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DIPLOMATIC LICENSE

Current Events at the United Nations

Aired November 18, 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 FEMALE: I left my son, my father, my sister, my uncle, my aunt (INAUDIBLE) and, of course, their families, too.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They also know very well what it means to face threats and violence in the name of press freedom.

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RICHARD ROTH, CNN ANCHOR: There is a new film out about the United Nations. No, this isn't "The Interpreter," which is already out on DVD, the thriller with Sean Penn and Nicole Kidman.

Welcome to DIPLOMATIC LICENSE. I'm Richard Roth.

This new film is opening in limited release in select major U.S. cities and it's more of a small budget independent documentary. It's called "Broken Promises," narrated by actor Ron Silver. The film says the United Nations has failed its founding goals.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So, the idea was that the main victorious powers in World War II would continue to work together after the war through the United Nations to keep the peace, but this turned out to be a stunning lack of foresight, because the USSR, which rather than being a policeman, was the main criminal in the world scene after World War II.

RON SILVER, NARRATOR (voice-over): Just a year after its founding, Winston Churchill issued a warning. He saw the Soviet Union and its aggressiveness in Eastern Europe as a threat. Churchill wondered how a world body devoted to peace could include a totalitarian state as a Security Council member.

WINSTON CHURCHILL, STATESMAN: We must make sure that its work is fruitful, that it is a reality and not a sham, that it is a true temple of peace in which the shields of many nations can someday be hung up and not merely a cockpit in the Tower of Babel.

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ROTH: Well, we'll do some debating and babbling now on DIPLOMATIC LICENSE about this film.

Joining me from Washington is the man who spearheaded the production, David Bossie, co-producer, president of Citizens United and Citizens United Foundation, a conservative grassroots organization. And with me here in the studio in New York, David Shorr of the Stanley Foundation, where he is program officer in policy analysis and dialogue.

Well, we've got two Davids. Let's start with the David in Washington, David Bossie. Why did you do this film? Many of these issues have been reported on this program and elsewhere. Why did you gather up $500,000, do this film in four months?

DAVID BOSSIE, FILM PRODUCER: Well, you know, I think that it's important for people, both in this country and around the world, to be able to see all of it at once, and put it in a historical context. Obviously, you do great reporting. Others on other networks do great reporting on these issues, but you do it once snippet at a time and people can't see the totality.

What we felt is with the 60th anniversary of the United Nations upon us, with all of these problems at the United Nations, that we felt it was important and I felt it was important to educate the American people on some of these issues, and that's why I got a hold of Ron Silver, who is a friend of mine, and we decided to make this film.

ROTH: All right, let's talk to an American, David Shorr, who is here. What was your review of this film.?

DAVID SHORR, STANLEY FOUNDATION: Well, the film has some compelling voices in it and I think that David Bossie and I would agree about the need for stronger action in some of the places that he's interviewed survivors from, like Bosnia and Rwanda.

Where we might differ, I think, is some of the diagnosis and prescriptions for where the problem really comes from and what should be done about it.

ROTH: David Bossie, what is the problem you feel at the United Nations? Running through this, you're watching Rwanda, Srebrenica, a little bit of Oil For Food, after such a glorious start for the United Nations is laid out in the beginning of the film.

BOSSIE: It really was an opportunity for them 60 years ago. The U.N. charter is a document that if it was still being lived up to today I think this would be a different film. However, it's not, and I think that reform is the only.

ROTH: Who's responsible? Is it the few people who have been secretary-general? Who has been.

BOSSIE: Look, I will tell you, it was a lot of reflection and a lot of thought that went into this movie. We did not look critically enough, in my opinion, based on time and energy that you can spend on this, because you could continue this film for the next several years. You have to put an end to it, though.

SHORR: There was a lot of focus in the film on the staff of the United Nations, on the leadership within the U.N. administration, and this is my point. When we look at who really has the power, who can make the United Nations take action or keep the United Nations from taking action, it really is the countries that make up the membership of the United Nations, the governments and leaders of those countries, that's really where the focus should be if we want a more effective United Nations. The United Nations really only works when those political leaders come together, agree, work from a common sense of purpose, and so reform is really needed over there more than it is, you know, in the staff.

