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Amanpour

Syrian Chemical Weapons Report Controversy; Iranian Human Rights Lawyer Freed; No Tapering for the Fed; "The Story of the Jews"; A First for Iranian Women

Aired September 18, 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.

And as we come on air, there is breaking news from Iran, where a number of prisoners of conscience have been released today, including Nasrin Sotoudeh. She's a prominent Iranian human rights activist who was jailed in 2010. And we speak to her from Tehran in a moment.

But first this week started with the U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon saying the evidence is indisputable.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BAN KI-MOON, U.N. SECRETARY-GENERAL: The report makes for chilling reading. Chemical weapons were used on a relatively large scale in the Ghouta area of Damascus on August the 21st, causing numerous casualties ,particularly among civilians.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: But as the week winds down, Russia is raising its doubts again, taking the extraordinary step of slamming the very investigation that it had demanded the U.N. conduct, the very findings that Russia said the world must wait for before deciding on military action.

Well, the world has held off on military action ,but on a visit to Damascus today, Russia's deputy foreign minister called the U.N. report "biased and distorted," and then the foreign minister himself, Sergey Lavrov, said that Moscow will present evidence they've received from the Syrian government which they claim proves that the opposition are behind the attack.

Now of course the United Nations report never laid blame at anyone's feet; that wasn't its mandate. It just confirmed that sarin was used.

So is Moscow disputing that conclusion? Or is it trying to muddy the waters by playing the blame game again? And what, if any, effect will Moscow's latest broadside have on actually implementing the deal that it reached along with the United States to corral and destroy the Assad regime's stockpile of chemical weapons?

And the clock is ticking. Assad has to present his inventory to the U.N. by Saturday.

Now Angela Kane is the U.N. disarmament chief. She was in Damascus leading that investigation into the August 21st attack. And she tells me that she stands by the credibility of her team's report.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: Angela Kane, welcome. Thank you for joining me.

ANGELA KANE, U.N. HIGH REPRESENTATIVE FOR DISARMAMENT AFFAIRS: Thank you for having me here.

AMANPOUR: You know, it's very important that we actually talk to you today because Moscow is now starting to raise doubts about the credibility of your investigation. The deputy foreign minister has said in Damascus today that the Syrian government has provided them with new information, and they call your investigation distorted and biased and not based on enough information.

What is your reaction to that?

KANE: I think the report stands for itself. It is a very sound, scientific report; it has 40 pages. It is buttressed by scientific evaluation, by diagnosis and by assessments. And so therefore I have not heard any criticism of the findings themselves.

The findings show that there is use of chemical weapons, what the inspectors found on the ground.

AMANPOUR: Well, then, let me ask you why then would this deputy foreign minister say that they're disappointed at the approach taken by the secretariat and the inspectors?

The report was prepared, quote, "selectively and incompletely, without receiving a full picture of what's happening; therefore, it's impossible to call the nature of the conclusions anything but politicized, preconceived and biased."

I mean, these are extraordinary allegations.

KANE: Christiane, I think what we need to remember, that this is a partial report; it is only a report on the incidents that happened in the early morning hours of 21 August. The original agreement that the secretary- general has with Syria is that a complete report will be delivered very shortly from now.

There will be additional allegations that will be investigated. The team actually was in the country at the time of 21 August, so they were already investigating these additional allegations that have been brought forward, including by the Syrian government themselves.

They were the first ones to raise the flag and said we would like you to investigate an allegation of chemical weapons use on the 19th of March. And that's actually what the team was in the country for, plus additional allegations. So they need to complete the whole report.

AMANPOUR: Well, let's just be clear: the chemical attack that they referred to on the 19th of March was something that also the opposition had complained about. There was a lot of reporting about that chemical attack.

KANE: The secretary-general received from a fairly large number of member states allegations of chemical attacks throughout Syria. Khan Al-Assal in near Aleppo was the first one; there were subsequent allegations that were brought forward by member states.

