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Obama and Italy's Prime Minister Hold News Conference; Terror Threat in Africa; Immigration Crisis; Obama Addresses Loretta Lynch Nomination; Obama on Congress and Iran Nuclear Deal; Bomb Blast in Irbil. Aired 1-1:30p ET

Aired April 17, 2015 - 13:00   ET

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

QUESTION: President Putin has been the last of the seven leaders in Moscow. Do you think it was useful and did you ask and get any specific commitments for the renewal of the sanction against Russia? Thank you.

MATTEO RENZI, PRIME MINISTER, ITALY (translator): Well, let me talk to you about the question on Libya. I will repeat what I said. Obviously, all the countries in this region are countries that are interested in looking and finding -- looking for and finding a solution, barring none. We appreciate the work that certain countries are finally doing in the Mediterranean area, northern Africa, starting by Egypt.

So, all the countries are part of this huge undertaking. But please allow me to be very clear. Peace in Libya, either the tribes do this or no one is going to do this. No one is going to achieve this. Peace in Libya, either the tribes do this or no one is going to do this. No one is going to achieve this. The only way to reach peace is if the tribes finally accept that they're going to go toward stabilization and peace.

And our work is that of looking for this to favor of this at all levels so that this effort does, indeed, lead to peace. The diplomatic initiatives you are aware of, they're the ones that we are doing with Ben (INAUDIBLE.) And they're the ones that the foreign ministers are also trying to support and to study.

Obviously, this is not a job that starts in Libya. I would like my Italian journalist friends to understand that Libya which we consider because they're across from us, the main problem, but they're part of a more complex, greater problem that has to do with the risk of terrorist infiltrations in Africa.

We are feeling the pain for what happened at the university in Korisa in Kenya, but this regards Africa as a whole, as a continent. A few days ago, we remember that a year has gone by from when some 100 girls were kidnapped by Boko Haram and remember the hashtag, bringbackourgirls. This is a moral imperative for all of us, therefore the issue of Libya is something we have to place in a wider context. The technical solutions, our teams are looking at them every single day and there are obviously technical solutions in which there is a full awareness, for which there is a full awareness. The United States is next to the United States. Europe is next to the United States in a huge challenge that will bring the troops in our country to spend more months, more time in Afghanistan, much more so than we had thought because if the coalition with the United States considers that the process has to continue. Italy will do its part.

Obviously, in terms of the technical solutions that I mentioned, this is not something that has to do with political debates. It has it to do with our technical teams, with their expertise. I have to be sure that I have priority in assurance from the United States this is not something in which Italy is working on its own.

I can tell you that, as far as we are concerned, the cooperation and the work together with you, both in the natural diplomatic way and in the constant work which is done every single day which is a job which is done silently, quietly, in everyday life which takes us to heroism. I'm thought -- I'm thinking about coast guards. The men and women that saved those people at sea -- at sea that allowed a young woman to give birth on the boat. She was dying and they saved two lives. This is what we want to do. But, at the same time, we also have to be fully aware of the fact that the work that we do together is a job that not only regards Libya but all of Africa. I might say the whole world.

And allow me to say this without taking the floor too long. This is a job we are doing everywhere from Russia to Latin America, Afghanistan, to the Middle East. The cooperation and work which is done between the United States and Italy is something out of discussion that cannot be discussed.

[13:05:00] BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We are consistently looking where terrorist threats might emanate and Libya, obviously, is an area of great concern. ISIL has been very explicit about wanting to use the chaos inside of Libya as a potential justification for putting their -- some of their personnel there. And so, the coordination with Italy and with other of our key partners is going to be very important. We will not be able to solve the problem just with a few drone strikes or a few military operations. You have a country that has been broken into, a number of tribal factions. There are some sectarian elements to it. And you don't have a central government that is functioning effectively.

So, we still have to guard against the use of the territories in Libya as a safe haven for terrorist operations, much in the way we've done with respect to Somalia for means years. But the answer, ultimately, is to have a government that can control its own borders and work with us. That's going to take some time.

But we will combine counterterrorism efforts in cooperation with Italy and other like-minded nations with a political effort. And we're going to have to encourage some of the countries inside of the Gulf who have, I think, influence over the various factions inside Libya to be more cooperative themselves. In some cases, you've seen them fan the flames of military conflict rather than try to reduce them.

With respect to Russia, I -- Matteo and I agree that we need implementation of Minsk. And I expressed my strong belief that the European council needs to continue the current sanctions that are in place until we've seen full implementation of the Minsk agreement. There will be a vote coming up this summer in the European council. And my expectation is not only Italy but all countries in Europe will recognize that it would be a wrong message to send to reduce sanctions' pressure on Russia when their key implementation steps don't happen until the end of the year.