BOSSIE: Well, David, that is true, that it is a body made up of its members states. The problem is its member states, and I think with democracies, you know, obviously growing, but not growing fast enough in my opinion, we have a lot of countries at the United Nations that are interested, as we say in the film, that are interested in problems so that they can hide their own internal strife and conflict.

SHORR: For me, this is a diplomatic problem, that it's a matter of, again, building coalitions so that some of those voices that you're concerned about are, you know, drowned out a little more effectively or overcome.

We really can't -- what we have is the United Nations. We can't just get rid of it and start over, and so it's a matter, as I say --

BOSSIE: Well, we can, actually. I mean, there is nothing to say we've been wrong for 60 years therefore we have to continue to be wrong for the next 60.

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BOSSIE: What I'm saying is, there can be wholesale reform at the United Nations. There can be a takeover from a lot of the problems and I have to say it starts at the top.

In the United States government, the American people hold the president, its elected officials, accountable. Companies in this country, if they were operated the way the United Nations is run, the top not only would be removed, but the leadership would be under investigation.

SHORR: But the top of the United Nations, seriously, is the president of the United States, not the secretary-general, and we can talk about how that plays out in terms of the case of Rwanda and in terms of the case of Somalia before that.

ROTH: And even Srebrenica. Let's talk about that. In this film, one of the biggest disasters for the United Nations in the Balkans, Srebrenica. A United Nations interpreter at a camp in a safe zone, remember that, described in the film "Broken Promises" a powerless United Nations in the face of Serb threats.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They give me a megaphone and they told me translate to the crowd the following: "Start leaving the base in groups of five." That was the only instruction to the people. There were several executions or several groups of men and teenage boys near the front of the base, and the Dutch saw it happening. The question is how could the Dutch continue to forcibly expel the people from the base knowing what was happening in front of the base. And this question has never been answered.

Three Dutch soldiers came and three United Nations military observers. They were looking at me and my family and they told me to translate the words to my family, "Tell your family to leave right now, they cannot stay here." And I saw the Dutch battalion deputy commander sending my family out of the base. And that's the last memory I have about my family.

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ROTH: Srebrenica and Rwanda, two big cases where member countries in a way also left the United Nations out to dry -- David Bossie.

BOSSIE: Well, clearly, Kofi Annan is responsible. We can argue all day long about member states and who did and who did not participate. But I could tell you, Kofi Annan failed in Somalia, he failed in Rwanda, and he's failed in Bosnia.

Before he was secretary-general he was head of peacekeeping.

ROTH: He was director of peacekeeping, right, and there are valid criticisms about his role, whether he should have ever been made secretary- general based upon his track record.

BOSSIE: That's right.

ROTH: But the member counties, as I'm sure David Shorr would say, I mean, Madeleine Albright was there at the Security Council representing the United States, and you say your film is for the American audiences. Yet in the film it does not say that she was making sure that the United States and other countries did not come to the rescue in Rwanda. They did not want them.

SHORR: The policy was very clear. The president of the United States had decided that there was going to be no forceful intervention in Rwanda. I think, as I said earlier, David and I agree about the need for more forceful action, but it's just simply unrealistic to think that Kofi Annan would have overridden the president of the United States.

ROTH: David, your track record, I mean, it's there on paper. Your career includes a very hard effort to get anything on Bill Clinton when you were a House investigator, right or wrong. That was your job, you were working in different areas like that, and a conservative group -- and then when you say it's all Kofi Annan's fault, do you feel that takes away from the credibility of your film, that you've been a staunch opponent of the United Nations and Bill Clinton?

BOSSIE: Oh, no. As you're familiar with the film, one of the former U.N. peacekeepers discusses Bill Clinton's problems in Somalia and he pulled out and it caused Rwanda to really take shape, and I think we do lay blame there in the sense of using a U.N. peacekeeper to say that.

We are not looking the other way when it came to Bill Clinton's inaction. What we're saying, though, is, partially, as an organization, somewhat through this film is, the United States is not and has never been and cannot be the world's policeman by itself. That's one of the arguments that liberals make as to why we should participate in the United Nations.

I say if the United Nations is going to be around for another 60 years, it better wake up and it better take action in the war on terror which it's not doing, has not been doing. Look at Iraq as an example.

