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DIPLOMATIC LICENSE

Current Events at the United Nations

Aired August 19, 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)
FRED ECKHARD, FMR. U.N. SPOKESMAN: Ladies and gentlemen, the secretary-general of the United Nations.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

RICHARD ROTH, CNN ANCHOR: He did more than serve as the moderator at press conferences for the United Nations secretary-general. Fred Eckhard was the spokesman for Kofi Annan for seven-and-a-half years and take it from a U.N.-based correspondent, Fred did a lot more; helping journalist cut through the incurable maze of international plotting in New York and elsewhere.

But Fred Eckhard retired at the halfway point of this year, a year- and-a half before the end of Mr. Annan's term. Instead of taking questions in the U.N. pressroom, Fred has kindly crossed Manhattan to answer queries in our home.

Fred, when you announced your retirement, I think you said it was sort of a sense of relief, that the secretary-general, in moving ahead, had, you know, said it is OK you're going. Why did you say that? Why was it a relief?

ECKHARD: I traveled with him through the tsunami area. It was an exhausting trip --

ROTH: I was on it.

ECKHARD: -- and I never felt so tired at the end of that trip, and that's when I decided I was going to offer him my resignation.

Many people said he wouldn't accept it, but I think he had a sense of my fatigue as well, and when he did I just felt enormously relieved.

ROTH: It's always been a little tricky. You're the U.N. spokesman, but you really don't speak for the 191 countries of the United Nations. And many press people come into the room and start asking you why is Japan doing this to China, or whatever, and you calmly always say, please --

ECKHARD: Ask them.

ROTH: And they say why isn't the Security Council not doing something on Sudan.

ECKHARD: We have to be very careful to not speak for the Security Council.

What they do, of course, is the bread and butter, of course, of our daily briefings. So it's very important that we can report for them, describe what they are doing, and so on, but we can't speak for them. Each president -- it rotates every month -- has a press officer, and the ambassador himself or herself tends to be their own spokesperson.

ROTH: Yes, many countries don't even have a press person. That's why a lot of journalists at the United Nations rushed to you for any insight or comment.

But speaking of those briefings, as a spokesman, you were comfortable enough in the position to throw in a few extra comments to spice up the usual replies.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REPORTER: Will the United Nations guarantee that if any staff ask critical questions, that their rights and future employment prospects are going to be absolutely guaranteed not harmed by anything they might ask in that session?

ECKHARD: This is not a gulag. It's the United Nations, Louie.

REPORTER: Does he plan to do any PR, per se, beyond that, to talk to real people other than just people on the inside and other than just heads of state, if you will, that this place needs the reform that he is proposing?

ECKHARD: We don't do PR. If we try, we don't do it very well.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROTH: What about the United Nations and your briefings? Through all of this scandal and other things, did you have to adjust tactics at all, as the U.N. image, especially in the United States, took a pounding?

ECKHARD: The nature of the press corps has changed over time and there is now a more highly politicized atmosphere in the briefing room. And that I find difficult to deal with.

We had a rather very genteel relationship before. You would ask a good, straightforward question, I would try to give you a good, straightforward answer. Now there are people who ask questions that are meant to embarrass or to politically weaken the organization, and when I hear one of those questions, my first reaction is to drop my level of respect for the person asking the question, and it kind of lowers, for me, the quality of the entire briefing. But I can't change it. I've got to deal with it.

ROTH: The other day, you said -- recently you said, "That's an ideological question," I think, "I'm not going to answer that." And you even bypassed a question, which I'd never seen you do, in the seven-and-a- half years, which I had never seen you do. You just moved to someone else.

ECKHARD: That, I think, was a mistake. I think it's important for a spokesman always to show respect for the journalists asking the question, even if you don't have it, and I apologized to that journalist after the briefing.

But it's a different time now, and I don't think it's bad for the United Nations to be in the center of politics the way it is. I think it's a sign of positive growth. But we're now in the big leagues and it gets rough up here, and we're taking our knocks. The secretary-general is taking his knocks. He's not a politician.

So we are also adjusting and adapting to this new, more politicized, more hostile environment. We've got to work in it. It's there. We're in the middle of it.

ROTH: Well, let's take a look at what you have faced in the last year-and-a-half. It seemed like Watergate and you were White House spokesman Ron Ziegler.

