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DIPLOMATIC LICENSE

Current Events at the United Nations

Aired October 16, 2005 - 07:30:00   ET

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

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
RICHARD BOLTON, U.S. AMB. TO U.N.: We take our responsibilities in this regard very seriously because the five new elected members will be with us for two years.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I do believe very strongly that we have not turned the corner on preventing genocide from either happening or happening again, depending on your point of view, in Darfur.

ANGELINA JOLIE, U.N. GOODWILL AMB.: Refugees are humble, grateful, they're funny, they're spirited and they are loving people and families and I feel very, very fortunate to say that many of them are my friends.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LIZ NEISLOSS, CNN ANCHOR: Genocide, terrorism, earthquakes, a lot competing for the world's attention these days. Especially if you are one of the world's 19 million refugees.

Welcome to DIPLOMATIC LICENSE. I'm Liz Neisloss sitting in for Richard Roth.

One woman manages to rivet focus on the plight of refugees, Angelina Jolie. In just four years of work as a Goodwill Ambassador for the U.N. refugee agency, UNHCR, Jolie has become a powerful advocate for refugees and for fighting poverty.

This week Angelina Jolie was presented with the 2005 Global Humanitarian Action Award by the United Nations Association of the USA and the Business Council for the United Nations. She had recently been to Pakistan's Northwest Frontier visiting Afghan refugees, an area now devastated by the earthquake.

She sat down to talk with Richard, who asked her thoughts in the aftermath of the disaster.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

RICHARD ROTH, CNN HOST: You have met many U.N. fieldworkers, emergency aid people. What works in situations like this? Though many times you're not at the natural disasters, but you've seen the aftermath when sometimes the spotlight goes away.

JOLIE: Well, it's coordination, but I think that's, you know, whether there is a disaster or not. I think just in general aid relief is only really at its best when people are coordinating with each other, which I think is something they're trying to figure out more at the United Nations, more just around the world. Everybody is being more unified in our efforts.

But I think certainly also really finding -- following through. And I think that's something like you said. When the spotlight goes away, there are situations like Afghanistan, where there are things that are going on everyday. Liberia had its elections today. There are things that are going on every single day, and yet when we have big things happen we're very aware of the things in the headlines and there are all these other things that are just constantly sometimes unraveling, and then it's only when they completely explode into chaos do we notice them. So it is just trying to keep the spotlight on many different things and trying to watch out for many different people.

ROTH: What is more satisfying to you: winning the UNA or the USA Global Humanitarian Award or the Oscar Best Supporting Actress Award for "Girl Interrupted?"

JOLIE: Well, winning an award for anything humanitarian is very strange, because it's a strange thing to win an award for, because it's something you love to do and it's an award -- as corny as it many sound, it is a reward in itself and it's a great thing to do, but certainly that. That kind of -- to be acknowledged for doing something good is something I can leave my children and say this is what I did with my life, as opposed to I made a movie and, you know, it was very emotional and -- so, yes, of course, it's something that's more important to me, something like tonight.

ROTH: Does this award and others you've received ease the anxieties? I've read many interviews where you've talked about, you were worried about how you would be perceived as an adult woman, that you were a punk kid.

JOLIE: I'm still a punk kid. I've got my tatoos covered.

ROTH: What a shame.

But you were very worried growing up how you would be perceived and that this perhaps -- is this why you're still doing it? I mean, when is enough? Or is this now -- when you go up to the stage, is this old hat now?

JOLIE: Well, a night like tonight, to be honest, is really -- I am here in essence to bring attention to US -- to the United Nations Association for the United States. I think it's a great program and that's really why I'm here. It's kind of -- it's not really about me getting an award. It's really about their programs and global classroom and bringing attention to them. That's why I decided to come.

So, but, yes, any time there is -- it all feels very official, these nights, but, you know, I would prefer to be out there just doing stuff and hanging out with people in another part of the world, and I do feel more comfortable there, and I'll always feel uncomfortable in the middle of New York or Washington, all dressed up, and I'll always feel like a bit like a punk kid, yes.

