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Amanpour

Crimea: Signed, Sealed and Delivered; Religious Forces Unite; Imagine a World

Aired March 18, 2014 - 15:00   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. Tonight, Crimea signed, sealed and delivered to Russia, the West refuses to recognize the new borders that President Putin has drawn, but he seems to be playing for his place in history.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

VLADIMIR PUTIN, PRESIDENT OF RUSSIA (through translator): In our hearts, we know Crimea always has been and always will remain an inalienable part of Russia.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: But a few hours later, a dueling claim from Ukraine's interim president, Oleksandr Turchynov:

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OLEKSANDR TURCHYNOV, INTERIM UKRAINIAN PRESIDENT (through translator): Crimea has been and will be part of our country. This is the position of the Ukrainians and all civilized countries of the world.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: So the tension is clear and the danger was mounting, even as Russia's rubber-stamp parliament applauded and gave standing ovations to Putin and Crimea's new leaders.

As the signs on Crimea's parliament were being changed, shooting erupted at a military base near the capital, Simferopol. One Ukrainian officer was killed and another was wounded. And now, for the first time, the new interim Ukrainian government has authorized its soldiers to use their weapons. So could these be the first sparks to light a wider Ukrainian fire? The British foreign secretary, William Hague, says he sees no sign of Russia ending its military adventures.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WILLIAM HAGUE, FOREIGN SECRETARY OF GREAT BRITAIN: Given that Russia still maintains it has the right to intervene militarily anywhere on Ukrainian soil, there is a grave risk that we have not seen the worst of this crisis.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: And so what will Putin's next move be? And what can Ukraine do about it?

For that, I'm joined now by the Ukrainian political leader, Petro Poroshenko from Kiev. He's the front-runner in the upcoming elections, a billionaire business man and a former foreign minister.

Mr. Poroshenko, welcome. Thank you for joining me tonight.

Can I ask you, do you believe that Ukrainian territory is -- ?

PETRO POROSHENKO, INDEPENDENT UKRAINIAN MP: Thank you very much indeed, Christiane.

AMANPOUR: -- is threatened?

Do you believe that Ukraine is further threatened?

Thank you very much for the question, Christiane. I strongly believe that this is not only Ukrainian territory, is now threatened, I think after today's events and what happened today in Crimea, when so-called cold period of the war is finished and we have the first officer who's killed and the two more is injured, is the means that the whole system of the European and global security is finished.

And all the efforts we undertake with the U.N. Security Council through the OECD, through the European Union, a direct negotiation, is demonstrated, that this is not stopped. Their aggression and this is not safe, the life of Ukrainian military officer.

AMANPOUR: Well, those are strong words and I see some strong criticism. What is it that you think, then, that is going to stop anymore military moved into Ukraine?

POROSHENKO: Yes, we understand that we have this danger. And today, the Ukrainian armed forces are in the complete readiness to reject the -- any attack of the aggressor. And we give the -- our general staff and minister of defense give the right for Ukrainian officer and soldiers to use the weapon to defend themselves and to defend Ukrainian territory.

Can you imagine would we speak like that in the 21st century, in the center of Europe, between the two countries, Ukraine and Russia, even one month ago, anybody cannot imagine anything like that. Today, we understand that the new system, new approach should be undertaken. And we absolutely sure that the new treaty for the security, new version of the Budapest nuclear memorandum should be developed. And the possibilities of the United States and United Kingdom as a guarantee for the Ukraine, which voluntarily rejected from the third-world nuclear arsenal should be renegotiated. And we should present absolutely new system of security in Europe, in the world.

AMANPOUR: Are you asking for your nuclear arsenal back?

POROSHENKO: Not at all. We are responsible politicians. And Ukraine is a peaceful country. But we are now under aggression, more than -- more than 2 million Ukrainian population is on the occupied territory. More than 700,000 of Ukrainian, Crimean Tartars, Ukrainian military personnel, is now under occupation and we don't know how -- in how big danger is their lives and their securities.

And we undertake that we should rethink the global system of the security. And Ukrainian should propose absolutely new concept of our security. And we undertake that today our speaker of the parliament, acting president, prime minister, parliament of Ukraine and the whole Ukrainian people are ready to undertake the very serious step to guarantee the security of our country.

And we think that the negotiation and absolutely active steps, which now demonstrate the whole world, after the aggression, should bring the situation to the following day. Crimea should be deoccupied. Crimea, all the time, would be Ukrainian. And the situation we bring now, that Russia, the Russian Federation, one of the leaders of the world and the member of the U.N. Security Council, to the global isolation.

And I think that we should find out the way, the peaceful solution from this situation. And from day to day, less and less hope left for the solution.

