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DIPLOMATIC LICENSE

Current Events at the United Nations

Aired January 21, 2005 - 21:00:00   ET

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

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You don't have to read them all tonight.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is what stands behind the overview report.

KOFI ANNAN, U.N. SECY.-GEN.: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) that destroyed 6 million Jews and others in those camps is one that still threatens all of us today.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Richard, I can't resist the Iraq prediction, and my prediction again is bad for Iraq.

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RICHARD ROTH, CNN ANCHOR: Well, how many of you have kept your resolution to lose weight in the new year? Or to be nicer to people? Or maybe to be more wicked to people.

Welcome to DIPLOMATIC LICENSE. I'm Richard Roth.

You probably don't remember, but five years ago, when world leaders gathered for the millennium, they made some promises too. To cut extreme poverty in half by 2015, reduce hunger and stop the spread of AIDS. And guess what? Overwhelmingly, they are not exactly keeping their word so far.

For three years, the United Nations has been running the Millennium Project to brainstorm how to seal the deal. The rich helping the poor, does it work? What's up with these loft U.N. goals.

Joining us are two people donating their time to discuss the issue. Jeffrey Sachs has many titles, but the main one for the purpose of this program: he's the special advisor to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan on what's known as the Millennium Development Goals. This week, as you saw at the top of the program, Mr. Sax delivered a 3,000 page report to the U.N. chief, three years in the making.

Also with us, from London, is Steve Tibbett, head of policy for the group called Action Aid. There are likes and dislikes in the report from his side -- well, it is 3,000 pages long.

Jeff Sachs, what have you found in probing these Millennium Development Goals for a three year period?

JEFFREY SACHS, U.N. ADVISOR: Well, the main point is that a lot of the world is far off track. Like you said, promises were made but the commitments weren't followed through.

On the other hand, we found that these goals can still be met, and it's no simple matter. It's not a joke of whether we meet them or not. This is life and death for millions of people every year. People are dying of extreme poverty. We can help get them out of extreme poverty. That was the commitment that was made in 2,000. It's the commitment that really needs to be followed through.

ROTH: Jeff Sachs, I will list the goal. Please give me a quick thumbnail description on how U.N. countries are doing.

1. Eradicate poverty and hunger.

SACHS: Well, poverty is down in a lot of Asia, but it is up in Africa. Same with hunger.

ROTH: 2. Achieve universal primary education -- boys and girls completing a full course of primary schooling.

SACHS: Still well over 100 million, perhaps over 150 million to 200 million children, not in school.

ROTH: 3. Promote gender equality and empower women.

SACHS: Progress in some parts of the world, but still large gaps between boys and girls attendance in school, for example, in a number of parts of the developing world.

ROTH: 4. Reducing child mortality -- reduce by 2/3 the mortality rate among children under five.

SACHS: Here's the tragedy. In Africa you have millions and millions of children dying needlessly of preventable and treatable diseases.

ROTH: 5. Improve maternal health.

SACHS: Again, rates of maternal death -- that is dying in childbirth -- 100 times or more higher than in the rich world is what you find in the poorest countries.

ROTH: There is a bit of a theme here.

6. Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases.

SACHS: You got it. These pandemics are still out of control, even though they could be controlled.

ROTH: 7. Ensure environmental sustainability.

SACHS: Well, we know we're off track on that one. Just about the whole world. Again, things could be done. We took decisions to do them, we haven't followed through.

ROTH: You were trying to reduce by half the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water.

7. And develop a global partnership for development.

SACHS: Well, that's the whole point of the report. If we had such a partnership, all the first seven goals could actually be achieved.

ROTH: Steve Tibbett, in London, what do you think of this report and the attempt at those goals?

STEVE TIBBETT, ACTION AID: Well, I think -- first of all, let me say, I think the report takes us a long way, and I think what's really useful is that Professor Sachs has hopefully exploded some of the myths around aid and how much aid we give and whether it can be absorbed and whether we need to wait for perfect governments in order to deliver that aid.

You know, hopefully he's put some of those myths to bed, and he's also said that what we need is debt relief for poor countries, and debt relief should be based on these goals, human goals, and not some sort of economic theory. So I think that's all a big plus, a big kick.

On the minus side, from our point of view, we think he puts some of the existing structures that stand in the way of the developing world getting out of poverty, like trade liberalization, and he really puts that at the center of his plan, and I don't think that's particularly helpful from our point of view, and it would have been far better if he had been a big more nuanced about trade and not said that just more trade liberalization would be a good thing for poor countries.

ROTH: So is there too much, do you think, of a good thing for corporations -- Jeff.

SACHS: Well, no. We actually say that the core of what is needed is investment. That's why we call it investing in development. And I think Action Aid and we agree, and all of the groups in Make Poverty History, a wonderful campaign, agree that what we have to do is get the tools of productivity and survival to the poorest of the poor, and that's really the theme of the report.