At minimum, we have to maintain the existing sanction levels until we've seen that they've carried out the steps that they're required to under the agreement.

And, you know, one of the things that Matteo and I share, and I think the Italian people and the American people share, is the sense of values and principles that sometimes override political expediency. You know, that's part of our DNA. That's part of our memories because of the history of both our countries. And I think we have to be realistic and practical in how we look at a problem like Ukraine. But we have to also recall that the reason there is a unified and prosperous Europe is because enormous sacrifices were made on behalf of ideals and on behalf of principles. And if those principles of territorial integrity and sovereignty start getting ignored, then that carries a cost for Europe and for the world. Thank you very much. Thank you, everyone.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: All right. So, there they are, the president of the United States, the prime minister of Italy wrapping up more than one hour news conference during which they went through several major issues.

Once again, we want to welcome our viewers in the United States and around the world. I'm Wolf Blitzer reporting from Washington.

From Iran to Libya to economic issues facing Europe right now and the United States as well as some major domestic issues here in the United States. Both the President and the Prime Minister spoke forcefully on several of these matters.

[13:10:00] We did see President Obama speak very forcefully when it came to the delay in confirming his nominee for attorney general of the United States, Loretta Lynch. We don't often see him get this passionate on an issue, but he is clearly angry at Republicans in the United States Senate. Watch this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The dysfunction in the Senate just goes too far. This is an example of it. It's gone too far. Enough. Enough. Call Loretta Lynch for a vote. Get her confirmed. Put her in place. Let her do her job. This is embarrassing, a process like this.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: It's been more than five months since he nominated Loretta Lynch to replace Eric Holder as the attorney general of the United States. She would be the first African-American female attorney general here in the United States. Gloria Borger is with me. Jim Sciutto is with me. Gloria, as I said, you don't often see the president --

GLORIA BORGER, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL ANALYST: No.

BLITZER: -- get that agitated, if you will.

BORGER: He's mad. He's furious about it and he has a point, actually, because they have held up this nomination for five months on a completely ancillary issue that has to deal with abortion. They're mad at her because she agrees with the President's executive orders on immigration.

And Senator Harry Reid, the leader of the Democrats, has now said, I am going to force a vote on this. And the way he forces a vote on this is that somebody calls for a vote. He's not the majority leader, remember. He can force a vote, remember. He can force a vote if he gets 51 senators to say, yes, they'll go with him on that. That would mean he'd would need to convince a bunch of Republicans to go against their leader on a procedural issue, not sure whether he can get the votes. But this is a huge breach of protocol if Harry Reid does what he says he wants to do. And it's going to create even more strained relations between Democrats and Republicans. But don't forget, yesterday, Jeb Bush, came out and said, time for a vote on this. Let her get her vote. And that's what the President was effectively saying.

BLITZER: Well, there seemed to be some movement in the last few days.

BORGER: Yes.

BLITZER: Maybe there would be a vote.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: And Reid telegraphed that. But he said, we've waited as long as -- he said, I might be able to wait a little bit longer but not much longer. In effect, he's presenting this nuclear option to prod the Republicans to move forward. And if not, then he'll take this path.

BORGER: And the question is whether Republicans who are willing to vote for her are actually going to vote against their own leader on a procedural matter? I'm not convinced they'd be willing to do that. But public pressure is clearly building on this because the American public is sort of saying, why not just vote. If you want to vote her down, vote her down.

SCIUTTO: And the president made a point, it's the top law enforcement official in the country. He made a national security case for it. You've got terrorist threats, et cetera. Get her confirmed. That's what it -- that's where he went.

BLITZER: And Jeb Bush, the former governor of Florida who's a -- soon to be a formally announced Republican presidential --

BORGER: Yes. BLITZER: -- candidate. He said, look, the Republicans don't like Eric Holder, the current attorney general, anyhow. Move him out. Get a new attorney general and that will be that. We'll see what happens.

I want to go to Michelle Kosinski, our White House Correspondent. Michele, you're over there. You're in the East Room of the White House. It's not often you see the president get that angry.

MICHELLE KOSINSKI, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Right. I think that was -- it was asked almost as a, oh, don't forget, can you add something about the Loretta lynch situation? But it turned out to be the strongest statement he made during this. And I don't think that that was entirely unexpected. I mean, I think, really, the time has come for this. And we've seen the White House, over the last couple weeks, kind of ramping up their language over this as well as their criticism of Republicans. I mean, a couple of weeks ago, they started this day count of how many precise days it has been since the nomination. Today I think is day number 161.