ROTH: All right, we're going to give Mr. Shorr a chance to respond in a moment, but first another look at "Broken Promises." The United Nations often makes do with what it receives from member countries, and the film also says planning by the United Nations has been a nightmare, it's catch as catch can in the field.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: One of the things that's very difficult for outsiders to understand about the United Nations is how ill-prepared and untrained most of its staff are. So I for example had studied at law school and new nothing about the military knew nothing about combat, God knows. I was doing prisoner of war exchanges. I was helping coordinate convoys in and out of the prison where I was working to release detainees.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I went from being a secretary in Cambodia working on the logistics of the election to being an operations officer in their intelligence and operations until.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So you end up being in charge of military operations in a way in which you have absolutely no training or no right to e there, and people get killed because of that.

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ROTH: The United Nations is, of course, trying to reform and change.

David Shorr, you've been at many of these seminars, you've talked to United Nations officials. Do they get it? Would this film have an impact with them?

SHORR: I think there is a wide awareness that we need a stronger, more effective United Nations, and that's what the whole current push for reform is about. I was in a meeting yesterday with 10 or 15 ambassadors, talking about replacing the old human rights mechanism, which had been discredited, with a totally new human rights mechanism.

So there is an awareness of a problem, there is a serious effort to fix some of the problems, and as I say, the focus needs to be on this kind of political coalition building and not using the United Nations as a scapegoat. Frankly, the depiction of the balance of power is completely unrealistic. We actually had a secretary-general stand up to the president of the United States. His name was Boutros Boutros-Ghali. He did it over Somalia, and then he was gone because the United States pushed him out.

ROTH: David Bossie?

BOSSIE: Boutros Boutros-Ghali never went to Rwanda. We make that very clear in the movie. General Romeo Dallaire, who was head of the peacekeeping effort there.

SHORR: But my point is about where the responsibility should be laid. To say that the United Nations secretary-general or the under-secretary- general for peacekeeping can have any chance of overruling a firm policy from the president of the United States doesn't strike me as realistic.

BOSSIE: But what also is not realistic is to lay blame at the United States' feet on every time the United Nations doesn't do anything or any time the United Nations is involved in the Oil For Food Program, you know, or the renovation program, which is going on now, and being run by the same people, by the way, that were running the Oil For Food Program.

SHORR: Right, and right behind the administration of the United Nations is the Fifth Committee on Administration micromanaging them to death again, member countries.

BOSSIE: Well, let me tell you, if they're micromanaging these guys, they're not doing a very good job of it.

Let me just say this, the same guy who was running the Oil For Food Program, Yakovlev, was the same guy who is running the renovations --

ROTH: He was running procurement. He was not in the Oil For Food Program.

BOSSIE: Running the renovation project and is the guy who was getting the contracts for the renovation, and those contracts have had to be cancelled because of him.

SHORR: You mention corporate accountability, and no corporate leader that I know of would report to a board of directors with 191 members. That's one of the things they're talking about changing and improving in the management reforms of the U.N. reform push right now.

ROTH: All right, we have to stop there. I must say that I am in "Broken Promises" a little bit and I actually thought the film would be much harder on the United Nations, considering perhaps Mr. Bossie's track record. I thought it was somewhat straight, despite what some critics might say.

I've got to stop there. David Shorr, thank you very much, from the Stanley Foundation. David Bossie, co-producer of the film "Broken Promises," in the Washington bureau of CNN, thank you.

"Broken Promises" ends with a challenge to the United Nations.

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SILVER (voice-over): It is indeed an organization of its member states, but is the idea of a world community just a fiction? For many, the United Nations is more than the sum of its parts. It's decision time at the United Nations.

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ROTH: Actress Whoopi Goldberg and the Muppets announcing the first- ever outdoor advertising campaign to raise awareness of the impact of HIV/AIDS on children.

Fifteen million children have lost parents to AIDS. UNICEF is hoping for millions of dollars to treat, protect and support children affected by the disease.

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WHOOPI GOLDBERG, ACTRESS: HIV/AIDS is affecting children's lives in so many ways that sometimes adults just remember about themselves and they forget about the kids. So that's why we're putting this altogether, so that this poster goes out, so that we can remind people that children need a lot more help than I think we remember.