The spokesman was under siege as Kofi Annan and son Kojo became embroiled in the Oil For Food investigation.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REPORTER: Have you ever talked to his son directly about this or in the past or after this latest --

ECKHARD: His communications with his son, I'm afraid, we have to leave private in this case. Of course he's --

REPORTER: But this is not a private -- this is a public matter.

ECKHARD: Of course, yes, but you can't blame the father for the sins of the son, if there are sins of the son.

REPORTER: I'm not blaming him. I'm just saying --

ECKHARD: Let Mr. Volcker decide if anyone has committed this sin or has broken the law here. And then we'll know.

REPORTER: But the secretary-general was himself on the record twice I believe in this building --

ECKHARD: You want to drag the son into the father's business, and the father's business. It is now in the hands of Mr. Volcker.

REPORTER: But, Fred, as he is saying, Kofi Annan said --

ECKHARD: You're not going to get anything more out of me on this subject. This is a matter --

REPORTER: But for the record -- for the record, the only thing that we have is a statement from the secretary-general, something in which he affirms something which we've now learned is not true.

ECKHARD: And I have acknowledged the discrepancy between what we said before, which we said in good faith on the basis of what Cotecna told us in writing, and I cannot explain the discrepancy, but the discrepancy is known to Mr. Volcker and we will have to hear from Mr. Volcker what he makes of it. But I can't explain it and neither can the secretary-general.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROTH: How do you feel watching that?

ECKHARD: Good old times, I guess.

ROTH: I guess a big question a lot of people had, did Kofi Annan kind of leave you out to dry and hang out in those briefings with information that you had to revise regarding his relationships with the son and what he knew and just in general as this scandal, whenever it went, unfolded?

ECKHARD: We tried to protect his privacy. I mean, I don't want to ask him about how many times he's spoken to his son and where and what they said and all the rest. We were both surprised sometimes by some of the things that were revealed. He certainly was about his son's relations with Cotecna over such a long time and the amount of money that the son had earned over that period of time.

ROTH: But did it hurt that the secretary-general just never really understood the media going forward or was that a good thing, that he was not playing to the cameras?

ECKHARD: Well, you just judge that. He's a pretty straightforward honest and decent guy. He's not a politician. And there were times when consultants came in and said let's brighten up his presentations and get him to say this and that, and I said, you know, he is who he is, and people now have gotten to know what to expect from him and how he speaks, and they actually came to trust him considerably over the first seven years so this --

ROTH: What happened? Nobel Prize winner and then --

ECKHARD: Well, it's a difference between the first and the second term. Perez de Cuellar had a huge difference between his first and his second term. Nothing happened in the first and the second you had the end of the Cold War.

For Kofi Annan, it was the invasion of Iraq which really unsettled the Security Council, disrupted international relations among the world's major powers. It still hasn't totally settled down. So he got sucked into that.

ROTH: Final memory, and specific great high moment for you in the seven-and-a-half years with the secretary-general?

ECKHARD: You mentioned the Nobel Peace Prize. I got up at 4:00 in the morning. I went up to his residence and I had the Norwegian broadcasting calling me asking for a reaction. I said I'm not going to give you a reaction until it's official.

So I was then inside the residence. The secretary-general was there, dressed casually, his wife, one or two others, and the Norwegian broadcasting guy called me again. He said, listen, they're announcing it now, and I could hear Norwegian in the background. I heard Kofi Annan. And he said, "It's Kofi Annan and the United Nations share the prize."

So I turned to the secretary-general and I told him. I was so proud of him, I wanted to hug him. And I went like this and he went like that and I said, "My God, it's the secretary-general, I can't do that," and I wish I had.

ROTH: He leaves without a hug.

Fred Eckhard, spokesman for Kofi Annan and the secretary-general. Well appreciated by the journalists, I think, at the United Nations, even during tough times. Thanks, Fred, a steady viewer of DIPLOMATIC LICENSE. Enjoy your retirement.

ECKHARD: Thank you very much.

ROTH: One of the final accomplishments for Fred was the arranging of a reunion of former United Nations spokespeople, ranging far back to the early years of the institution. And we heard former CBS television U.N. correspondent Richard C. Hottelet sing Fred's praises, along with his former boss.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RICHARD C. HOTTELET, FMR. CBS CORRESPONDENT: You have been well-served by a superb spokesman, a man who has that illusive but indispensable quality for a man of his job, the respect of the people he deals with.

