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Amanpour

Russia's Syria Plan: The Next Step; Syria: A War in the Making; Capturing an Atrocity on Camera

Aired September 11, 2013 - 14:00   ET

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

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN HOST: Good evening, everyone, and welcome to the program. I'm Christiane Amanpour. With the remarkable flow of fast- paced events in and around Syria, it is easy to overlook the real fact that some real progress has, in fact, been made.

For the first time Syria admits what everyone knows that it does possess chemical weapons and it now says that it'll sign onto the Chemical Weapons Convention.

In fact, Syrian officials now seem to be falling all over themselves to provide unprecedented detail about the scope of their stockpile, which is thought to be one of the largest and deadliest in the world. One cabinet minister has told the AP that it is the nuclear of the poor and said their chemical weapons were meant to create a strategic balance against Israel, presumably its nuclear arsenal.

Few doubt that it's the threat of U.S. military force, which has opened up this diplomatic window. And U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is now heading for Geneva to meet his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, and review his plan for placing Syria's chemical weapons under international control.

There are, of course, real pitfalls to come, not just in the negotiations but in the herculean task of finding and removing Syria's chemical weapons, not to mention the view from the Syrian opposition, which feels today that it has been sold down the river, that the terrible conventional war, which has already killed 100,000 people, will go on and that Bashar al-Assad will inevitably become a partner in any resolution, going nowhere, despite what the United States had once demanded.

So we're going to cover all the angles tonight, including a dramatic convention with one of my CNN colleagues. He's a rare eyewitness to a previous chemical weapons attack that was in Halabja, Iraq, 25 years ago.

But first, what is Russia's plan for Syria? And how will it be implemented? The permanent five members of the Security Council are meeting right now in New York to discuss it.

What will Russia agree to?

Ambassador Vladimir Chizhov is Russia's envoy to the European Union and he joins me now from Brussels.

Ambassador, welcome to the program. Thanks for joining me.

AMB. VLADIMIR CHIZHOV, RUSSIAN ENVOY TO E.U.: Thank you and good evening.

AMANPOUR: Good evening to you. We have a long delay, so I'm going to barrel ahead.

What is the plan as you know it?

What is the plan that your foreign minister has already presented to Secretary Kerry and that they're going to go over tomorrow in person?

CHIZHOV: Well, the plan has been outlined not only to Secretary Kerry but to the international community and made public. It envisages placing the chemical weapons stockpile of Syria under international supervision and also addressing the issue of accession of the Syrian Arab Republic to the convention on dining (ph) chemical weapons, which it has not been a party to until now.

AMANPOUR: Well, let me ask you the actual detail --

(CROSSTALK)

CHIZHOV: So the idea is to --

Yes.

AMANPOUR: Just quickly, part of what has been said publicly is that not only will these weapons be declared, be shown to Russia and other states at the United Nations, but also that they will be transferred to international control.

Many thought that that would be transferring them out in some way to destroy eventually this chemical stockpile. But a cabinet minister in Damascus has told the Associated Press that there's no talk of transferring out these weapons, only to put them under international control.

What does Russia understand?

Aren't these meant to be, you know, gotten rid of?

CHIZHOV: Well, you see, the ultimate aim is to have these weapons destroyed. Where exactly that will be taking place is a secondary issue.

But the initial plan is, of course, to place the existing stockpiles under international supervision in the territory of Syria.

AMANPOUR: Now what do you think ,when it comes to doing that and, in fact, eventually destroying them?

Is that even possible in any kind of reasonable timeframe, given that there's a war going?

What is going to be asked, therefore, of the Assad government, of the opposition, presumably, in terms of creating a space to actually carry out this work by the inspectors? I mean, does a cease-fire have to be put in place? What's necessary?

CHIZHOV: Well, I don't think anybody in the world would imagine that this would be an easy task to do. But it takes resolve, political will and, of course, agreement by all parties concerned.

Actually what I am personally worrying about is what the opposition forces might do in this situation.

AMANPOUR: Ambassador, you know a lot of talk has gone on around how on Earth did this whole plan, this diplomatic initiative come into the open to begin with.

Was it really just an off-the-cuff remark by Secretary Kerry that then Sergey Lavrov jumped on and everybody else jumped on board?

Or has this been something that has been discussed between the principles for a long time?