ROTH: What is the feeling when you are on the road, away from the cameras, when I see you sitting huddled in a small village with six people in some very far away place with mountains in the back of you. I mean, do you feel like a different person there?

JOLIE: I feel like the person I should be there. I feel really connected to what really matters and I feel very grounded. I've learned a lot from traveling and a lot from those people and certainly they're -- unfortunately, because they have to be, they're so focused on what's really important, and they have such an amazing way of speaking and raising their children.

ROTH: Do you deserve this award?

JOLIE: Nobody deserves an award for doing humanitarian work, because it really is something we should all just be doing, and that's it.

ROTH: What happens when you lean over at an entertainment event, which I know you don't really go to those things, but when you do talk to people and say, "Let me tell you about the Millennium Development Goals."

JOLIE: I have done that on set and I've had a few people, yeah, I drive a few people crazy.

ROTH: And it's kind of strange to talk about global poverty when you're in a tuxedo, but you know that the world nations really could not resolve differences on the 60th anniversary of the United Nations on a variety of issues, on the Millennium Development Goals, on an action plan for human rights. I mean, isn't that almost pathetic?

JOLIE: Yes, it is pathetic, it absolutely is. I think we all know what the -- you know, it's recently, I was -- I was in Washington. I was discussing AIDS and poverty and all these big issues and you have so many people sitting around and trying to figure out what should we do, what little thing -- should we do this, or should we do this first. Should we do this part of it, or that part of it. It's like, should we give them food or water. Should we vaccinate or should we give them medicine. And these are these big issues. We have the ability, we need to just do it. Just do it. Just stop talking about it and pass a little bill that covers a part of it and do it.

And this is what I've just been learning about, and I'm just frustrated by it because I just see a lot of people discussing and going around in circles, but I don't see huge action being done, and that's what needs to be done or it just simply, it's a drop in the bucket.

ROTH: Is the United Nations properly managed? You see more in the field than the senior people, including Kofi Annan and others, at the headquarters. And I'm not looking for you to have your U.N. pass revoked here, but what's going on in the field?

JOLIE: I've seen -- I've had the good fortune of seeing -- I have worked with UNHCR and they are the most in the field of any U.N. agency, and I have seen a lot of great people. So, I mean, I -- there are corrupt people in every organization. There are some, you know, certainly like I said, the United Nations is not perfect by any means, but I know that UNHCR, for example, is not very well funded for the amount of people and the amount of situations they take on. They've taken on refugees for years. Now they're taking on internally displaced persons. A very small percent of their budget is actually from the United Nations. And they have it's something like one staff per 2,400 refugees. That's huge. It's unfathomable. How is that possible.

So you go to these places and you see 10 staff members, and they're exhausted and they're trying to figure out, and they're trying to maintain a camp of hundreds of thousands of people and organize food for them, and organize health and organize those things. And then they've got people crossing borders with wounds and trying to talk to governments about allowing them access.

So, I've seen a lot of hard work being done by a lot of good people. And so, yes, there are certainly problems with the United Nations. Absolutely. I want to see it fixed and I want to see it better, like most people who actually -- we really support these things. But at the same time, I wish almost somebody could write a list of all the things the United Nations does accomplish in a day that is positive, because there are a lot of people fed, there are a lot of people kept alive, a lot of people protected. There are a lot of good things that are happening.

ROTH: You said in an interview that you don't want to be too political, that you want to get more things accomplished maybe behind the scenes, be efficient that way. But when is it time to get angry enough for Angelina Jolie to hold a press conference on the steps on First Avenue in front of the United Nations and say I was n Darfur a year ago, in Sudan, and I saw horrible things, and this week the U.N. genocide investigator said it's still going on and the Security Council --

JOLIE: Well, this is -- but what is the Security Council? You know, what is -- the United Nations can move depending on the different members states and how much they're willing to move. So, you know, we can talk to the United Nations, but the United Nations is -- you know, who are the different member states that are maybe not moving. The United Nations is the one that is saying it is continuing. They are the ones that are reporting. They're the ones that wanted me to go there three different times, and I went to Chad earlier. They're the ones that are there helping all of the refugees that are crossing at Chad.