KOFI ANNAN, U.N. SECRETARY-GENERAL: I agree with that. Although sometimes I think he takes too much from them, they beat him up. But he takes it with good grace.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JAN ELIASSON, U.N. GENERAL ASSEMBLY PRESIDENT: It's also good to be back in New York. Life in the United Nations is like a drug in the veins.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROTH: That's how the incoming president of the General Assembly described returning to the United Nations, Jan Eliasson, former humanitarian chief and Sweden's ambassador to Washington may be asking for some drugs, maybe a sleeping pill, as he tries to navigate the complicated U.N. reform issue in September.

When you're talking about drugs in the United Nations, there is only one man, and he joins us now, visiting New York from his Vienna post. He's Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

Welcome, Mr. Maria Costa. How are you?

ANTONIO MARIA COSTA, U.N. OFFICE ON DRUGS AND CRIME: Thank you. Very well indeed. Thank you.

ROTH: All right. You know, in your last world global drug report, you said that an estimated 185 million people, 3 percent of the global population, are drug users. What is the latest report say?

MARIA COSTA: Well, if you look at the raw numbers, of course they may have gone up. They have gone up to 200 million, but there is a distortion with the numbers in the way you are using it.

The definition which has been used in the report is someone taking drugs once in the past 12 months, which is not really a manifestation of addiction. If you look at hardcore indeed abuse, then we are talking about 22 to 25 million people worldwide, 0.3 percent of the population, a very low percentage indeed.

ROTH: Viewers may want to know, what do you do in this global fight against drugs? They've seen neighborhoods where the problem hasn't necessarily been solved and all of these intergovernmental agency -- what's your role?

MARIA COSTA: Our role is to assist governments in controlling both the demand and the supply. If we look at supply, we are talking about a few countries, first of all and foremost Afghanistan.

Major efforts are underway and indeed in the report which will be issued in September we are likely going to show a reduction in the cultivation.

ROTH: What is your biggest problem, and you've got to have many, but what country, what region?

MARIA COSTA: Afghanistan, for opium. Colombia, Peru and Bolivia for cocaine. Morocco for marijuana.

ROTH: And is it organized crime? Is there a link between these agencies and some of the crises that we face on the globe today?

MARIA COSTA: Yes, indeed. There is organized crime behind all of these situations, but I would go even one step backward and indeed represent that at least in some of the countries I mentioned the fact that the government structure is very week. We have that manifestation obviously in Afghanistan, we have it in Bolivia, we have it in Peru. Indeed, organized crime can prosper only where the government is not able to cope with enforcing law and order.

ROTH: You briefed the Security Council in late June about Afghanistan specifically. So has the U.S. presence, going after the Taliban and saying it's time for the war on drugs, has that made a difference at all?

MARIA COSTA: Well, the U.S. presence is, of course, meant to stabilize the country and fight insurgency, but we have been claiming, and I would say with very good reasons, that the insurgents in Afghanistan are partly funded by the opium trade. And, therefore, we believe that further measures have to be undertaken to fight the opium cultivation and trafficking so as to cut the grass underneath the terrorists.

ROTH: In Afghanistan and elsewhere, what is the link between terrorism and drug trafficking?

MARIA COSTA: Like in other places, like, for example, in Colombia, where you have insurgency which is directly involved in the cultivation and involved in the trafficking, in Afghanistan you have a couple of links between terrorism and the drug economy.

First of all, as the government gets stronger and measures are undertaken to eradicate the cultivations, some of the farmers are moving their cultivation in areas where they get protection from insurgents, from organized crime, but especially insurgents.

Point number two, in order to export the narcotics, the Afghan mafia has to go through different checkpoints, especially along the borders between Afghanistan and Pakistan. And we know that the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, well, it's populated by permanent Taliban settlements, and as the convoys, the trafficker's convoys, go through these territories, they're charged a fee, sort of a transit fee, which may be very low, a few percentage points, 10, 12 percent, but when you talk about cargoes globally, a couple of billion dollars, you've got a lot of money.

ROTH: In late June, what did your agency say about the link between economic inequality in Africa and crime?

MARIA COSTA: We published an interesting report, the first of this sort, trying to represent a problem which has been underestimated or perhaps not considered at all until recently in Africa, namely that underdeveloped instability conflicts to a large extent are not only related to the poverty due to lack of infrastructure, schools, education, but also very much to uncivil behaviors, crime, corruption, trafficking of human beings, trafficking of narcotics, indeed money laundering and so forth.