Can you tell me about the genesis of what they hope to be a successful diplomatic initiative in this regard?

CHIZHOV: Well, I think I should first refer to a statement by Minister Lavrov, who said that the plan stems out of context, that had been held between the Russian Federation and the United States at different levels and in different quarters, I would say.

So you know, it's not an issue of claiming fatherhood as some third countries are doing at the moment. The popular saying is that success has many fathers, but failure is always an orphan.

So we would like to share the fatherhood with anybody who is interested, provided there's success.

AMANPOUR: Well, that's very generous. And of course, provided it is a success.

But let me ask you this, success, then, in this regard, must surely be due to the credible threat of U.S. military force.

I mean, you're not going to tell me that this all happened just because suddenly everybody got lovey-dovey about a diplomatic initiative. This must have been because of the threat of military force on the table.

CHIZHOV: Well, anybody can have one's own view on this. But I can only repeat my previous remark on this.

AMANPOUR: OK.

Do you therefore think what many skeptics in the United States believe, that in fact President Putin and the Russian government is coming to the rescue of President Assad, that this, in fact, would involve him in the future diplomatic resolution of this issue, this chemical weapons issue, and that therefore he's going nowhere?

CHIZHOV: Actually many people in my own country and here in the European Union think that President Putin and Minister Lavrov are actually coming to the rescue of President Obama ,who was facing a possible defeat in the U.S. Congress.

So it's not an issue of who's rescuing whom. But it's an issue to rescue a political settlement, which in the case of military strikes, would have become hardly possible.

AMANPOUR: Well, that actually was going to be my next question; you answered it, you previewed and guessed what I was going to ask you about that rescue mission.

But do you strongly or do you really believe that this has a chance --

(CROSSTALK)

CHIZHOV: It's called --

AMANPOUR: -- of success?

CHIZHOV: -- it's called telepathy, telepathy.

AMANPOUR: All right. Use your telepathic powers to tell me whether you think --

CHIZHOV: Well --

AMANPOUR: -- this is really going somewhere or is it a stalling and delaying tactic?

CHIZHOV: Certainly -- I'm certainly convinced that there is a chance of a progress along the plank (ph) of political settlement. It would have been much more difficult had this opportunity not appeared.

AMANPOUR: Ambassador Chizhov, thank you so much for joining me from Brussels.

And after a break, can President Obama's words put out the fire in Syria? Veteran U.S. diplomat and former ambassador to Syria and of course Iraq and other countries in the Middle East, Ryan Crocker, says that in the end, Assad looks set to win back more territory, "foot by bloody foot."

And meantime, if the search for peace in Syria seems like searching for water in the desert, perhaps one parched corner of the globe can serve as a hopeful metaphor, in drought-stricken Kenya a vast underground water reserve has been discovered, an estimated 200 billion cubic meters of fresh water, enough to meet Kenya's needs for the next 70 years.

And the same satellite imaging that helped find water for Kenya may also be able to locate similar reserves in neighboring South Sudan and Ethiopia. Hope, indeed, does spring eternal.

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AMANPOUR: Welcome back.

President Obama's speech to the nation last night highlighted his dilemma, which has been a confusing U.S. policy on Syria for the last 2.5 years, first resisting calls for military action to advocating the necessary strike to postponing now intervention.

My next guest is former U.S. ambassador to Syria Ryan Crocker, and he says the U.S. has failed to grasp the historical fact.

Make no mistake: the Assads, first with Hafez and now his son, Bashar, have been preparing for this war since the Hama massacre in 1982, says Crocker, when the army there killed some 20,000 civilians to stop an uprising by Syria's Muslim Brotherhood.

The regime has known, has been preparing, says Crocker, for years, that a day of reckoning would come. I spoke to him earlier from Texas.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: Ambassador Crocker, thank you so much for joining me and welcome to the program.

I want to start by asking you first, what did you make of President Obama's case in this Syrian crisis last night, in his address to the nation, because the critics have been vociferous and brutal.

For instance, one critic has said that it was, quote, "very probably the least consequential vitally important speech ever."

Your take on that, Ambassador.

RYAN CROCKER, FORMER AMB. TO SYRIA: I think we've got to keep a perspective on this.

I think the president was right in saying we need to pursue this diplomatically.

It is important overall that the Syrians have said, yes, we have chemical weapons and we're prepared to put them under international control.

