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DIPLOMATIC LICENSE
U.N. and Iraqi Elections; 60th Anniversary of Liberation of Auschwitz
Aired January 28, 2005 - 21:00:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Elections are the way to go, and intimidating and killing voters or electoral workers or candidates is absolutely wrong.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: How was such calculated evil, such bottomless and pointless cruelty possible? Had creation gone mad? Had God covered his face?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: She was here to brief you on the technical preparations for the election and that she did not intend to criticize the U.S. military's profile.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
RICHARD ROTH, HOST: There is so much coverage of people going to vote around the world, enthusiastic citizens from Detroit to Sydney running to the polls, that I feel left out I'm not an Iraqi citizen.
Welcome to DIPLOMATIC LICENSE. I'm Richard Roth.
I have some company on the program at least. To discuss the United Nations and the Iraq elections, Oil For Food, the United Nations and the Holocaust, Sudan and the Security Council. Look at the faces, please, of Colum Lynch, of the "Washington Post" and Beni Avni, of Israeli radio and the "New York Sun" newspaper.
The United Nations has been advising the Iraqis on how to run an election, fast. Security is the main concern.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CARINA PERELLI, U.N. ELECTIONS CHIEF: Iraqi citizens are faced with a very tough position, as before then the Timorese voters and the Salvadorian voters and the Afghan voters, of basically having to confront their fears and confront their hopes and decide by themselves whether they consider this election is important enough, is valid enough, is legitimate enough, you know, to risk their lives to go and vote.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ROTH: Discussion of the technical details by U.N. political leaders was going fine the other day, but it seems you can't go a week without a United Nations official saying something that is perceived as a knock against the United Nations' largest and most powerful member, the United States.
Informed by an Associated Press reporter just back from Iraq that U.S. soldiers were still passing out posters and leaflets about the election, which media have caught on tape, Carina Perelli, the U.N. elections director, said she thought the U.S. troops were over-enthusiastic, that they shouldn't be doing that.
Colum, what's your take on this remark, which drew the ire of those who like to criticize the United Nations?
COLUM LYNCH, "WASHINGTON POST": Well, Carina Perelli is an election specialist. She's a professional. And so she's very much focused on -- you know, she's been doing these elections for years all over the place, and she sees a foreign military force in this country participating in the election process as something that kind of violates her notion of how you run these things.
And, you know, from the U.S. military point of view, they see lots of people in Iraq who don't really understand what's going on, that there is an election, and that the electoral officials are kind of unable and afraid to go out and distribute information to get people out to vote, so they said, OK, we'll do it.
And I think it shows sort or a difference of philosophy and, you know, it just happened that she basically.
BENI AVNI, "NEW YORK SUN": Well, she herself admitted in fact that they didn't disseminate the information correctly and as someone who does like to every once in awhile criticize the United Nations, as you say, I would say this shows more than anything else the hubris of the United Nations. With 22 U.N. people on the ground, they criticize what 150,000 American soldiers who give life and limb for that election do.
LYNCH: Yes, but I think hubris is kind of a stretch.
As I said, I mean, this is someone who kind of looks very narrowly at the electoral issues, how you do these things properly, and that's probably based on experience in lots of places in the world.
AVNI: How you do these things as a technocrat, as a bureaucrat. I like Carina Perelli very much.
LYNCH: Yes, exactly...
AVNI: . but that's what she means.
LYNCH: . I mean, perhaps she doesn't recognize the political implications. She makes this remark on a day when the Americans lost 31 troops. We ran a story this week saying that an American GI was killed trying to disseminate information about the election.
AVNI: Well, elections is about politics.
ROTH: But this is the issue. The United Nations is every week, whether it's Jan Egeland the day after the tsunami saying rich countries like the United States are cheap about overall humanitarian aid, a remark which actually I think drew millions. They are still -- they should really -- shouldn't they be getting together everybody who is going to go before the cameras and say listen, let's be real or watch yourself.
Obviously I'm not saying muzzle people but.
AVNI: That betrays a deeper thing here, that the United States and the United Nations have huge differences in their approach to the world, and the United Nations would love now to be on the good side of the United States, after the election, after they bet the farm on one candidate and lost. They would love to get on the good side of the United States, but every once in awhile the truth, which is they don't like the way the United States is doing things, comes up.
ROTH: But should the U.S. troops be there, thus affecting the way some people might view the candidates or the election? Why should the soldiers be telling people -- if they don't want to vote, they don't want to vote.
