you come to this country, get yourself a hotdog stand and on a fall afternoon be standing on the corner of 62nd and Madison and sell a hotdog to the secretary of state to the United States of America.

I gave the guy a $1 tip, paid $2 for a $1 hotdog.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROTH: Here's another tip. Always look inside that hotdog.

And that's DIPLOMATIC LICENSE. I'm Richard Roth. Thanks for watching.

END

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