That is a step forward.

AMANPOUR: So given that they've done that -- and, again, I'm going to ask you, because of your deep knowledge of the players, whether you trust their words -- given that they have done that, how difficult is it going to be to execute this diplomacy to actually control and do all the things that they're saying should be done with the chemical weapons?

And do you think Russia and Syria can be trusted to go to the very end with their promises?

CROCKER: You know, we will have to see. A lot of this depends on Russia and a lot of it depends on Iran. And Iran has suffered from chemical weapons. They are no fans of them.

So pressure from Tehran, pressure from Moscow will be critical in all of this. But none of us should think it will be decisive to the outcome of the war.

AMANPOUR: Interestingly, Iran was one of the first countries to support the Russian-Syrian plan to put these weapons under international control.

But let me ask you this, another critic has said, in terms of the general policy, Jeffrey Goldberg, who is, as you know, formerly of "The Atlantic" and now a "Bloomberg View" columnist, he has said the following, "After two years of saying that Assad should go, the message now is that Assad can stay and that we just want to remove one of the weapons systems."

CROCKER: I think we made a mistake right at the beginning in somehow thinking that Syria was like Egypt, like Tunisia, like Libya. You and I know it's not.

The Syrian regime has been ready for this fight since Hama in 1982; very few Americans remember what happened then. You and I do, when up to 10,000 innocent Sunni civilians were murdered by Assad, the elder, in his effort to get rid of the Syrian Muslim Brothers.

It radicalized the Sunni population and the regime knew that a day of accounting may come. And they've been ready for it for three decades.

You know, Assad isn't going anywhere outside of Syria anytime soon, if ever. And maybe we're beginning to understand that.

AMANPOUR: Well, that is a really gloomy assessment, Ambassador. And obviously you know what you speak of. You were there as ambassador during the time that Hafez al-Assad died and Bashar al-Assad assumed the presidency.

Explain what you mean by preparing for this moment.

CROCKER: After Hama, Hafez al-Assad knew that there could be a Sunni day of retribution. And he and his son -- and his son is a -- just like the old man, maybe not quite as flexible and more doctrinaire, just as ruthless -- spent, again, three-plus decades building an intelligence, security and military apparatus that could withstand a Sunni revolt.

They knew what they had done in Hama and that the day of backlash might come. They were ready for it, unlike Egypt, unlike Libya, unlike Tunisia. We didn't understand the difference.

AMANPOUR: Well, now that you're making that crystal clear -- and clearly the situation has made that crystal clear because after 2.5 years, Bashar al-Assad is still there -- what do you predict are the eventualities?

Is he going to win?

Is he going to stay in power?

What are the alternatives?

Is there a possibility of a political solution, as President Obama has said, to change the political dynamic?

CROCKER: I think there are two alternatives. Either Assad regains control, foot by bloody foot, or it settles into some kind of stalemate.

If it's the latter, then there might be a possibility for a diplomatic solution or stabilization. Now is not that time.

I'm from the West of the United States, Christiane. We have giant forest fires; the one burning now in Yosemite. You can't extinguish them. You can only contain them. That's Syria. We can't extinguish that fight. Neither side is ready. All we can do is try and contain it and keep it from spreading further into Lebanon, into Iraq, into Jordan, into Turkey.

That's the best we can do right now and wait for circumstances to change.

AMANPOUR: Do you think this diplomatic initiative is going to work?

And will President Obama, by what he's done and the way he's delivered his speech in his address to the nation, will he then be able to resort to a military strike if necessary down the line if this diplomacy simply is a stalling tactic and not true?

Christiane, first, I think we already have a success. Whatever happens next, we have the Russians and Iranians on record as saying that Syria should put its chemical weapons under international control. We have Syria acknowledging it has such weapons and it is prepared to do so.

So whatever happens or doesn't happen, I think on the international level, this has been a significant positive step towards reinforcing the international position that chemical weapons should never be used.

AMANPOUR: Ambassador Ryan Crocker, thank you very much indeed for joining us with your unique insight.

CROCKER: Thank you, Christiane.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: But of course did the world implicitly enable this use of chemical weapons by not responding to the horrors of the 1980s, when Saddam Hussein gassed Iranians and unleashed poisonous chemicals on his own Kurdish population in the village of Halabja, killing thousands of them?

