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Amanpour

Israel: Only Deeds Count; Syrians Desperate for Food as War Rages On; Imagine a World

Aired September 20, 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: Hello, everyone, I'm Christiane Amanpour, and welcome to our special weekend edition of our program, where we bring you the big stories that we covered this week.

Now if all goes according to the agreement that's been hammered out by the Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov and the U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, Syria must disclosure the extent of its chemical weapons arsenal this very weekend.

But as the threat of an armed attack by the United States dissipates, it appears that once again Russia is building a stone wall of resistance on this matter, first denouncing the U.N. report on poison gas as distorted, then saying again that it will provide its own evidence handed over by none other than the Assad regime that it was the opposition that used chemical weapons on August 21st on that suburb outside Damascus.

This week the U.N. High Representative for Disarmament Affairs dismissed that criticism, and she told me that she stands by her team's rigorous report.

I also interviewed this week the Israeli cabinet minister Yair Lapid for the first official Israeli reaction to the Syria chemical weapons deal.

Lapid told me that while he has hopes for the diplomacy in Syria, only deeds count. The Israeli government has cautiously welcomed the proposal to disarm the chemical arsenal that sits right on its border. But even before this deal was struck, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had already taken military action in Syria without any of the fanfare that had surrounded a possible American attack.

This year Israel bombed convoys of conventional weapons that it suspected were being transferred from Syria to its enemy, Hezbollah, four times. Yair Lapid is a former journalist and a TV host. He's head of the moderate secular party which secured a surprise second place in this year's election. And he joined me this week from Tel Aviv.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: Welcome to the program and thanks for joining me.

YAIR LAPID, ISRAELI FINANCE MINISTER: Thank you for having me, Christiane. I'm happy to be here.

AMANPOUR: Well, let me ask you first about your reaction to the international plan between the United States and Russia to seize Syria's chemical weapons and destroy them.

Does that satisfy you? Does that satisfy Israel?

LAPID: Well, it's too early to tell. I mean, I think we have just proved again, the international community has just proved again that if you want to negotiate, you'll better have a big stick in your hand or, in this case, a big Tomahawk in your hand. And then you can negotiate. This is -- I mean, it's the Middle East; you have to have sticks with the carrots.

It's too early to say if this will succeed. What we need is to fork (ph) all chemical weapons to be removed from Syria. When this will happen , I will tell you it's a great success. Until this is happening, we're still looking at it.

AMANPOUR: So you talk about the big stick. So are you satisfied that the United States will keep the threat of force on the table? Obviously Secretary Kerry has briefed Prime Minister Netanyahu about the plan.

You're satisfied that that stick will remain there?

LAPID: Well, I think it was proven once and once again that unless there is a credible threat, the -- all the negotiation are becoming -- are just empty words. So the fact that this is still on the table and this time this is agreed upon with Russia and the United States, is a good thing and essential for the progress of all this process.

We need to have -- I'm telling you, this is not over. It won't be over until all weapons of mass destruction will be out of Syria. Then we will know this whole move has succeeded.

AMANPOUR: Obviously, there are huge challenges ahead.

What is the most important issue for Israel right now over this Syria crisis?

LAPID: Well, I think there are two issues. One issue is the fact that I think no country in the world wants to know that they have on their border a regime, a dictatorship which is dangerous in the middle of a civil war and willing to use weapons of mass destruction. And we want to have those removed. So this is number one.

Number two is of course everybody's looking of the kind of signals the international community and especially the United States are signaling us and especially to Iran. Iran also have to know that the word, the word, the international community, the United States will not be silent when regimes and dictatorships are gathering weapons of mass destruction and while intending to use them.

AMANPOUR: Mr. Lapid, what do you make, then , of the new Iranian president who has been very vocal and public about wanting to have a foreign policy that is more moderate -- those are his words -- less extremist -- those are his words -- and also willing to talk about the nuclear program?

Does that -- I mean, are you eager to see what he has to say? Or are you just dismissing it as just more rhetoric?

LAPID: I'm happy for a different vocabulary. But I want to see what's happening.