And the secretary-general's mechanism, on which this investigation is based, actually asks for him to investigate all credible allegations of chemical weapons use.

So the team was engaged in the first investigations when the 21 August incident happened. And because of the outcry and the clamor, he decided that he would release a report only on the 21st August incident, but would very shortly provide a longer report that would include all the other allegations that are to be investigated.

AMANPOUR: Let me ask you, your report did not specifically lay the blame at anybody's feet regarding the August 21st attack. Yet there were parts of the report that talked about surface-to-surface missiles, that talked about rockets and rocket fragments that had been tested and proven positive for sarin.

They talked about, you know, the human tissue and other such samples. People came to the conclusion that this was something only the Assad regime could have.

Was that a fair conclusion to come to?

KANE: What the mandate of the secretary-general's mechanism is not to draw conclusions, but to put the scientific facts in front of the world community. We have said from the first day that the general assembly, the member states gave a mandate to the secretary-general to investigate the use, but not to make a determination who used it.

I think when you look at the reports, people draw their own conclusions. But the secretary-general nor the inspectors will draw any conclusions from the reports.

AMANPOUR: And do you believe that there's any point in having such a report without drawing conclusions, without apportioning culpability?

KANE: Christiane, this is, I must tell you, the very first time that you have had an investigation of chemical weapon use within such a short time and in such a comprehensive manner. The mechanism has been used only twice before with inconclusive results, with very short reports.

And so this is unprecedented in terms of the completeness, in terms of the access to the area, in terms of the access to the -- to the victims, in terms of the biomedical and also the environmental samples, like the rocket fragments that you mentioned. It's absolutely unprecedented.

AMANPOUR: Angela Kane, thank you very much for joining me.

KANE: Thank you.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: And you can see more of that interview on the website at amanpour.com. You can hear Angela Kane's dramatic telling of how difficult it was physically to just do that investigation, plus what possible evidence could Moscow want to turn over to the U.N. to prove its case. You'll hear what she has to say about that.

And now we turn to the other big story we're following: good news out of Iran today. Human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh walked out of prison a free woman. Sotoudeh was jailed in 2010 for, quote, "acting against the national security," when she defended Iranians who were detained following the disputed 2009 elections that brought Mahmoud Ahmadinejad back to power.

The news of her release surprised everybody, not least Nasrin herself, who didn't even know that she was actually being freed until she was driven through the gate of that notorious Eben Prison. Indeed, the president's office, President Hassan Rouhani's office, retweeted the report of her release, and this happens on the eve of his visit to New York for the United Nations general assembly.

I spoke to Ms. Sotoudeh moments ago, just hours after she was freed and reunited with her husband and her two children.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: Nasrin Sotoudeh, welcome and congratulations on being free.

How do you feel? How does it feel?

NASRIN SOTOUDEH, HUMAN RIGHTS LAWYER: Yes, I'm free from prison today and I'm glad. But I'm worried for my friends in prison, (inaudible), political activists and I know they are prisoners, human rights activists there.

AMANPOUR: Yes.

SOTOUDEH: Especially attorneys.

AMANPOUR: How did you get home? Who took you home? What did they tell you?

SOTOUDEH: They told me, "You are free." And they don't give any sign from me.

AMANPOUR: Are you free forever? Or are you free just for a few days?

SOTOUDEH: Yes, yes.

AMANPOUR: Free forever?

SOTOUDEH: Yes, free forever.

AMANPOUR: That's fantastic. Are you allowed to continue practicing as a lawyer?

SOTOUDEH: Yes, surely.

AMANPOUR: Even though the initial sentence, when they convicted you, they said you would not be allowed to practice your profession as a lawyer for 20 years?

But you think you can continue to defend human rights cases?

SOTOUDEH: I hope that my government a statement man (ph) don't have any unlawful acts. So I continue my lawful activities.

AMANPOUR: Do you think this is a new day for Iran?

SOTOUDEH: It is hard -- it is hard to say new day because we have many political prisoners in jail. But I hope if there be a new day.