AVNI: Actually, Richard, you had that great bite from the Iraqi ambassador to the United Nations, who basically said that they're not there just to say, OK, vote for Allawi or vote for this guy or vote for the other guy. They're there just to help disseminate information, which if Carina Perelli really was there, if her people really were there, other than 22 people, that's what the United Nations would have done.
But the United Nations is not there. The United Nations is scared of being there.
LYNCH: I agree that there is a cultural difference between the United Nations and the United States, but I mean, to sort of suggest that it's some sort of anti-Americanism is a bit of a stretch.
I mean, I'm sure that this is based on, you know, the notion of the experience in elections in Latin America and East Timor.
AVNI: It's not about anti-Americanism. It's anti-American.
(CROSSTALK)
ROTH: All right. While Iraq this week looks ahead, several investigations in the United States continue to look behind. The Oil For Food scandal. Who did it and who helped?
This week, we learned U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has been formally questioned by Paul Volcker and his U.N. authorized Oil For Food investigation team.
The third meeting was Tuesday. Other sessions were in November and December, though they were not revealed at the time.
Volcker exited from the Annan interview a little surprised to be faced with people with questions of their own.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PAUL VOLCKER, OIL FOR FOOD INVESTIGATOR: Our report now and through the middle of the year focuses on administration within the United Nations -- United Nations responsibilities.
ROTH: You're not going to get into details, but what is the importance of interviewing someone like the secretary-general in this report? Today and the other days.
VOLCKER: I don't know how -- it's important to interview a lot of people. That's.
ROTH: What was his attitude?
VOLCKER: I'm not going to comment. All I can tell you is wait for the report to come out.
(CROSSTALK)
ROTH: It's cold out! Come back!
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ROTH: The Volcker-Annan session comes very close to the release of the first report by the U.N. improved inquiry into Oil For Food. That could be the week of February 7. It's been delayed, the Volcker people say to give those who are named a chance to respond.
Beni, tell us what's in this report.
AVNI: Well, that's, as they say, the $64 billion question. Exactly.
But the Volcker people are pretty much like a vault. It's very difficult to get anything out of them. But the most interesting development in this case, I think, has to do with last week's testimony in court, in Manhattan.
ROTH: Samir Vincent.
AVNI: . Samir Vincent.
ROTH: . who we talked about on the show last week.
AVNI: . who basically threw the whole thing back into the period before Oil For Food, to '95 - '96, when actually they started laying the foundation for Oil For Food under another secretary-general, which was Boutros Boutros-Ghali.
ROTH: And there is a link by some to his nephew, who.
AVNI: Who is the owner -- who runs that Middle Eastern petroleum company, Panamanian-based, which is the clearing house for lots of those vouchers which we heard so much about.
ROTH: Again, nothing proven -- nothing yet. I mean, interesting that Volcker, the first statement -- we talked about it last week, after Samir Vincent became the first to plead guilty and be convicted in a sense, that they hadn't talked to him, and then suddenly this report is about come out.
Colum, you're Oil For Food droppings?
LYNCH: Well, I think Beni is right in the sense that the Samir admission of guilt is going to be quite interesting. He's not cooperating with U.S. authorities and if he was able to influence, if he was able to fuse money from the Iraqi regime to corrupt U.N. or even U.S. officials, then that is going to be very interesting in the kind of months ahead as they pursue that investigation.
But so far, Ashcroft, the Justice Department, hasn't been able to sort of provide any detailed evidence of what that wrongdoing might be.
AVNI: Maybe one interesting aspect here that I would like to add is, there is big competition among all of those who investigate this. I counted like eight or nine investigations, in Congress, Ashcroft, Volcker - - they're all competing to actually define and shape the final verdict on Oil For Food, whether it was scandal, whether it wasn't a scandal -- and I think that Volcker, because of the Samir Vincent, is a little behind.
LYNCH: Yes, and he's been begging the Americans to turn over Samir Vincent so he can question him. He'd like to get some of that information.
It's true. I mean, one of the reasons why Volcker has been so reluctant to turn over documentation to Congress is that he wants to come up with the, you know, the big sort of report at the end of the day, to demonstrate that he is working, that he is earning the millions of dollars that they are being paid to conduct this investigation.
ROTH: All right. That's the Oil For Food look.
This week the United Nations looked further back in history a few days ago, the 60th anniversary of the Auschwitz concentration camp liberation. The United Nations had never held such a commemoration of a historical event before. Hard to believe since you hear ambassador after analyst after host say the United Nations was founded on the ashes of World War II.