AMANPOUR: One of the ways to achieve that kind of solution would to be have negotiations with the Russians, with the Russian leadership. President Obama called for that yesterday.

Are you having any conversations at all with Russian leaders? Are any members of the Ukrainian government?

POROSHENKO: Not at all. Can you imagine that we have a very deep crisis? We have a presence for more than two weeks, foreign troops on the Ukrainian territory in Crimea. And the Russian leadership is rejecting for any direct negotiation with any of Ukrainians representative of either the government, parliament, military forces, or minister of foreign affairs. And we are ready and we ask for the -- for the United States, for the European Union to arrange this negotiation.

And until today, we don't have any tiny sign for the rainiers (ph), from the Russian side to the direct negotiation. And this is the behavior of the aggressor. And we think that the arm of former diplomat, a former minister of foreign affairs and I think that it is absolutely irresponsible, this way of providing the relationship between Ukraine and Russia. And we demanding that immediately we start negotiation, Crimea will be deoccupied and those who's responsible for the victims, for killing of Ukrainian soldier, for Ukrainian officer, should be punished. And we demanding the independent investigation of that, because we have a feeling that we are at the beginning of the very dangerous conflict. And we should do our best to stop this process.

AMANPOUR: You talk about a future conflict. You've talked about Russia as the aggressor. I want to play for you a portion of what President Putin said in the Duma today, regarding fears of Russia going beyond Crimea into Ukraine proper.

Listen to what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PUTIN (through translator): Those who say that Russia is intimidating you, frightening you in other regions, we do not want to divide Ukraine. We do not need that as far as Crimea is concerned.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: So he's basically saying that there's no more military moves into Ukraine.

Do you believe that?

POROSHENKO: Look, several weeks ago, we have a guarantee that nothing happen with the Crimea. Several weeks ago, we heard that there is no any military presence of Russia in Ukrainian territory, including the Crimea.

So this is the -- this is the undermining any trust between the whole world and Russia. And we now should be responsible to renew this trust. And if we renew this trust, this is the one demand, deoccupying the Crimea and canceling what's happened today.

I think that, of the 20th of March, on the general assembly of the United Nations, we will see what is the whole world estimate the -- this aggression, this annexation of Ukrainian territory. And I think that the events which now take place in Crimea has united my country. We think that we are ready to defend our country. We are united and we are saying to the whole world for demonstration the solidarity with us.

Again, we're talking not about the Ukrainian security and not about the regional security. We're talking about the -- this last act of aggression is ruined the global architecture of the security. And we don't have any more, any system working. And we now should think about that, to create a new mechanism of the security, not to allow to repeat once again anyway in the world, including Europe, because now if under attack, can be any country of the European Union, including other parts of Ukraine. That's why we should think that it's never happened -- it can never happen again.

AMANPOUR: Mr. --

POROSHENKO: But we should -- the whole world should be united to stop and to clean Ukrainian territory.

AMANPOUR: Petro Poroshenko, thank you very much for joining me from Kiev.

And to that point, yesterday on this program, the NATO secretary general condemned Vladimir Putin's redrawing of borders, as he put it.

As Putin makes like Peter or Catherine the Great, we might forgive one defeated U.S. presidential candidate for saying, "I told you so." During the 2012 campaign, Republican Mitt Romney said this about Russia.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MITT ROMNEY, FORMER GOVERNOR OF MASSACHUSETTS: This is, without question, our number one geopolitical foe. They fight every cause for the world's worst actors.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: And for that warning at the time, he was mocked for being trapped in a Cold War time warp. And the current secretary of state, John Kerry, leapt at the chance to lampoon him back then.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN KERRY, SECRETARY OF STATE: Mitt, Mitt Romney talks like he's only seen Russia by watching "Rocky IV."

(LAUGHTER)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: Well, nobody's laughing now.

After a break, we turn to another desperate crisis, the worldwide crisis in slavery and human trafficking.

Can the power of different faiths together end this scourge? Amazing grace, when we come back.

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(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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AMANPOUR: Welcome back to the program.

Australian billionaire and mining magnate, Andrew Forrest, has signed up major religious heavyweights to fight the terrible global scourge of modern slavery and human trafficking. And when we say heavyweight, we mean Pope Francis, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Grand Imam of the al- Azhar Mosque in Egypt, Islam's highest ranking Sunni cleric.

This week, their representatives gathered at the Vatican to sign on to the Global Freedom Network. And today, they joined me here in the studio. Andrew Forrest, Archbishop Sir David Moxon and Bishop Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo, to talk about the moral urgency of tackling what they call a crime against humanity.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: Gentlemen, welcome to the program. Great to have you here.

Andrew, I want to start with you first because you are the initiator of all this. You're the founder of Walk Free.