They're the ones that are in there now even though -- because they're not peacemakers is what I have learned about the United Nations. They're peacekeepers and they're aid relief, but they're not peacemakers. And when there is something -- when you see people -- I saw field officers in tears in Darfur because they simply cannot get to the people they need to be able to constantly get to. When you have people that are running over landmines, you have people that are -- you know, there are serious security concerns, that must -- something else must happen for them to be able to move.

So if the people are saying we need them to bring peace to Darfur, ask the peacemakers. Ask the policymakers. Ask the governments that are able to put pressure on the other governments.

ROTH: Final questions here. Biggest success story of all your trips, briefly, and the worst of all the 20 countries you've been to. What are you most proud of, that you affected change, and where are you saying, boy, they really let me down?

JOLIE: What I am most proud of? I suppose my first trip was to Sierra Leone and that was four years ago, when it was still in civil war. And I was back there recently and we're pushing with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and with civil society, we're pushing the president to try to make adjustments to make sure it doesn't happen again and make a better future for the country and I'm seeing some positive change and that's pretty amazing.

And the most difficult thing, I suppose, I guess it is those forgotten emergencies that you just -- that have been going on for 20 years or more, that just keep going on, and you just wonder -- you've seen people -- Burma. Burma is very frustrating. The Burmese refugees in Thailand.

ROTH: You don't like saying Myanmar, the United Nations official pronunciation, do you?

JOLIE: No. I have a problem with that. I know I should. Myanmar. Yeah. They've talked to me about that.

ROTH: I wasn't asking you to say it.

JOLIE: But I do, yes.

ROTH: Burma. OK. And finally, I think you also mentioned, you have two adopted children, Cambodia and Ethiopia.

JOLIE: Yes.

ROTH: And I think you said -- or maybe you were joking -- about creating your own little U.N. family.

JOLIE: My own little United Nations.

ROTH: So, of course, after you adopt a U.N. television correspondent into the family, you have 189 countries left. Where is this U.N. headquarters or home going to be?

JOLIE: I don't know, but it's growing. I don't know.

ROTH: Angelina Jolie, thank you very much, and congratulations on winning the Global Humanitarian Award for the UNA of the USA.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

NEISLOSS: Few can resist a bit of Hollywood glamour. Take the vice chairman of the United Nations Association of the U.S., John Whitehead. He's a man of many careers: former investment banker, deputy secretary of state and now leading the charge to redevelop lower Manhattan after 9/11. And that's where Whitehead works with actor Robert De Niro. It seems that one day John was talking to his friend Bobby and, well, maybe a new career is born.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN WHITEHEAD, UNA OF USA CHAIR: De Niro said to me one day a few months ago, "John, you've done a great many different things in your life, but there are two things you've never done before. One is to be in a movie and the other is to be a priest. I'm going to give you," he said, "a chance to do both in my next film."

So in August, Angelina and I, or Angie, as she has asked me to call her, spent two long days together filming the scenes I am in, unless I end up on the cutting room floor, which is fairly likely.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NICHOLAS CAGE, ACTOR: Though I hesitate to tell you your job, I must point out that when shipped separately the weapons and the aircraft both comply with the current Interpol trade standards and practices.

ETHAN HAWKE, ACTOR: We both know that is an obscene bureaucratic loophole that is going to be closed any day.