Since this president came into power, since Rouhani came into power in Iran, they've already built 7,000 new centrifuges; 1,000 of them are from the upgraded use kind of machinery.

So when this will stop, when the reactor cone will be closed, when they will stop enriching uranium, when they take off the uranium, enriched uranium, they already have, then we can discuss the fact whether we can all hold hands and sing hallelujah together.

So again, I'm happy to listen to any new music coming from Iran. But this has to be backed by -- not only by words but also by deeds.

AMANPOUR: So hallelujah, new music, must have been interesting to your ears then, over Rosh Hashanah, when the president's office tweeted, "A happy new year to Jews all over the world," and when the foreign minister himself tweeted, "A happy new year to Jews all over the world."

LAPID: Well, of course I'm -- I'd rather have people tweeting me happy Rosh Hashanah or Happy New Year, instead of tweeting that they are, I don't know, Holocaust deniers as it was before. But we have to be more careful than that.

As I was saying, is this the real thing? I don't want to be sour about everything. But is this the real thing? Because if deeds contradicts the words, then we have to believe the deeds, not the words. I'm sure you'll agree with me on this.

AMANPOUR: Let's now talk about the Middle East peace process between Israel and the Palestinians. Secretary Kerry has just been there; you know that he has taken it on, maybe as a personal mission to try to get this peace process back on track. Tzipi Livni has been named the chief negotiator for the Israeli government. She's the justice minister.

And yet there seems to be deep pessimism that this idea of a two-state solution may be an idea whose time has come and gone.

What do you think right now?

LAPID: Well, I like low expectations. I want to keep low expectations. The best things are happening when we have low expectations and in a way, I wish this to continue a little while at least because I think we should make great -- good use of the -- of the time.

There's a timeframe of nine months, and I think we should make good use of this timeframe because this is also an adjusting period for everybody, as I think that whatever the agreement will be, it will need an adjusting period in terms of implementing it.

So the fact that everybody is going around and telling each other, you know, this is not going to work, this is not going to happen, is actually a good thing for everybody who feels the way -- strongly the way I do, that the two-state solution is the only solution where we should progress more in this peace process.

On the details of this, we have all agreed upon the concept in which Secretary Kerry is the only one who's talking to the press about the nitty- gritty of the process, so we're going to leave it this way.

AMANPOUR: You know, you are minister of finance. And as we look at Israel's economy, it's obviously done a lot better in these crisis years than many other economies.

When it comes, though, to the central bank, to the Israel central bank, you and the prime minister have failed to put in place a new governor, since Stanley Fischer stepped down in June.

Why? What's taking so long? Several candidates were -- didn't work out.

Why can't you get that act together?

LAPID: Well, this is a fine example to the fact that, you know, comedies are just tragedies in fast forward. We have -- we have managed to choose two candidates who turn out to be the wrong candidates to -- and decided to withdraw.

And now it's going to take a few days or weeks more, and we're going to have a government of central bank. We have the right people in the right place. We just -- I mean, this is folklore and it's colorful enough to be interesting.

AMANPOUR: OK. Well, who do you think will be the central bank governor? Give me another name.

LAPID: Well, it's -- we have a few names on the table and we will discuss this.

(LAUGHTER)

LAPID: Well, this -- I'm sorry, but this has become the Holy Grail of all economical reporters in Israel. So we're not selling this yet.

AMANPOUR: Oh, my goodness. OK.

Well, how about --

LAPID: But it was a nice try.

AMANPOUR: It was a nice try.

Well, then let me close by asking you and turning the tables a little bit on you.

When you had your television show, you would end each episode with a quiz. And you would ask each and every one of your guests, Israeli or from other places, what symbolizes Israel for you?

So what does symbolize Israel for you today?

LAPID: Well, I'm going to choose the corniest answer that everybody gave me, which is my children. I have three children and whenever I look at them, I see the reason why is it that I'm doing what I'm doing.

You know what? Part of the things that happened to me in the move from journalism to the public arena is I lost most of, if not all my cynicism. I'm -- I mean, I was -- everybody's a bit cynic when he's in the media. I'm not any more.