Why? What brought you to this cause?

ANDREW FORREST, MINING MAGNATE: I got dragged, really, kicking and screaming, into this cause by my daughter, Grace. When she was 15, she worked in an orphanage in Nepal and our intelligence was that as something was suspect about the orphanage.

And so we took Grace back on another humanitarian mission, completely independent. But Grace wanted to go back to this orphanage. And there she saw only the children who were severely facially disfigured or mentally handicapped, i.e. could not be sold.

AMANPOUR: And you have amassed an incredible array of religious firepower here.

We have Bishop Sorondo, who is representing the Holy See, representing the pope.

How did he persuade the pope and therefore you, and how did you get into this?

MARCELO SANCHEZ SORONDO, CHANCELLOR OF THE PONTIFICAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES AND THE PONTIFICAL ACADEMY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES: I have this note.

AMANPOUR: What is this note?

SORONDO: Original, in this letter, we ask the pope if he want to study one thing special.

And the pope say, "Marcelo, I believe that could be very important to study the question of human trafficking and the modern slavery."

AMANPOUR: So that is pretty amazing.

SORONDO: This is the original.

AMANPOUR: That is the original Pope Francis autograph --

(CROSSTALK)

SORONDO: Signed by the boss, Francis.

AMANPOUR: Signed by the boss.

SIR DAVID MOXON, ANGLICAN BISHOP: Signed by the boss.

AMANPOUR: Indeed.

MOXON: Yes.

AMANPOUR: And your boss, what brought him along? Was it follow the leader?

MOXON: That was when Canterbury had heard of Pope Francis' passion for modern slavery and human trafficking and the struggle against both of them.

And when they met in July last year, I was present at the lunch. And the Archbishop of Canterbury, knowing the pope had taken on this initiative from day one of his pontificate, feeling the same thing himself, raised the question over lunch, shouldn't we be doing something about this? I think we should do something about this together.

And that early initiative of the pope and the Archbishop of Canterbury has really been the force within faith-based organizations to bring us to this point today.

AMANPOUR: And of course we're not just talking about the major Christian denominations. We're also talking about Islam having joined you as well. We know that the Sunni leader from the al-Azhar Mosque in Cairo has signed on.

FORREST: Once Archbishop Justin challenged us to --

AMANPOUR: Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury --

FORREST: -- yes, to do the good and don't let the great get in the road, i.e., let's just see if we can get the Anglicans and the Catholics together for the first time since Reformation in a major operating agreement.

Once we had that, then the credibility we had to approach the Sunnis to say this is how far the Christian faith has come. They're now working together really closely; surely now is the time we can bring Islam with us and have Islam and Christianity there, steadfast, walking the same journey together.

And he just signed straight on. He said I'm going to do this. I'm going to do this for the Sunni faith. And it was absolutely groundbreaking.

AMANPOUR: What is it that you think that faith leaders can do to make a difference, that other people have not yet been able to do? Because as you very well know, we all report about sexual slavery, about human trafficking, about girls -- we do. CNN actually has the Freedom Project. We are great champions of this.

But it's all incremental results.

SORONDO: Today, we have in a global situation. And we need an concretely answer, global answer for this. And of course, the soul of all the culture is the religion, that is historical thing. And if we take the soul of the culture, we take the population.

AMANPOUR: Let me just bring up a graphic, an illustration that we have, to show what your aims are, that 162 governments should publicly endorse the fund, that 50 multinational businesses to commit to modern slavery proof their supply chains, and for the G20 to adopt anti-slavery and human trafficking initiatives.

Again, it sounds great.

Why do you think that your voice and the Archbishop of Canterbury's voice and the pope's voice will be, as august as they are, any more successful than efforts already underway?

MOXON: Well, I think there are three things we bring together.

First of all, there's credibility on the ground. There are examples of Catholic nuns, Anglican city missioners, many other faith-based operations rescuing people from trafficking all the time.

So there's credibility on the ground.

Secondly, though, there's the moral challenge to political leaders which we represent as global faiths, keeping it on the front burner all the time.

Thirdly, though, there's the important message that every sacred text can be utilized to challenge the notion that this is immoral, that liberation, that freedom, that redemption are of the heart of what we're about.

AMANPOUR: Now Andrew came face-to-face with it because of his daughter's experience.

Do you, in the church, come face-to-face with this issue? I mean, we had that terrible story here in England several months ago of several people, now adults, who had been held as slaves for years and years and years.

But how common is it for you to come face-to-face with this?

MOXON: Wherever there's a brothel with people who've been trafficked into it, wherever there are people who've had their passports removed, their livelihood, their dignity removed, abducted, taken against their will from their own country, ended up in a hopeless situation, wherever that occurs, there is a parish or a temple.