AMANPOUR: You hope it will be a new day.

Well, Nasrin Sotoudeh, we do, too; we are pleased that you're out of jail, along with some other colleagues. We're mindful that there are still many, many people in jail in Iran. But thank you very much for joining us on your first day of freedom.

And even as there are these little glimmers of change in Iran, important glimmers and talks to take chemical weapons off the table in Syria, even as those talks continue, the so-called conventional warfare there in Syria grinds on, forcing the opposition to seek U.N. conventional means -- rather unconventional means -- of fighting back against the Assad regime.

This member of the Free Syrian Army is using an iPad to help aim a homemade mortar in a firefight on the outskirts of Damascus.

And after a break, we'll take the long view of Syria and the region through the eyes of renowned historian Simon Schama, a perspective that dates back 3,000 years, when we return.

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RICHARD QUEST, CNN HOST: Hello, I'm Richard Quest at CNN in New York with the news of the Federal Reserve's latest meeting. The Federal Reserve has decided not to begin tapering its bond purchases at this latest September meeting.

In an announcement just a few moments ago, the Fed now says that the U.S. economy remains very weak and the committee decided to await more evidence before adjusting the pace of its purchases. The Federal Reserve, the open market committee, has decided to continue purchasing U.S. bonds at the rate of $85 billion a month, $40 billion in long-term -- in treasuries and $45 billion in mortgage-backed securities. Now this is an extraordinary result, since most of the market had been expecting that the Fed would start the tapering process at this meeting.

And if we look at the Dow Jones industrials, you'll see exactly how the market has reacted.

The Dow is now up 106 points. But focus closely on the red to the left and the little smidgen of green to the right, because the market had been down 30-40 odd points throughout the session. And then we get this announcement of no tapering. And the reason the market likes it, because more cheap money will clearly be being pumped into the economy for the foreseeable future.

So the Fed decides tapering will not take place now. Everyone knows that tapering is on the way. But with the U.S. economy still in a weakened position, the Fed has decided now is not the time to begin cutting back. I'm Richard Quest in New York.

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AMANPOUR: And welcome back to the program. It's an old story that in the Middle East Jews and Muslims sometimes have struggled to live side by side. But it is not as old as you might think.

Noted historian Simon Schama explains in his new book and documentary, "The Story of the Jews."

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SIMON SCHAMA, BRITISH HISTORIAN (voice-over): In our own age of bitter hatreds, it's not so easy to believe, but over 1,000 years ago, Cairo was home to one of the most thriving Jewish communities in the world. And that story was repeated across the eastern Mediterranean and in Arabia itself, the birthplace of a powerful new monotheistic faith, Islam.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: Schama's story of the Jews spans thousands of years and thousands of miles, as it expands the focus far beyond the well-known tragic stories of the Holocaust and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I asked him about his latest project, as well as his take on Syria, another place where Jews once thrived. He had joined me earlier this week in the studio.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: Simon Schama, welcome.

SCHAMA: Thank you.

AMANPOUR: Thank you for joining me.

SCHAMA: Pleasure.

AMANPOUR: So the book, the film series on television, "The Story of the Jews," I was staggered by the sheer exuberance of it, the enthusiasm, the sort of joyfulness of the pieces that I have seen so far.

And it is actually in stark contradiction to what one reviewer basically wrote, "Jewish history is not all a lachrymose chronicle of persecution," and that you had done a splendid job of shattering certain stereotypes.

Was that your aim?

SCHAMA: Yes, it was. I mean, it seemed to me particularly to the non- Jewish world, Jews are mostly defined and Jewish history through the frame of Auschwitz and the Holocaust and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Now you can't run away from that, but that of course is not the whole story.

And it seems to me that if you actually feel you might be in trouble every so often, you learn to live the other side of life, the exuberant, life- hungry side of it. Part of the other reason why I should do this series is to make connections really between the whole long story of the Jews.