AMANPOUR: Yair Lapid, thank you very much indeed for joining me.

LAPID: Thank you.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: And if you were to ask what symbolizes Syria today, one could also say it's the children. As President Obama noted in his chemical weapons speech when he described the horrifying image of a father clutching his dead children, imploring them to wake up again.

The United Nations says that almost 7,000 children have been killed in Syria's brutal civil war. More than 2 million people have been forced to flee as refugees and hunger is widespread. In a moment, I'll speak to the executive director of the World Food Programme, who's on a mission to feed every hungry Syrian, man, woman and child. We'll be back in a moment.

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AMANPOUR: Welcome back to the program.

Syria's health care system is at breaking point, according to dozens of the world's top doctors, who are sounding the alarm today in an open letter to the medical journal, "Lancet."

The civil war which has ravaged the country has turned hospitals into war zones and medical staffers into targets. The few hospitals that are functioning are flooded with the war wounded. And now more Syrians are in need of medical help for another problem. They are desperate for food. One little boy told CNN recently that he can't even remember the last time he ate bread.

The U.N. World Food Programme's mission is to get food into the stomachs of every hungry, needy Syrian, including those who have fled the country. But there are, of course, major obstacles, not least the very safety of the humanitarian workers and the desperate need to raise funds from a war-weary world.

It's Ertharin Cousin's job to leap those high hurdles, because she's the executive director of the WFP, and she recently came back from Syria and the surrounding countries. She joined me here in the studio to describe just what she's facing.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN HOST: Ertharin Cousin, welcome. Thank you for joining me.

ERTHARIN COUSIN, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF THE UNITED NATIONS WORLD FOOD PROGRAMME: Thank you.

AMANPOUR: You have a huge challenge. Here you are in the Middle East's biggest refugee crisis in memory. In fact, the U.N. has called this whole humanitarian crisis one of the worst since World War II.

COUSIN: Well, there are 6.8 million people that the U.N. has identified as being in need. We're reaching 3 million of those this month with a goal of reaching 4 million by the end of October.

AMANPOUR: What happens to the others who you can't reach?

COUSIN: The challenge is many times those people are without assistance. They go hungry or they leave the country, which is why we're seeing increasing numbers of refugees. UNHCR has now documented 2 million refugees who've -- Syrians who have left the country to find assistance.

AMANPOUR: You're trying to get basically cash-strapped, war-weary, fatigued nations to give you more money.

COUSIN: That's our other big challenge is that this crisis costs us $30 million per week to deliver the assistance to the 3 million people inside and the 1.2 million people outside. As we move to increasing to 4 million people by the end of October and 2 million outside, it goes up to $42 million per week.

AMANPOUR: Paint a picture of how dire it is on a daily survival level.

COUSIN: I meet mothers who are afraid for the safety of their children. You have children -- you talk about being war-weary, you have children who have become accustomed to the sounds of shelling outside their bedroom windows. You have mothers who have moved their children three and four times.

They've left their homes; they're living in churches and abandoned schools and old businesses with many, many other families. They're sleeping on floors; they're -- and then they're depending on us to get the food there.

AMANPOUR: So we have this map, which shows that practically every single place in Syria where there is desperate need.

Do you find a difference between access from one side or other of the conflict?

COUSIN: We reach all 14 governorates, whether it's regime-held or opposition-held. It's the conflict areas where we have challenges, where there's ongoing fighting.

AMANPOUR: And when you look into the future, do you see the new political deal that's underway to try to secure the worst kind of weapons, weapons of mass destruction -- but this war is going to go on. When you look into that abyss, do you think that, you know, you're going to run out? I mean, this could be a forever situation in Syria for you.

COUSIN: What we deal with is lack of a political solution. The response, the answer to the humanitarian challenge is not for us to be perfect humanitarian service deliverers. It's to find a good sustainable political solution to the challenges in Syria. That's what the people there need.

We deal with the failed -- the consequences of a failed political solution.

AMANPOUR: And you have said that food security is security.

Tell me what that actually means to you.