And as a consequence, we felt that by shedding light on these uncivil behaviors and representing them as something that has to be controlled, we are making a contribution to the development of Africa.

ROTH: In late June, how did you report that -- what was the key from Laos, once the third-largest opium producer in the world, cut by two- thirds? What was the reason for success, briefly, on that country?

MARIA COSTA: Well, I may have good news for you. We may very well within a few months -- and this is breaking news story for CNN -- in a few months we may certify Laos as being drug free. Of course there has been some rather decisive measures taken by the government and we all recognize the difficulty of a country which is indeed not necessarily complying with democratic principals, but also with some support for farmers, we are advocating additional loans, not only credit but also grants, to Laos to help develop forms of alternative livelihood in the countryside.

All of this has conspired positively for the success story of Laos in terms of counter-narcotics.

ROTH: OK. Thank you very much, Antonio Maria Costa, the executive director of the United Nations drug control fighting agency based in Vienna. Thank you for stopping by in New York for us.

MARIA COSTA: Thank you very much. It's a pleasure.

ROTH: Afghans are preparing to go to the polls in September for provincial elections, but the massive drug problem there doesn't help the fledgling democracy.

Nancy Powell, U.S. Assistant Secretary for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, gives her take on the Afghan problem.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NANCY POWELL, U.S. ASST. SECY.: Poppy cultivation, drug processing and trafficking can be expected to continue until the government can extent its authority throughout the country and until rural poverty levels can be reduced. Political stability and assistance by the donor community over many years will be required to help the Afghan government succeed.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ROTH: Welcome back to DIPLOMATIC LICENSE. Sorry to interrupt. You were about to send us an email. Here's the address for your friends in the audience to catch up. Please comment on the program or the weather in your town at Diplomatic.License@CNN.com. Once again, that's Diplomatic.License@CNN.com.

It takes a lot of courage to sit in the studio reading a teleprompter. Courage to persevere through studio crews and interns. But for real courage, behold the winners of the 2004 International Women's Media Foundation Courage in Journalism Awards. Reporters covering Namibia, Paraguay and Algeria were honored by their peers. It was not your standard ladies-who-lunch event in Manhattan.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The women of courage that you will meet in a few minutes know very well what it means to face threats and violence in order to report the news.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Gwen Lister (ph) is a very courageous journalist from Namibia who started a couple of her own papers that had a large role in bringing down apartheid in South Africa.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I think in a sense I'm very proud that I've managed to sustain what I've been doing, because there were many times when I thought that I wouldn't make it or I thought that the threats and intimidation, which actually forced me to stop doing what I was doing. I think courage is a very relative term. Often people say to me, you're terribly courageous. You have risked bullets. You have risked death. I mean, I would be petrified to drive in Los Angeles, and I'm not a very happy flier.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Mabel Renfield (ph) is a journalist from Paraguay who has done an enormous amount in her country to expose corruption in what is known as one of the top five corrupt countries in the world.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through translator): Maybe if I could tell you about my fears while waking up every morning, then I could also tell you about my sorrows.

It is very hard to do any type of journalism. They still want us to cover weddings, birthdays, health issues, education issues. We still have a problem covering important issues or dangerous issues.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Selene McClenseny (ph), which, of course, is not her real name because she writes under a penname, because her real name is on a death list put together by the (UNINTELLIGIBLE).

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through translator): I've always had a bit of a rebellious side to me. The sort of Mother Teresa dimension. I wanted to befriend the lost causes.

As a journalist, I am under two laws at the same time, the law that applies to journalism but also the law that applies to women and family. This is the situation of the woman journalist today in Algeria.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I think there is opportunity. I just hope young women really realize that it didn't just happen by osmosis and because some nice guy said it was OK, that many women worked very hard, sacrificed very much, to prove that we can do the job as well as anybody else.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ROTH: More on the winners. Gwen Lister (ph), from Namibia, survived a kidnapping in 1988. Mabel Renfield (ph), of Paraguay, had her 11-year- old daughter nearly kidnapped in May of 2003. And the Algerian journalist with a fictional name remains on the armed Islamic group's death list. Ten of the 22 journalist on that list have been killed.

That's DIPLOMATIC LICENSE. I'm Richard Roth, in New York. Thanks for watching.

END

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