The Jews have not lived separately, you know, until they've been forced to by other people or their own sense of nervousness, as with the security fence in Israel has made them to do that.

The default mode for Jewish life is not to self-ghettoize. So Jewish history has been American history and Russian history and British history and French history and German history. The film you saw, I was very concerned not to predetermine it. It ends in a sad place in the Holocaust Memorial.

But the thrust of that program said, what one place where it looked as though everything was going to turn out fine?. Here it is. It's called Germany. And that's the important thing to do because people who have come to the Jewish story are -- who are not Jews, are nervous. They're nervous of either a kind of Jewish truculence or they're nervous of patronizing victims of the Holocaust.

And part of the series states stop being so nervous. We're all in this together.

AMANPOUR: I was struck by what you've said in some of the program, that this is a story about tolerance.

SCHAMA: Yes.

AMANPOUR: About learning to live together and to share, and the historic figures that you profile there, Jewish figures, who actually went against the grain, and wanted to have tolerance between different religions.

SCHAMA: Right, right. The Jews have lived this issue of the difficulty, the pain of existing with people with whom they don't agree about fundamental principles more extremely than everybody else. They've not had a unique experience. They've lived it, of course, with such extraordinary intensity.

So that is, you know, the sense where you can find someone like Moses Mendelssohn in the 18th century, the first Jewish intellectual celebrity, who's a religious Jew, but his best friend is a non-religious, extraordinarily kind of rational non-Jewish figure; that seemed very important.

I say in that film, hanging out with people who are not your same faith seems so obvious now. But it was completely revolutionary then.

AMANPOUR: You talk about Syria in some of your programs. There's beautiful scenes of Jewish life in Syria. And obviously, you know, and actually quite a lot of Jewish life in the Middle East that actually was quite flourishing, for instance, in Egypt at a certain point in history.

And I guess today, when we have the Syria story and we see the, you know, the terrible suffering, I wonder what you think when you see the realpolitik which has been victorious in this sort of arms control deal between Syria now and the United States and --

SCHAMA: Well, I myself am terribly conflicted about that because, on the one hand, you can't go through a long project like this in which the relationship between ethics and power is at the heart of the modern history. It still haunts Israeli life.

It's why a lot of my friends who are writing the stories of the Jews who are novelists, like David Grossman, are kind of haunted about whether or not actually ethics comes first and power comes second, or whether we have an obligation to think about our survival.

But there's the other Schama, like, you know, the other Christiane, who knows, you know, who's got his -- what's the 500th anniversary that's most important this year, Young Amanpour? It's Machiavelli's "The Prince."

And Machiavelli, who looks weirdly like Vladimir Putin, same skinny face and beady little eyes, actually, they could have been brothers, Machiavelli and Putin, Machiavelli's point was out of unvirtuous calculations, things for the good of all can arise.

So it's a bit much, a bit rich when Vladimir Putin takes to lecturing America in "The New York Times." He is, after all, an oligarchical, self- perpetuating, time-serving bully in Russia. But even those --he's perfectly like Cesare Borgia. He's capable of delivering some things you cannot but say is for the good of this particular misery.

AMANPOUR: Of course. But then when you talk about humanity, the humanitarian suffering will continue because it is just an arms control agreement. If it works, great; but it won't stop the war.

So what do you say, having, you know, done this incredible history, to people about their apparent disaffection? They can't be bothered, as the saying goes now in England, the fact that publics are so against helping out those who are being killed --

SCHAMA: It'll come back to haunt us. It came back to haunt us in the 1930s when, you know, I mean once they get -- one scene not in the film, "The King's Speech," was Neville Chamberlain on the balcony of Buckingham Palace, waving his disgusting little piece of paper with thousands and thousands of people cheering him on.

That came back to haunt the sense in which the most important thing is our own self-protection. Czechoslovakia, a faraway place of which we know little, nothing, whatever it was, that is it was a mistake.