ROTH: I'm sure you've heard this, "Washington Post" editorial page, a lot of people saying it's too utopian, not practical enough -- good try, but how are you going to reduce poverty by 2015 in a lot of these countries.

SACHS: Well, Steve, is this utopian? We don't think so. We think this is very practical and I think a lot of people around the world think it's practical.

ROTH: Steve?

TIBBETT: I think the practical side is really good and really helpful. And all I would say, really, is that for Make Poverty History, you know, this campaign that we're involved in here in the United Kingdom, what we're looking for is the whole package. You know, it's aid and it's debt, but it's also trade and it's also looking at the way those are delivered -- what are the conditions attached. You know, are we going to force countries to privatize their public services in order to get aid? You know, what about corporations? What's the role they have to play?

And I think, again, the report is a little bit, you know, running to catch up on the issue. It talks about corporate philanthropy and corporate social responsibility. That's all fine, but what we want to see now is real regulation on multinationals who often go into these countries and you know, profit take, basically, from local markets.

So I think it was a great step forward on the aid front, but we need (AUDIO GAP) that whole model that's sitting behind the development agenda at the moment.

ROTH: Do you have a specific example, Jeff, of a country and what it should do and how it can act and speed up its progress?

SACHS: Absolutely. The whole point is practical, so we're working in Kenya, we're working in Ethiopia, we're working in Ghana.

What we find is those countries could double or triple their food production just by enabling farmers to have nutrients for their soil. The children could be saved by malaria bed nets. People that are suffering from AIDS could be put on treatment. The problem is, these countries are impoverished. They need our help. The help has not been coming. It was promised, but it has not been forthcoming in the amounts necessary.

Now, Europe is starting, because of Action Aid and others, with their wonderful campaigns, the aid is starting to increase, but what we're saying is get real, follow through on the commitments, make these investments, and then these goals can really be achieved.

ROTH: The United States, is it the stingiest, as Jan Egelund, the U.N. humanitarian chief put it? I mean, you can lay out the numbers there, developing aid in all other major countries that's been going down.

SACHS: Well, the United States has the lowest ratio of official development assistance to national income of any of the donor countries right now. That really has to go up.

We show the calculations here, that the United States, together with the other countries, must increase the official development assistance if these goals are going to be achieved, but it would be so easy to do, because we're talking about just 20-cents, 30-cents more per hundred dollars in the next couple of years and then rising so that every country would be spending 70-cents out of $100. That's what they promised to do, and if you do that, you meet the goals.

ROTH: Steve Tibbett, (UNINTELLIGIBLE) in your country there, Gordon Brown, talking about a Marshal Plan for Africa. What is your sense on the way forward and has this tsunami wave of outpouring and support turned things around, do you think, for the future on developmental assistance?

TIBBETT: Well, I think the tsunami shows that people really care, but I think, you know, Gordon Brown's plans, as ambitious as they may be, I think they fall some ways short of what we're looking for.

I mean, basically his plan is to frontload aid, and there is a real benefit to get from frontloading aid, because you can get the health and the education benefits now rather than in the future, but what he's not talking about is any new money at the moment.

ROTH: All right, we have to leave it there. It's an important issue that we don't do enough of on the program. We're going to continue to follow it as the world leaders will gather in September here in New York to discuss the Millennium Development Goals, MDGs, I don't like that name.

Jeff Sachs, special advisor to Secretary-General Annan on the Millennium Development Goals project. He's also at Columbia University. He has a whole list of titles. We last had him on the show here from Monterey, Mexico. It's good to have him here in person. Steve Tibbett of Action Aid, policy chief, thank you very much for appearing from London on DIPLOMATIC LICENSE.

There are other U.N. men on missions. Steven Lewis (ph) is the secretary-general's special AIDS envoy. He appreciates the tsunami response from the world, nearly $6 billion in three weeks pledged, but noted this week that that's the same amount offered over three years to fight HIV/AIDS in Africa.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I don't think it's invidious to point out that there are 6 million people on the plant now, today, at the time of this press conference, dying of AIDS. 4,100,000 of them are on the continent of Africa. Obviously, the money is desperate and imperative for South and Southeast Asia, but necessarily one has to ask the question about the balance in the world and the need for the industrial countries to respond to a tragedy that unfolds incrementally but methodically and horrifically on the African continent.

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BILL CLINTON, FMR. U.S. PRESIDENT: I am delighted to be here with my long-time friend Carol Bellamy, whom as she said, the first time I met her, she never would have dreamed I could become president, and I didn't really dream she'd become the head of UNICEF.

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ROTH: Well, President Bill Clinton is not in the White House anymore, and on May 1 Carol Bellamy will not be leading UNICEF, completing her second five year term.