CAGE: But it's not closed, and while certain people might interpret this cargo as suspicious, thank God we live in a world where suspicion alone does not constitute a crime, where men like you respect the rule of law.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

NEISLOSS: An Interpol agent hot on the heels of a gun runner, that's "Lord of War," now in movie theatres in many countries. Nicholas Cage plays an arms dealer trying to keep ahead of his rivals, and Ethan Hawke as the persistent Interpol agent.

But that's just the movies, or is it. What's a real Interpol agent do? Why not go right to the top?

Joining me now, Secretary-General of Interpol Ronald Noble, who is now serving his second five-year term at the head of the organization.

Welcome, Mr. Noble.

What does your agency do? There is a lot of mystique that Hollywood has created. Tell us, is this what the agent is really like?

RONALD NOBLE, INTERPOL: Well, in fact, the Interpol agent is, in the United States a U.S. agent, in Germany a German agent and in France a French agent. What we are is an organization of 184 countries. Each country has national police officers that wear the Interpol badge when they're working international cases.

So unfortunately we don't travel the world armed and dangerous arresting people. We send information around the world and ask the police in each country to do the arresting for us.

NEISLOSS: So what are the crimes that you are most concerned with these days? We assume that terrorism has really moved to the forefront.

NOBLE: Right. Terrorism is one of our number one priorities. Many people in the United States don't remember this, but in 1993, the first World Trade Center bombing was committed by a guy named Ramzi Yousef, who entered the United States carrying a stolen passport from Iraq.

So Interpol says if we can help the United States protect its borders and other countries protect its borders from terrorists carrying false documents, that will help keep people safer. So we have a database of over 8 million stolen passport numbers.

Since September 11, we've generated a list of suspected terrorists that grew from 2,000 to 8,000 and we help fugitives be arrested all around the world.

NEISLOSS: But a lot of things that people worry about now with borders seeming to dissolve are things that are very elusive, nuclear materials that can be carried in a briefcase, bioterrorism. How can Interpol help with these things that you would assume can barely go detected?

NOBLE: What can go detected are the people who engage in these activities. So one thing, we know they use stolen or fraudulent travel documents, so we have a database on that. We know they use names, they have photographs, they have fingerprints. We exchange that information as well.

I'll give you one example. Following the Madrid bombings of March 11, there was a guy stopped for a simple immigrations check in Serbia. It turns out he was a Moroccan carrying false documents. When his fingerprints came into Interpol, we sent them around the world and they were matched against fingerprints lifted in Spain. So although you might not be able to detect the material when people are carrying it, if the person is wanted, if he has fingerprints or if his photograph or name is on file, we have a way of tracking it.

NEISLOSS: But you have to have a lot of cooperation to do that. You have 184 member countries.

NOBLE: Right.

NEISLOSS: So you're a lot like the United Nations. And you say in your mission statement the organization is politically neutral. How does that help or hinder your work, because certainly criminals are not politically neutral, and there is usually, definitely, clearly a bad guy in a process. How does that harm you?

NOBLE: Well, we start with the fact that each country in the world has crimes for which they seek the arrest of people. And so they send those arrest requests to Interpol. We send them around the world and help have those people arrested.

We don't get involved in political cases. We don't get involved in cases involving the military. But when someone is wanted for arrest anywhere in the world, Interpol helps to track the person down. We work with the United Nations on cases, although we're different from the United Nations. The United Nations is investigating the assassination of the former prime minister of Lebanon, and Interpol is helping with that investigation. But Interpol is an organization of police officers that help identify, help locate and help apprehend fugitives around the world.

Last year we helped apprehend over 3,000 fugitives around the world, so we're practical in our orientation, but we don't just worry about terrorism, we don't just worry about organized crime or drug trafficking. We also worry about crimes that know no borders. If I think about the sex exploitation of children over the Internet, that's a crime where Interpol helps to identify children who might have been filmed in Ghana and had the film sent around the world via the Internet.

So practically speaking, we are a very competent international law enforcement organization that, unlike the United Nations, doesn't allow politics to prevent us from doing a lot, but like the United Nations has the support of over 184 member countries.