Our CNN cameraman, Rich Brooks, was an eyewitness, and he offers his riveting first-hand account of a chemical weapons attack when we return.

But before we take a break, just back in March this year on the 25th anniversary of the Halabja massacre, on this program we remembered the victims and the ominous implications for Syria. Take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: Today, Halabja's dead are remembered in monuments and memorials. But they cry out for more than tears. They want justice.

And meanwhile on Iraq's western border, another brutal regime, that of Bashar al-Assad of Syria, has stockpiled chemical weapons. Will he use them?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: That was in March. And now we know the answer. We'll be right back.

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AMANPOUR: And finally tonight, in his address to the nation, President Obama painted an agonizing picture of chemical warfare in Syria.

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BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The images from this massacre are sickening: men, women, children lying in rows, killed by poison gas; others foaming at the mouth, gasping for breath; a father clutching his dead children, imploring them to get up and walk.

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AMANPOUR: The words are powerful and yet not many outsiders have actually witnessed a chemical weapons attack.

Our own Rich Brooks is one of the few exceptions. Back in 1988, he brought his unflinching camera to the Kurdish village of Halabja, where Saddam Hussein unleashed a lethal chemical cocktail on his own people. He killed about 5,000 people and he left 10,000 more scarred for life.

Rich recorded that atrocity in unforgettable images that resonate especially today, as the world confronts the Assad regime's use of chemical weapons on innocent children. And he joins me now from Atlanta.

Rich, thank you for being with me. You're one of CNN's longest serving and most talented cameramen. So I'm really pleased to have you.

I want to know what it was like when you first went to Halabja.

What did you feel? What did you sense? What did you think when you got to this terrible, terrible scene?

RICH BROOKS, CNN PHOTOJOURNALIST: Well, we weren't sure what we were going to see exactly. But what I remember vividly was entering the village and just how still and silent it was. Initially, we saw birds on the ground and then we saw cattle and sheep. And then we turned a corner into a street that was just full of bodies.

And you've seen it before and the smell was overwhelming. And as we walked through there, you just couldn't believe the scope of what it was. And it was most likely the worst thing I've seen in my career.

AMANPOUR: Well, I was going to ask you, because you have covered so many wars and so much hell on this Earth.

What made it the worst thing that you'd ever seen? And it was before I was a correspondent; I didn't see that. But the images are seared into my mind and into anybody's mind.

What made it so bad?

BROOKS: Well, they're seared into my mind as well because these were civilians. These were women, children, older people; they were not combatants and they were just dead where they fell. They were in their houses, sitting on sofas, you know, dead, in the street. There's that image of the woman clutching her child, trying to take shelter in her house, I can imagine.

And recently on the attack of July 21st, there was an image I saw that just brought all those images back to me in such a way that I couldn't help but think of Halabja. The video of the animals piled high, and that's exactly what we saw in Halabja.

AMANPOUR: When you saw what was revealed finally in Syria after August 21st, you know, you say it brought all the memories of Halabja back, could you ever have imagined, after actually bearing witness to that attack in 1988, that this would happen again?

BROOKS: Well, it's hard to believe 25 years later that the world has seen this happen again. And I wonder if we are going to do anything because just a short 2.5 years after Halabja, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, as we all know and we know what happened after that.

But it's still unbelievable that these weapons are used; even the -- you know, somebody thinking about using them in such a way, because they do affect the civilian population much more so than the battlefield.

AMANPOUR: And so many people simply don't want to look. Tell me why you think it's important that you go there, that you take your camera and everybody else does?

BROOKS: Well, I think if journalists don't go and tell these stories, you know, now with the advent of the Internet and how quickly information travels, we don't always go there. But 1988, we had to go there to take these images and bring those pictures back and show the world.

And nowadays it happens so quickly and so should the response, I believe. people need to see this and we need to not sanitize it when it's aired on TV and let people know exactly what's going on.

AMANPOUR: You're absolutely right. Rich, thank you so much indeed for your special, special account. And you and we have kept the spotlight on.

And perhaps President Obama said it best in his speech last night, and I quote, "When dictators commit atrocities, they depend on the world to look the other way until those horrifying pictures fade from memory , but these things happened," he said. "The facts cannot be denied."

That's it for tonight's program. Meantime, you can always contact us at our website, amanpour.com. Thanks for watching and goodbye from New York.

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