This week, Bellamy's successor was announced. It's the outgoing U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Ann Veneman. Development and food security have been part of her job in Washington. But what about the always vexing social issues you run into involving the United Nations and the United States, such as abortion and population control?

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ANN VENEMAN, UNICEF PRESIDENT-ELECT: I don't come with any agenda with regard to those or any other social issues. I come with an agenda of helping children, particularly in the areas of education, of health and to address the issues of hunger and malnutrition. I don't believe that these issues are relevant to the missions of UNICEF.

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ROTH: Kofi Annan says Carol Bellamy leaves an inspiring legacy, but now the secretary-general gets a cabinet member of the Bush administration at a time when he's not on the best of terms with some in Washington.

Of course, one of the reasons Mr. Annan is not the golden boy he once was down the road in Washington is Oil For Food, the big humanitarian exchange deal which left a lot of room for corruption. This week, a man by the name of Samir Vincent became the first person to be accused and pronounced guilty in connection with the U.N.-Iraqi imbroglio.

The Justice Department, through Attorney General Ashcroft, said Vincent pleaded guilty to four criminal counts, including failing to register as an agent of a foreign government. Vincent says he was trying to help his country, but it also looks like he got a lot of money to try to sway some people in Washington and the United Nations.

The United Nations authorized investigation, led by Paul Volcker, issues an interim Oil For Food report in the next couple of weeks.

Monday morning at the United Nations, a remembrance of a day in history: the liberation of Auschwitz and the death camps run by Nazi Germany in World War II 60 years ago. Survivor Ellie Wiesel will speak, along with Germany's foreign minister.

The General Assembly hall has not been a place Israel and many Jews have considered home. In the 1970s, the assembly declared Zionism as racism. Israel is subject to constant resolutions while other global deadlocks are ignored.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It is true that I have often referred to the automatic immoral majority against Israel at the General Assembly. That is something which we are very frustrated with. And in all of my meetings with my colleagues, we try to change it, and we do feel there is a change. We do feel that what we have seen in this process, which will culminate in the meeting on Monday, is the formation of a moral majority.

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ROTH: Kofi Annan says the evil that killed 6 million Jews and others, still with us today.

Former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell last year called what's happening in Sudan a genocide and the Security Council still can't come together to have a robust response. U.S. Ambassador Danforth played a role in forging a North-South Sudan peace deal and hopes that might give a boost to the Darfur dispute. This was also John Danforth's final week as he stepped down, replacement still unknown.

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JOHN DANFORTH, FMR. U.S. AMB. TO U.N.: I am going -- you know what Eisenhower said when somebody said what are you going to do when you retire? He said, "I've got a farm in Gettysburg with a front porch and there's a rocking chair on the front porch, and I'm going to go and sit in my rocking chair, and after about six months, I'm going to start rocking."

I think that's a very good approach.

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DANFORTH: Well, it will have to be the Cardinals in six, right? The press, sometimes -- I mean, the media can just be, just inordinately mean and nasty. And I'm shocked at that kind of a question. It's just absolutely shocking.

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ROTH: A bold but bad prediction. That's always risky at the United Nations. Before he left, then U.S. Ambassador John Danforth didn't like being reminded by me that he picked his hometown baseball St. Louis Cardinals to win the World Series over Boston.

Welcome back to DIPLOMATIC LICENSE.

We usually do our new year's predictions with our crack team of press prognosticators at the end of the old year. That was not possible with the tsunami catastrophe, so we taped our picks December 31.

We usher in now James Bone of the "Times of London" and Afsane Bassir- Pour, now doing her forecasting and living from Geneva, Switzerland, but we have her here in New York, where she can face the music.

Before we hear from the seers, let's look back at what James, Afsane and myself predicted for what would happen in the year just passed, 2004.

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JAMES BONE, "TIMES OF LONDON": The first, although rather morbid, prediction is that one leader of the following three countries will be assassinated: Pakistan, Afghanistan or Saudi Arabia.

My second prediction is there will be U.S. military intervention in Haiti. And my third prediction is that Osama bin Laden will be found alive, like Saddam Hussein, in an October surprise, before the election.

AFSANE BASSIR-POUR, "LE MONDE": We'll see more democracy in Iran. I think Iran will cooperate on its nuclear program. And I hate to say that the domino effect that the neo-conservatives are talking about seems to be going pretty well. I think it will continue maybe to other countries.

On the Middle East, I think, as I said before, the civil society will play a big role in bringing peace to the Middle East. Bin Laden will be dead, is dead, that's my prediction. I have to add that one. Bin Laden, dead.

ROTH: Can I get my predictions in? When does your flight leave?