NEISLOSS: But you are working on a very politically sensitive case if you are, as you mentioned, working in Lebanon on the investigation into the assassination of Rafik Hariri. What is Interpol's role in this?

NOBLE: Well, if a former prime minister has been assassinated, it has to have some kind of political overtones. But when the Security Council identifies an independent body to investigate the case, as it has, what Interpol does is we say we will help you investigate by sending you an analyst, sending you police investigators, and helping you use our databases to see whether the names, the phone numbers, the bank accounts you come across are accounts we have information for.

So, it's a politically based investigation because a former politician was assassinated, but the investigation itself is being driven by the rule of law, not by politics and that's where Interpol comes into play.

NEISLOSS: Now, you're working more closely with the United Nations, increasingly with the United Nations. The United Nations has come up with its own watch list. They have a sanctions committee that puts together a list of suspects for Taliban and al Qaeda. There have been a lot of problems with the names on the list, misspellings, misidentified individuals. What can Interpol do to make this a more viable list, to make this list actually mean something?

NOBLE: What we've done is, we've taken the names and the information that the United Nations has and we've compared that with information in our database. So where the United Nations might give us a name of a person, without fingerprints, without photographs, we're able to take that information and build a real profile, build a real human being around the name. So you have a photograph, we have fingerprints, we have actual wanted person notices for them as well, so that the likelihood of a person being falsely stopped because he has the same name but no other identifying information that is similar is greatly reduced.

And that's what the Security Council has asked Interpol to do more of. They've asked Interpol to convert their lists, their names, into real wanted persons notices. And that's something we're doing now and having success at doing.

NEISLOSS: OK. And finally, can you mention who is the top on your most wanted list at this point? Are you --

NOBLE: He's the top of everyone's most wanted list, Osama bin Laden.

NEISLOSS: OK. Good luck with that one.

NOBLE: OK.

NEISLOSS: Thank you, Ronald Noble.

NOBLE: Thank you very much.

NEISLOSS: The United Nations has its own terror threats to worry about. U.N. offices in Geneva recently went to a heightened state of alert after a reported credible security threat. And the main U.N. post in New York has been on higher security levels since the September 11 attacks.

The new man in charge of the renovation projection for the United Nations, Louis Royder (ph), says headquarters is taking security seriously.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LOUIS ROYDER (ph), U.N.: We have accelerated the installation of certain security devices to the tune of $25 or $30 million to the facility as it is now since we feel that given events specifically in New York City and specifically against the United Nations elsewhere, that security is important to the United Nations. So we have made investments in this site right now as we speak of $25 to $30 million in security projects.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

NEISLOSS: 191 members of the United Nations cast their ballots for new members of the powerful Security Council. Five seats up for grabs every two years.

Welcome back to DIPLOMATIC LICENSE.

Years of lobbying by countries goes into getting elected. The new members start their term in January. And the winners are: the Republic of Congo, Ghana, Peru, Qatar and Slovakia.

There was only one region with a contested race for a seat, but with lobbying the diplomats said continued right up to the voting, Peru beat out Nicaragua.

Once the celebrating stops, those members take on a portfolio of crises, including a problem that seems to have fallen from many screens, the deepening trouble in Darfur. This week warnings about escalating violence from a U.N. official that genocide hasn't been prevented on Darfur or, depending on your view, hasn't been stopped.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JUAN MENDEZ, U.N.: There hasn't been any disarmament of the Janjaweed, for example, that the Security Council called to happen months and months ago. And there hasn't been even a plan to disarm the Janjaweed. In fact, no one talks about the Janjaweed anymore and whether they can be called something or other, I don't have any doubt in my mind that a fighting force that constitutes a militia that is very highly organized and that has ties to the government of Sudan is still very much in operation.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

NEISLOSS: And that's it for this week's DIPLOMATIC LICENSE. Thanks for watching.

END

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