COUSIN: It means that you -- when people are hungry, when a mother is -- or a father is facing a child that they can't feed, you can't ask that family to lay down their arms. They -- because they won't, because the one thing a family is going to fight for is the ability to save their children. And we know that food is required to save a child's life.

And so providing the food assistance that's necessary is a big part of ensuring that the parties will continue to work towards a sustainable political solution.

AMANPOUR: And you've just come back from Yemen, which is another place at war and conflict, where the U.S. is also heavily involved there. You feed even more people in Yemen than you do in Syria.

COUSIN: The interesting situation is in Syria, before the crisis began, we had a very small program in Syria. Syria was a bread -- a --

(CROSSTALK)

COUSIN: -- it was the breadbasket for the region.

And in Yemen, on the other hand, you've had chronic poverty and chronic hunger for a very long time.

When I spoke to the president in Yemen, he told me his number one problem was not the political situation, it was poverty.

AMANPOUR: And it's extraordinary how many babies are dying because they're fed water when they're born. Tell me why that is.

COUSIN: In Yemen, there are 10 million people who are food insecure. Fifty percent of the babies are chronically malnourished and suffer from chronic malnutrition, OK? That challenge is on -- it's longstanding. And if you had gone to Yemen in 1970, 30 percent of the children were chronically malnourished.

So it's not just a problem of poverty, it's a problem of culture, of knowing what to feed your child, recognizing that in a place where you don't have access to clean water, giving a newborn baby water as women do in Yemen is -- will create diarrhea and --

AMANPOUR: That's deadly.

COUSIN: It's deadly.

AMANPOUR: Often.

COUSIN: It's often deadly.

AMANPOUR: And is that a problem, because what we hear so much is that, you know, girls as young as 8 are getting married in Yemen.

In other words, the people who actually have babies are barely educated.

Is that right?

COUSIN: That's absolutely right. The minister of education told me that 76 percent of those who are not attending school are girls. We know that a longer a girl stays in school, the healthier their child will be; she'll have fewer children. She'll have children later in life.

When girls are having children as young as they are in Yemen, with as many children as they're having, then the possibility of that child suffering from chronic malnourishment is exponentially higher than it is in other parts of the world.

AMANPOUR: Ertharin Cousin, in Syria and Yemen and all other places you do such great work, thank you very much for joining me.

COUSIN: Thank you for this opportunity. (END VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: And after a break, a more hopeful view from a country that poses even bigger challenges for the West. There are glimmers of change in Iran as a very different president prepares to step onto the world stage at the United Nations. We'll be back in a moment.

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AMANPOUR: And finally, at the end of this week, imagine a world where a new day dawns in Iran. The newly elected president, Hassan Rouhani, is getting ready to come to the United States, where he'll address the U.N. General Assembly in New York. And if his recent statements are any indication, it'll be a sharp departure from his predecessor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and his controversial, antagonistic diatribes from that podium.

The new president is certainly sending all the right signals. This week it was revealed that he's exchanged letters with President Obama. It's the first direct contact between the presidents of these two countries in over 30 years.

And Rouhani also tweets -- or at least his office does. He sent New Year's greetings to all the Jews around the world on Rosh Hashanah and he tweeted this message of congratulations to the newest Iranian female athlete. She's a young triathlete who represented Iran and all its women in the world championships here in London.

And yet, of course, actions speak louder than any tweets, any words or any letters. And this week, the gates of Tehran's notorious Eben Prison opened for Nasrin Sotoudeh. She's the human rights lawyer who's been in prison under the Ahmadinejad regime and she's been reunited with her family now after three years behind bar. Nasrin Sotoudeh spoke to us from her home just after winning her freedom.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

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

How does it feel?

NASRIN SOTOUDEH, HUMAN RIGHTS LAWYER: I'm free from prison today and I'm glad. But I'm worried for my friends in prison, bajaists (ph), 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 this will be a new day.

AMANPOUR: Thank you very much for joining us on your first day of freedom.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: And so imagine a world where more men and more women like Nasrin Sotoudeh, all prisoners of conscience, are no longer jailed in Iran, but are free.

That's it for our program this weekend. You can always contact us at our website, amanpour.com. Thanks for watching. And goodbye from London.

END