And they've started using examples of how much time it's taken other nominees even using Republicans' own words in the past to criticize them. So, to hear the president to say, this -- there's no reason for this. It is simply political gamesmanship and it's embarrassing. It goes along with what we've been hearing from the White House over the past couple days. I mean, calling Senator Grassley's comments about why the delay is happening. Astoundingly duplicitous and saying that this delay is unconscionable. I think that the White House is really willing to go farther on the language as this delay becomes more and more pronounced -- Wolf.

BLITZER: Yes. Loretta Lynch is the U.S. attorney in New York. And she's widely respected, highly respected. And the president made it clear he would like to see a vote, a roll call vote in the United States allowing her to be confirmed as the next attorney general of the United States.

So, the president was also asked about the compromise that was worked out in the U.S. Senate on the issue of Iran, the Iran nuclear deal that's not yet there that seems to be moving forward. Listen to what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I updated president -- Prime Minister Renzi on the framework that we reached with Iran, our progress towards a comprehensive deal that prevents Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

[13:15:12] And we agreed that until any final deal is reached, sanctions on Iran must continue to be fully and strictly enforced.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: Jim Sciutto, the president made it clear, though, he thinks it's a reasonable compromise that had been worked out by the chairman, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in terms of congressional oversight.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Exactly. The best he could get because the White House didn't want this. The president didn't want this from the beginning. But the fact is, the votes were there. It passed 19-0. He's got a veto proof majority in the Senate supporting this. But he said that listen, first of all, he has to live with it. He says he can live with it because he said he believes that it will not derail the negotiations that are underway and it - it was specific to the Congress, congressionally mandated sanctions. It was not establishing a precedence that Congress, for instance, would always have approval over political agreements like this.

But it's interesting, you get a sense of just how precarious these negotiations are. The verbal gymnastics he went through -

GLORIA BORGER, CHIEF POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes, (INAUDIBLE).

SCIUTTO: Not to say phasing out of sanctions, because this is an issue now because the Iranians are demanding they happen on day one. And, of course, he has said repeatedly that while we're going to have to phase them in to maintain leverage, but he didn't - he didn't go that far. He didn't go that far.

BORGER: No, he used the word how sanctions are lessened.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

BORGER: You know, very careful not to use phase out. He's clearly concerned about the snapback provision. He made it very clear, you know, that we have to be able, if things aren't working out, we have to be able, as he put it, not to jump through hoops, to reinstate the sanctions. But he doesn't want to get in front of - of John Kerry, his secretary of state.

SCIUTTO: Who was sitting in the front row there and he's got a lot of work to do.

BORGER: Who is negotiating.

BLITZER: Who was sitting right there.

The president also, despite all the tensions with Russia right now over Ukraine and other issues, he went out of his way to actually defend the decision by the Russian government to go ahead even now before there was a formal agreement and sell new what he called defensive missiles to Iran.

SCIUTTO: It's pretty remarkable. I mean he said - he basically was saying that I'm surprised they held the deal this long. So he felt -- he was sort of thanking Russia, thanks for take - you know, pushing it back. But these are advanced missiles, though. That said, when we were speaking to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs yesterday, General Martin Dempsey, he was asked about this and he said that our military option with regard to Iran's nuclear program is intact, in his words, even with this missile sale. In other words saying, American plans could get by it.

BORGER: We've already thought about that, yes.

SCIUTTO: We've thought about that and we're going to work around it. But, still, Russia is selling advanced missile systems to Iran to defend its nuclear sites in the middle of a nuclear negotiation. I mean that's not nothing.

BLITZER: Yes, there's one theory, though, that American planes might be able to deal with these surface-to-air missiles, but Israeli planes -

SCIUTTO: Not Israel.

BLITZER: Might not be able to deal with those.

BORGER: Right.

SCIUTTO: Exactly.

BLITZER: But that's another issue we'll discuss later.

I want both of you to stand by. We have much more.

While the news conference was happening, we also got word of some other breaking news. An explosion right near the U.S. consulate in Irbil, in northern Iraq. We have details on what happened. Stay with us. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:21:34] ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

BLITZER: And let's get to the breaking news. A blast right near the United States consulate in Irbil, in northern Iraq. Three people were killed in the blast. That is the headquarters of Iraq's Kurdish region.

Let's go straight to CNN's Ben Wedeman.