We have the global reach and every square inch of the Earth when you've got a faith-based approach together.

AMANPOUR: The pope has made his major goal ministering to the poor and going where previous popes have -- didn't go.

He's just given an interview but specifically for those who live in the slums of Argentina.

What is it that he said to you, apart from that fabulous note, that makes him want to take this on?

Why now? Why him?

SORONDO: Because he knew this when he was bishop in Buenos Aires. He know perfectly the situations, of the -- of the big cities, Latin America, but not only Latin America, also Manila, Asia.

But those are here, as you say. And they, he knows, because he visit directly this village in Buenos Aires, as we say, and the slums.

AMANPOUR: You're a business man, though, and part of this issue is -- and I read about it all the time; we see, you know, heartbreaking documentaries about it, the fishing industry, the canning industry, maybe the mining industry that you're involved in, the chocolate and cocoa industry, everywhere you look, there are slaves being used.

FORREST: Now let me be perfectly frank. When I returned from Nepal, I ordered a complete review of the several thousand suppliers of my own company supply chains. It's around a $30 billion enterprise business. It has suppliers everywhere.

We found several counts of slavery in my company's supply chains. That was it for me. I then resigned and said we have to do something about this.

But we -- I went over into that country, into those factories and saw the atrocious conditions which these people worked in, where they had 10-20 percent per annum mortality rate. They had got their passports confiscated; they hadn't been paid for 2.5 to 3 years.

And this was a great big European company who was -- had a labor and equipment supply from a -- from another company which they had not checked out. And this company served industries all over the world. So we know slavery's everywhere.

And when President Clinton held a small meeting to discuss slavery, there was a group of us around that table, all the, you know, industry titans.

And he just opened it up and said, "Tell me about slavery in your supply chains."

Well, one chief executive hopped up and another chairman hopped up, said, "Oh, we're so good; we've checked it out. We've found nothing."

So I said, "Well, hang on. Do you use this company?"

And a few hands went sheepishly up, "Yes, we all use that company."

"Well, you have slavery in your supply chains."

And President Clinton said, "Well, let's restart the whole conversation. Let's not say how great we are. Let's be honest."

All of us had slavery in our supply chains.

What are we going to do about it? How can we make heroes out of those people? We find it and publicize it.

(CROSSTALK)

MOXON: (INAUDIBLE) its own organization (INAUDIBLE) ordered on itself. And it can't possibly point the finger at somebody else. It's got to look at any fingers pointing towards its own heart.

AMANPOUR: Is there that problem in the church?

MOXON: We need to discover. We need to review. We need to be very careful.

SORONDO: And I think that we need legal instruments for this reason, the declaration that made the pope, that human trafficking and modern form of slavery is a crime against humanity, is very anti-Christian.

AMANPOUR: Really important, thank you so much, Bishop, Archbishop, Andrew, thank you so much indeed. I really appreciate it. We wish you very, very good luck indeed. And this is massively important. (END VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: And you heard us say that the leader of the Sunni Muslims in Cairo has signed on. Now during our conversation, Andrew Forrest announced that the representative of Ayatollah Sistani, leader of the Shia Muslim faith, has also today signed up to the initiative.

You can listen to the latest piece of news online at amanpour.com.

And after a break, the story that has captivated the world. Ever since an airplane vanished from the sky, but if you think it's Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, think again. That's when we come back.

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AMANPOUR: And finally tonight, imagine a world where an airplane vanishes mysteriously over the ocean, captures the imagination of millions and launches a thousand conspiracy theories. No, this one is not Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. It's the last flight of Amelia Earhart, the legendary aviatrix of the 1930s, the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic and a trailblazer who unlocked the cockpit door for generations of female flyers.

In May 1937, she and her copilot, Fred Noonan, took off from Oakland, California, on the first leg of her ambitious flying plan, hoping to become the first woman to fly around the globe. The route took her from Florida to South America to Africa and finally New Guinea, with only 7,000 miles to go.

And on July 2nd, 1937, she took off from Howland Island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, but she never got there. She and her plane were never found. And for 77 years, despite enough theories to fill an air and space museum, the mystery has never been solved.

Two years ago, a new effort to locate the wreckage was launched and then-secretary of state Hillary Clinton gave her support.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HILLARY CLINTON, FORMER SECRETARY OF STATE: Her legacy resonates today for anyone, girls and boys, who dreams of the stars.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: And tonight, even as the eyes of the world search for Flight 370, the mystery and the myth of Amelia Earhart live on.

And that's it for our program tonight. Remember you can always contact us at our website, amanpour.com, and follow me on Twitter and Facebook. Thanks for watching and goodbye from London.

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