Yet on the big day, as you look around the room, when the Assembly stood for a minute of silence, not every country was present. The no-shows missed something they may not have known. The U.N.'s former peacekeeping authority, Sir Brian Urquhart, was also one of the first British soldiers to reach one of the camps.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SIR BRIAN URQUHART, FMR. U.N. PEACEKEEPER: At Belsen, the dead and dying were everywhere. Cholera, typhus, small pox, measles, dysentery were rife, not to mention general starvation. Two walls of the children's playground, if you could call it that, consisted of neatly packed human corpses.
That is one of the problems of preventing genocide. For ordinary people, it simply unimaginable until it actually happens and they can see it for themselves. And, of course, by that time it's too late to prevent it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ROTH: Sir Brian Urquhart, the father of U.N. peacekeeping as he has been known, and of course when he was doing peacekeeping, two countries -- that was the deal -- two countries were tired of fighting, they invited the United Nations, no problem. No it's all changed. Rwanda, these other places, implode from within.
Your comment on the General Assembly Hall, which isn't always packed anyway, no matter who is there, but particularly it seemed a little empty considering the nature of the event.
AVNI: This event was 60 years in the making, and the one word that was missing there was the other creature that came out of World War II, and that was the state of Israel. It was the subcontext to everything that went down. That's why the no-shows. That's why lots of people actually opposed even conducting this event. And that's why not everybody supported it.
ROTH: Colum?
LYNCH: I agree. I mean, I think a lot of countries -- I mean, what was really notable was that Jordan was the only Arab country that spoke before the Assembly and there was sort of an understanding, a message sent to many of the countries before this event, particularly in the Arab world, that they didn't want this to sort of deteriorate into a kind of bitter discussion about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and so many of the Arab leaders or representatives just didn't show up to the event.
ROTH: All right, very briefly, Colum, final point here, on Sudan. The United States in a bit of a dilemma. What to do with war crime suspects from Darfur, Sudan. United States opposes the International Criminal Court. European Union and others think that's where they should be tried.
LYNCH: Yes, the Americans now are looking at the idea of setting up a whole new court, even though in the past they haven't been crazy about setting up new independent, expensive courts, but now they're looking to setup one which would be headed by the African Union and with the United Nations helping.
It would be stationed in Tanzania, where the Rwanda court is already based, and the idea would be the Americans having a difficult time winning this discussion over the International Criminal Court versus and independent court, so they're hoping to sort of change the nature of the debate, have the Africans come forward and say we want to do this ourselves.
ROTH: Two seconds, Beni.
AVNI: The easiest thing to do about Sudan is for the Americans to declare a no-fly zone over Western Sudan and forget about this whole U.N. business. It's not going to work.
ROTH: Beni Avni, "New York Sun," Israeli radio, thank you. Colum Lynch, "Washington Post," U.N. correspondent, inside our CNN U.N. office. Thank you both.
LYNCH: Thanks for having me.
ROTH: Some U.S. congressmen also think there should be sanctions against the government of Sudan. A delegation that went to the region is urging international action. To add clout to their case, they brought along actor Don Cheadle, who is nominated for a Best Actor Oscar award for his role in a movie about the genocide in Rwanda.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DON CHEADLE, ACTOR: People saw the film and said, "Wow, that was terrible, what happened. I wish I had known." Now you know. Please make it your jobs in this room to make sure everyone knows, because I do believe that we are good, and I do believe that we are powerful, and collectively we can change the world, and I have to believe that, and I hope that we can put our collective efforts together to address this real evil that exists today.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The world wants to be reminded again about man's incredible capacity for inhumanity against his fellow man and the odious scourge of the crime of genocide. (UNINTELLIGIBLE) in Rwanda in 1994, where over a period of three months over 1 million people were slaughtered.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ROTH: Very few countries could speak about genocide within their own borders during the U.N.'s commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death camps, but Rwanda's ambassador certainly could.
Yes, the death toll of as much as 1 million people, far from the 6 million at least killed in the World War II camps, but Rwanda joined a select group of nations that could only ask later why did the world not come to the rescue.
In the gallery the day the United Nations honored the liberators and survivors, a 78-year-old woman who was 15 years old when she was taken to Auschwitz. Josephine Prins says her father never thought the Nazis would take over.
Prins said the United Nations even came too late. Everybody was dead.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JOSEPHINE PRINS, AUSCHWITZ SURVIVOR: Every week there were transports of more than 1,000 people. So one of those weeks, in the beginning of January 1944, we were taken in the cattle cars. I had a little piece of bread. And my brother, in the cattle car, because the cattle car was full of people without facilities, without food, without anything, and we went three days and three nights without water or anything. But I didn't want to eat the piece of bread, because I thought if we go to Auschwitz, I have the bread for my parents. I thought I would see them there. How did I know that they were did?