But again, it's very -- I won't say it's the Jewish position, but it is a Jewish position really to want to do more than wring your hands. Of course in the back of our minds is the sense in which I say on Program Five, it's not what the Nazis did to the Jews that makes a case for Israel. It's what everybody else failed to do.

AMANPOUR: Your film also is a story of survival of the Jews, despite the considerable odds.

Does that have a special resonance today, do you think?

SCHAMA: Well, I think it does. The peculiarity of that Jewish story is that you think you have to survive through the usual markers, which will give you power -- armies, states, institutions and territory. And that was all ripped away from the Jews. And all they had was a sense of their portable memory, written in the Bible, but in many -- in the Talmud and many other books, too.

So in some sense, that's why we began the whole series actually with Sigmund Freud, who came to realize that whatever else happened to the Jews, the life of the mind, the life of the spirit, the life of reflection was not just a kind of sentimental luxury. It was actually the key to endurance.

AMANPOUR: So your series is airing now on the BBC. Your book is out in the U.K. It'll be airing in the spring and the book will come out in the United States in the spring.

What do you want the takeaway to be, if I can be so crass? What is the takeaway that you want people to really hang onto (inaudible) in the book?

(CROSSTALK)

SCHAMA: I think the work of toleration is very, very hard and the peace of the world depends on it, almost as much as thinking about the fate of the planet, the ecology of human beliefs.

And what happened to the Jews has happened in other measure to other people, it's that we've lit it very dramatically; we've written about it. We've made it the heart of our story. But it's the celebration and the lament.

AMANPOUR: Simon Schama, fantastic. Thank you very much indeed.

SCHAMA: It's a pleasure, Christiane.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: And as we've seen, the one constant in the Middle East is change. That seems to be especially true today in Iran. And after the break, the story of another remarkable woman.

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AMANPOUR: A final thought tonight, is it a new day in Iran? Well, it is too soon to tell. But something's dawning. The new president, Hassan Rouhani, is certainly sending some signals. We've just spoken to the human rights lawyer, Nasrin Sotoudeh, who today was just released after three years in the notorious Eben Prison in Tehran.

And now a 24-year-old triathlete, Shirin Gerami, has become the first Iranian woman to compete in the sports world chairmanship triathlon. She actually lives in London, but she wanted to compete under the Iranian flag. And when she swam, ran and cycled in full Islamic dress here in London on Sunday, as the first Iranian triathlete, I met Shirin and her bike today in London's Regents Park, and I asked her why she did this and what about the challenges of just getting to the start line.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: How difficult was it competing in the full garb? What did you have to do that was different than the other competitors?

SHIRIN GERAMI, TRIATHLETE: In terms of different, the only part for me was kind of the swim part. So walking up into the lake until I got into the water, I had a poncho on.

AMANPOUR: A poncho to cover you up?

GERAMI: Yes. So when I got in the water, and that's when my figure didn't show any more, I took the poncho off, gave it to the referee and then I was like any other competitor in their wet suits.

AMANPOUR: On Twitter, there's been a lot of reaction, most of it positive, some of it negative. People have said, listen, it's all well and good for you, Shirin Gerami, but what about all the other Iranian women who haven't been able to do this?

And what about a country which some people are saying is still stuck in the Dark Ages while the world is moving on? What do you say about that kind of criticism?

GERAMI: Well, I have been the first and I feel very privileged at being the first person. But I went willingly and I went willingly to -- and asked to represent Iran in the garment that is appropriate to Iran.

And I think anyone else (inaudible) a triathlon in the future, I hope it means that they can willingly come and they can also willingly compete. And therefore it's not something that's exclusive to me, but it's exclusive to any woman who wants to -- not only the Iranians but any other person who wants to compete in covered garb.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: Imagine a world where young women like Shirin Gerami are the norm and not the exception. And imagine a world where more women like Nasrin Sotoudeh and more men, all the prisoners of conscience, are no longer in jail but are free.

That's it for our program tonight. Thanks for watching. And goodbye from London.

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