Ben, you've spent a lot of time in that region. You're familiar with that consulate in Irbil. What do we know about this attack?

BEN WEDEMAN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, we understand, Wolf, that the explosion took place at about 5:50 p.m. local time. According to Kurdish security force sources, there was first a small IED explosion near the U.S. consulate, which is in the neighborhood of Inkowa (ph), a predominantly Christian neighborhood, very popular with expats.

Now when that bomb went off, shortly afterwards, another - a car started to approach the consulate. Kurdish security forces outside the consulate apparently opened fire on that car, but the car subsequently exploded, as you said, killing at least three people, wounding five, according to our sources in the area. Now, also what happened afterwards there is apparently an hour-long exchange of gunfire, according to eyewitnesses we've spoken to who were in that immediate area.

Now, this is a part of town where there's high security and this is a part of Iraq, Irbil, where the Kurds take security very seriously. And their - rarely are there such occurrences in Irbil itself. Now, fortunately, it was Friday. That's the day when the U.S. consulate is closed. But, of course, all U.S. diplomatic personnel actually live in the consular compound there. But we understand from CNN's Jim Sciutto, who's been speaking with officials in Washington, that they're all U.S. personnel at the consulate are safe and accounted for.

Wolf.

BLITZER: And there are hundreds of Americans there in Irbil. There are diplomats, military personnel, private U.S. citizens. This is the regional headquarters of Kurdistan.

WEDEMAN: Yes. It's very - it's basically the capital of Kurdistan. And Kurdistan, in a sense, is almost like a separate country within Iraq. The Kurds, for instance, are very careful who they let into the territory. They control what's odd, for instance, is that Iraqi citizens, if they're not Kurds and they arrive at the airport in Irbil, unless they have a local sponsor will not be allowed in. So they take their area, the area they control, very seriously and they try to control who enters and so security very much a concern for the Kurds in this incident, even though, in this case, no U.S. diplomatic personnel were harmed, is cause for concern about the situation in Irbil and in Kurdistan.

BLITZER: Yes, it certainly is. All right, thanks very much, Ben. We'll stay on top of this story.

Staying, though, in Iraq, a former top Iraqi general under Saddam Hussein has been killed. Izzat Ibrahim al-Duri, you may remember him better as the so-called king of clubs, the sixth most wanted man during the war in Iraq. He later took over as head of the banned Baath Party, replacing Saddam Hussein. More recently, he's been linked directly to ISIS.

[13:25:02] Let's go to New York, our own Atika Shubert. She's been covering this story for a long time for us.

What more can you tell us, Atika, about the operation that led to this man's death and are there any other major names from that so-called most wanted list who are still on the loose?

ATIKA SHUBERT, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, nobody really who was the stature of al Duri. He was the number six on that list. He was the right-hand man of Saddam Hussein. He was the most wanted there. There are other people who are still at large, but they're much lower in rank, many of them believed to be perhaps somewhere in Syria and they may not have anything to do with the ongoing insurgency in Iraq.

But al Duri was a particularly well-known figure because of his role in the Baathist Party. Now, what we understand about the operation, and this is all coming from Iraqi sources at the moment, Iraqi state television was airing the news, that he was killed in what was described as a surprise operation between Iraqi security forces and a Shia militia. Now, he was apparently killed somewhere between Tikrit and Kirkuk. Now, there's no report on who else was killed in that raid and they're saying at this point that while they think it's him, they think it's al Duri, they can't be 100 percent sure until they've done DNA tests to identify him as Izzat Ibrahim al Duri.

BLITZER: A lot of these former Saddam loyalists, they've joined forces with ISIS, right?

SHUBERT: Well, you know, yes, and no. This is - there are all kinds of shifting alliances. When ISIS first marched across northern Iraq, there were reports that al Duri's group in particular had really, at least tacitly if not actively, allowed ISIS to come right through. And there are even reports of al Duri's group fighting alongside ISIS. But in recent months, we've heard reports of that relationship fraying. And that might be because they have completely different objectives. While ISIS wants to establish the Islamic caliphate, al Duri's group really wanted to re-establish the Sunni/Baathist regime that it - that Iraq had under Saddam Hussein. So completely different goals and aims and quite possibly after ISIS was able to take over so much territory, that's when we started to see any sort of whatever that alliance was really start to show some strain.

BLITZER: All right, Atika, good explanation, thanks very much. Atika Shubert reporting.

Coming up, we're going to dig deeper into both of these breaking stories, the bombing right near the U.S. consulate in Irbil in Iraq and the death of one of Iraq's most wanted men. Stay with us.

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