And Mien Heller (ph) was there, with his shiny boots, and we went this way, that way, and they would say, "Go on the trucks, then you don't have to walk." But when you went to the trucks, the first thing that happened, you went into the gas chambers.
So finally, we were undressed and we went to a table where girls were sitting, and they took our arms and they hammered with needles in our arm. We didn't know what a tattoo was. I was a 16-year-old girl. What did I know. It was painful, and I smudged it. You can still see, because it was still open before, it smudged. And I have 74934 and my sister has 74933.
And then from that moment on we were a number and a piece of nothing, and they threw us some dirty clothes and shoes which didn't fit. We tried to stay alive and warm and food, but something else, what was life good for. My parents were dead. So who cares.
So we would at night come in and take the potatoes and the corn and we would divide it with some of our people so we had something more to eat. And then all of the clothes from the people which were murdered, we had to fold them, and then they were sent to Germany, that the people gave packages of clothes because the Americans and the English were bombarding the German people and they had nothing anymore, and they didn't know that they were clothes from living people who were in two minutes dead.
They said that they never knew that we were being persecuted. They saw it with their own eyes. There were the villagers. How can you say you didn't know, if you saw the fires every day. And why didn't they bomb these camps. Nothing was being done for us. We never, never, ever had anything done for us. We were not even allowed after the war to say that we had suffered.
My whole family was murdered in Auschwitz, so I mean, I am not full of hatred, but I am full of turmoil (ph), because I think every day of what we have lost.
My cousin, Heche (ph), committed suicide last year. He was also in the camps. He was very sick. And since he was in the camps, he never came out 100 percent anymore. It haunted her. It haunted us all. Every day, and I told you that, every morning, every day.
And we haven't learned one darned thing. We talk, but we don't do anything. Look in Africa. But we live in the 21st century and we still haven't learned. (UNINTELLIGIBLE), my father always said. History repeats itself. We don't learn anything.
I cope with it by talking and letting the world know what happened, and that we never will kill each other just for a belief.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Please, please, as the cameras start to go away, sustain your interest and commitment to rebuilding, even as this terrible disaster leaves the headlines.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ROTH: The U.N. Development Chief Mark Malloch Brown telling the world, don't forget your promises to help those wiped out by the tsunami.
The United Nations noted the passing of one month since the catastrophe. The tsunami sparked worldwide action, appeals, telethons, concerts, huge money rolling in, but there are other humanitarian disasters that have not been quelled. Many of those emergencies are in Africa and the U.N.'s humanitarian director says for the most part predictable disasters fail to be matched by U.N. members with a predictable series of investments in the peacekeeping missions and the needs of the people.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JAN EGELAND, U.N. HUMANITARIAN CHIEF: In Liberia, in Cote D'Ivoire and Burundi, for example, where there are important, big, expensive peacekeeping missions, we have less than half of the funds we need for a minimum humanitarian program and we have less than half of what we need to reintegrate the expatriates.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ROTH: Elsewhere, a few years ago DIPLOMATIC LICENSE interviewed a filmmaker who captured the terror in the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez. Hundreds of women killed. Victims families saying the government did nothing to search for the killers.
This week, a U.N. committee dealing with discrimination against women said Mexico is guilty of grave and systematic violations of the rights of women for mishandling the investigations.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MARIA REGINA TAVARES DA SILVA, WOMEN'S RIGHTS ADVOCATE: It's an environment where gender-based discrimination is widespread and systematic and where violence against women seems to be regarded as a normal or acceptable fact.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ROTH: In response, Mexico said the murders constitute a breach of women's human rights, but the origin of the deaths lies in, quote, "entrenched cultural patterns of discrimination."
The government noted staffing and money problems, but vowed to recommit to find out who was responsible for the murders.
The last time we saw former Bosnia Ambassador to the United Nations Mohammed Sacirbey, he was headed home on the Staten Island Ferry after release on bail from a U.S. jail. Sacirbey this week learned that his house-arrest form of freedom may end soon. A judge ruled he can be extradited to Bosnia to face charges he stole hundreds of thousands of dollars while representing his country.
Sacirbey has denied the charges and said, again, the average American would be stunned to learn what can happen in America.
That's DIPLOMATIC LICENSE. I'm Richard Roth, in New York. Stay with CNN for the latest on the Iraq elections, and thanks for watching.
END
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