Here are my predictions: Number one, after 50 years of trouble, and I've said this before, peace deal in Cyprus. I can hear James' groaning. Two, following a dispute over a terrorism related issue, the United States withdraws its ambassador from France. Two of the following people will be in jail when 2004 ends: Kobe Bryant, Martha Stewart, Michael Jackson, Scott Peterson, Radovan Karadzic, Osama bin Laden.

The winner of the 2004 U.S. presidential election is George Bush, who defeats General Wesley Clark 55 percent to 43 percent. Clark's running mate is John Kerry.

Major transportation problems at the Athens' Olympics. A country pulls out after its athletes fail to make the starting gate. And the best picture -- I was going to say "Lord of the Rings," but this time it's going to be "Mystic River."

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Well, audience, how did we do? I think I hear some boos out there and something is being aimed at the set right now. When I pick a "Lord of the Rings" movie to win the Oscar, it doesn't. And then when I go off it, the third film in the series wins.

More on my predictions. It looked good, but once again no Cyprus deal. Last time I look ahead on that divided island. Two of my six people are in jail, sitting there. Martha Stewart and California killer Scott Peterson. No recall of a U.S. ambassador in France, cest la vie. Apologies to the Athens Olympics' organizations. And you will notice President Bush did win reelection, and I at least had John Kerry on the ticket. This is when he was in the low digits last January 1.

Afsane, someone who looked and sounded like Osama bin Laden appeared especially toward the end of 2004. Is he dead in your mind?

BASSIR-POUR: I kind of wish. But you know, I predict that.

ROTH: What about your other.

BASSIR-POUR: I was just going to say that I predict whatever I predict is going to be wrong. Year after year.

ROTH: You predicted democracy in Iran. Do you think that happened while the nuclear fight went on?

BASSIR-POUR: No, no. No democracy in Iran.

ROTH: And civil society.

BASSIR-POUR: Although -- yes, the Middle East, I think I was right, because there is a beginning of a movement.

ROTH: No other domino effect, though, on the neo-conservatives, nothing there.

BASSIR-POUR: No, no.

ROTH: James, what about your picks. Those three men not assassinated. Bin Laden, no surprise. But we kind of expected that as the new year dawned that there would be military intervention, we'll give you that, on Haiti.

BONE: I'm sure that I expected it, but it wasn't clear that you expected it, Richard. You obviously respected it in retrospect, which might be called in President Bush's language retro-expecting.

ROTH: Didn't you always say never late but early?

BONE: Never wrong, just early, is my.

ROTH: There you go. Let's move on to the predictions for 2005. We'll start with Afsane Bassir-Pour.

BASSIR-POUR: My first prediction is on Iraq. I think we will see, unfortunately, the emergence with a vengeance of Ahmed Chalabi. I wouldn't be surprised at all to see him manipulating a lot of Shiites in Iraq.

My second prediction is that we will see a new role, a very important role, for Paul Wolfowitz, and he might even replace Donald Rumsfeld, which will be very good for the Middle East, Israeli-Palestinian, conflict. And I will repeat my last year's prediction. I do think there will be some movement in that region.

My other prediction is about the World Trade Organization. I think the new director-general who is to be chosen the end of May will be the Frenchman Pascal Lamy, who was European Commissioner. And I think, you know, maybe again wishful thinking, but maybe the United Nations will start thinking about leaving New York. I mean, they keep asking them to leave New York, why not.

ROTH: James Bone.

BONE: Richard, I can't resist an Iraq prediction, and my prediction again is bad for Iraq, that there will be a huge battle for Kirkuk as the Kurds try to reclaim that city, and there will be large numbers of dead toward the end of the year as the Kurds move in and try to force out the Arabs who are resettled there under Saddam.

My second prediction is that China will become increasingly involved in civil wars in Africa in the search for oil and we will be having reports of military advisors, Chinese military advisors, working with African governments to suppress rebel movements in resource rich countries.

And my third prediction is that there will be an attempt to let off a dirty bomb in Times Square, but it will be intercepted at the port in New Jersey as it comes in on a container ship from Somalia.

ROTH: Thank you very much, James.

Here are my picks for 2005: Mullah Omar captured. A former U.S. president died. President Bush must choose a new vice president. Israel and the Palestinians on the verge of a historic peace agreement. United States considers withdrawing from Iraq in December, leaving skeleton force. Hollywood's best picture of the year is called "Sideways;" Jamie Fox wins Best Actor for the movie "Ray." U.N. ambassador arrested, charged in prostitution and sex ring. Two airplanes collide over major city; it's not terrorism.

Those are the picks for 2005. Afsane, I think you also had an Oscar pick?

BASSIR-POUR: Yes, for me I think the Oscar for Best Actor will go to Don Cheadle for "Hotel Rwanda." I really hope he wins. He was excellent.

ROTH: OK. Those are the predictions for 2005. Thank you Afsane and James.

That is DIPLOMATIC LICENSE for this week. Thanks for watching.

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