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ROTH: I talked to one non-Muppet seen in that photo opportunity, UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador and film actor Roger Moore, about the new appeal.

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ROTH: What is significant about this appeal?

ROGER MOORE, ACTOR: I think that it will allow some global appeal, that it's not just sub-Saharan African and (INAUDIBLE). It's the whole of the world, and the whole of the world has got to get together to fight and combat it because as the campaign says, united children -- united against AIDS, and it must be that way, so that our funding, which is going to require UNICEF's funding, a billion dollars over the next five years for just this campaign alone.

ROTH: This U.N. building seems to sometimes focus on issues that don't affect the world. There is a lot of talking and speeches, but except for special AIDS days, do you think the world doesn't focus enough on these types of issues?

MOORE: I think it's fairly obvious the world does not focus on it, because look at the alarming statistics, the fact that every minute of every day a child dies of HIV/AIDS and four children every minute are infected. I mean, it's a serious, serious problem because it snowballs, it gets bigger and bigger. It's got to be stamped out, as we did with polio, where it's almost eliminated, must happen with HIV/AIDS.

ROTH: There is talk in the U.S. government of cutting money for certain programs, and they talk a good game about promoting more donations or bigger budgets, but sometimes really the money doesn't come. What's your sense of that?

MOORE: Well, when you ask for a debt to be repaid, sometimes it takes a little time, but when you ask for a pledge to be honored, that can take a little more. I think this might be very much a wakeup call, what we've done today.

ROTH: Do you think the world will one day succeed in finding a cure for the AIDS virus?

MOORE: If we don't, it will be for lack of funding.

ROTH: And today's event, was there any inspirational moment from the speeches you heard, anything that you did not know that you learned today?

MOORE: No, I didn't learn anything new except to listen to the testimony of those (INAUDIBLE) -- you know, you sit there and you know there is a camera pointing at you, you mustn't get (INAUDIBLE). Very difficult, very difficult to listen to.

ROTH: Thank you, Roger.

MOORE: Thank you.

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ROTH: UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador Roger Moore.

Meanwhile, outside the United Nations, an attempt to connect the goodwill of the United Nations with art. This motif actually starts inside the United Nations, on the ceiling, and spreads outside the building and winds into the East River. It's called the Uniting Painting, created by cartoonist Runan Lurey (ph). Continents are spanned as you follow along. All costs picked up by the artist.

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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through translator): I'm often confronted with the question, are you afraid? No, I'm not. They are afraid. I believe my pain is mightier than all their weapons.

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ROTH: A crime reporter from Bangladesh, herself becomes a crime victim. That's Sumi Khan (ph) speaking from the relative safety of the famed Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York City. Five hundred people attended the annual lunch conducted by the International Women's Media Foundation to honor courage in journalism. Honorees included the crime reporter, the only one in her city, an Associated Press war photographer and the founder of a magazine threatened with closure by the government of Iran.

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JUDY WOODRUFF, JOURNALIST: These courage awards come at a time when we know press freedom is at stake in so many parts of the world. Journalists are vulnerable not just in war zones, but also in countries where dictators and where corrupt forces in society operate.

BEN BRADLEE, JOURNALIST: Shahla Sherkat is a feminist among Iran's fundamentalists. She challenges traditional notions of women's place in her country. Her platform is in the pages of the magazine she founded in 1991.

SHAHLA SHERKAT, JOURNALIST (through translator): I believe journalism in developing countries is like tightrope walking, you have to be careful where you are putting your feet. Otherwise, you will fall.

BOB SCHIEFFER, JOURNALIST: Anja Niedringhaus, she is a photographer for the Associated Press. She focuses her lenses on lives that have been fractured and torn apart by conflict.

ANJA NIEDRINGHAUS, JOURNALIST: It's a special honor to win an award that celebrates courage. I have won several awards for my pictures, but this award celebrates the spirit of our work. Being a journalist, a reporter, a photographer. I am not here today to tell you my difficulties covering conflicts. The real difficulties and the real courage belong to those who are subjected against their will to conflicts.

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ROTH: That's the 15th annual Courage in Journalism award ceremony, and that is DIPLOMATIC LICENSE. Thanks for watching. I'm Richard Roth.

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