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Crises Face NATO's New Leader; Making Sense of Chaos in Libya; The Value of "Talking to Terrorists"; Imagine a World

Aired October 02, 2014 - 14:00   ET

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

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CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN HOST (voice-over): Tonight: a tough new job full of unprecedented challenges. My international exclusive with Jens

Stoltenberg as he takes the reins at NATO.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JENS STOLTENBERG, NATO SECRETARY GENERAL: What we are doing is only to implement what we see core idea of NATO. And that is to be able to protect

all allies.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR (voice-over): Plus a country out of control: how can law be restored to Libya? My interview with the U.K.'s special envoy, Jonathan

Powell.

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AMANPOUR: Good evening, everyone, and welcome to the program. I'm Christiane Amanpour.

At one of the most turbulent times for the world, the NATO Transatlantic Alliance has a new secretary general, the former Norwegian prime minister,

Jens Stoltenberg, who takes over this week.

Just look at today's headlines. Ukraine, heavy smoke rises over Donetsk Airport; Iraq, 14 killed in a Baghdad explosion; Afghanistan, suicide bomb

targets Kabul troops -- all on NATO's plate. And Stoltenberg comes with a reputation as a consensus builder.

And as prime minister, he approved his forces joining action in Afghanistan and Libya. His introduction to the world came as he comforted his own

nation after its greatest tragedy in recent times: the massacre of 77 people, including his own party's youth league members, by Anders Breivik

three years ago.

In his first international TV interview since taking office yesterday, NATO's new chief tells me about his most pressing challenges and his most

fervent hopes for the alliance.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, welcome to the program.

STOLTENBERG: Thank you so much.

AMANPOUR: So first and foremost, I could list your incredible to-do list ahead of you -- Russia, Ukraine, North Africa, ISIS, cyber crime, human

trafficking -- so much on your plate.

Are you daunted?

What is your first that you will tick off?

STOLTENBERG: The first thing I will do is to work with the implementations of all the decisions we took together at the summit of NATO in Wales a

month ago. And that's led to how we can keep NATO strong and how we can keep our neighborhoods stables, together with our partners.

And it has to do with how we can keep the bond between North America and Europe rock solid.

So that's a -- it's a huge agenda but we are an alliance of 28 members. So it's a strong alliance, which is going to maintain strong also in the

future.

AMANPOUR: So let me drill down on one of those since you brought it up.

One of the things that came out of the Wales summit was this rapid reaction force and that really was, we're told, going to get out there very, very

quickly.

Clearly one of your challenges -- tell me if you agree -- is to persuade the Eastern European partners that NATO is there for their defense and, you

know, security without poking the Russian bear, without provoking President Putin again.

Do you think that's going to be a difficult balancing act?

STOLTENBERG: What we are doing is only to implement what we see core idea of NATO. And that is to be able to protect all allies. And we have done

that partly by increasing military presence in the eastern part of the alliance already, more air policing, more naval presence, both in the

Baltic Sea and the Black Sea. And also more forces on a rotational basis in the Eastern allied countries.

And the rapid action plan is aiming at how we can make our forces even more ready, more able to deploy on short notice. And we are already

implementing and working on the implementation of that plan.

AMANPOUR: I want to read you a quote from President Putin, upon your appointment as secretary general.

He said this about you on Russian television.

"We have very good relations, including personal relations. This is a very serious, responsible person, but we'll see how our relations develop with

him in his new position."

So how do you expect your relations to develop?

I mean, clearly your predecessor, Mr. Rasmussen, had a much more confrontational relationship or approach to President Putin.

STOLTENBERG: So on this, Mr. Rasmussen and I, we truly agree on the -- how serious and grave the Russian aggression against the Ukraine has been and

still is. And we also agree on the need for keeping NATO strong.

But as a Norwegian politician in Norway, a country bordering Russia, I have developed a working relationship with Russia. And we were able also during

the coldest period of the Cold War to work with Russia on issues like fishery, energy, environment.

And when I was prime minister we also were able to reach an agreement on a borderline, a delimitation line in the Bering Sea.

And I see no contradiction between having a strong defense, a strong NATO, a predictable and firm policy and at the same time aspiring for a more

constructive relationship with Russia.

AMANPOUR: I want to get your personal experience. You're the youngest prime minister that Norway's ever had. You come from a line of

Stoltenbergs. I believe your father was once defense minister.

But you don't actually have defense experience. Yours is more economic, et cetera.

Do you feel you are cut out for this particular job, the secretary general of a defense alliance?

STOLTENBERG: You know, I worked with defense issues for many, many years. I became prime minister of Norway in 2001 and I attended my first NATO

summit in 2001. And since then, I've been responsible for forming the Norwegian armed forces. That was one of the big projects I had in my first

government, and I continued with that in my second government.

And we increased our defense budgets in my tenure as prime minister. We participated in Libya and Afghanistan. And it's not possible to be a

member or a prime minister in the government of Norway without being engaged in defense issues.

And in addition to that, Norway's neighbor to Russia. So we have a long experience of being a NATO member, a small country bordering Russia. And

we have seen how important NATO is for our own security.

And it has only been possible for Norway to be engaged with Russia because we have strong defense and we have the security which the NATO alliance

provides.

AMANPOUR: And Mr. Stoltenberg, again, when you were a young, young man, you opposed Norway's membership of NATO. And you demonstrated and

protested against the United States' war in Vietnam.

What has changed in you?

How have you evolved to now being the secretary general of the most powerful alliance in the world?

STOLTENBERG: First of all, I think that all people develop. And I think that's a good thing.

Second, you know, I was a member of the Young Labour Party. The Labour Party was strongly in favor of NATO membership. But the Young Labour Party

disagreed.

But when I was the chairman, I was able to convince the Young Labour Party to be in favor. So I was able to actually turn the organization from being

against to being in favor.

So I think you can hardly find any other Norwegian politicians who have fought so hard for being favorite (ph) as I did when I turned my

organization from being against to be in favor.

AMANPOUR: You were propelled onto the world stage during a moment of real horror for your country, the massacre by Anders Breivik. You comforted

your nation; you explained to the world.

How has that experience shaped you and perhaps positioned you for this new role?

STOLTENBERG: I think experience of the terrorist attack in Norway of 22nd of July, 2011, just has, in a way, in a very grave way, underlined for me

how important it is to fight all kinds of terror.

I've seen the sorrow, the grief, which terror attacks imposes on so many people. And I've also seen the importance of increasing, I mean, always

being -- the importance of improving preparedness and readiness to fight terrorists, whatever form it occurs.

And then of course, the importance of standing by our values, of open democratic societies. That's what the terrorists tried to attack and

that's what we have to defend.

Libya 2011: NATO was involved in the airstrikes that got rid of Gadhafi and we've seen what's happening in Libya right now. It's a chaotic mess

with Islamists and other militias in charge.

What should NATO have done differently, do you think?

Or what should happen now?

STOLTENBERG: First of all, I think we had to be very careful on following that NATO conducted the military operation with a clear U.N. mandate. And

our mandate was to protect civilians and to stop the killing of civilians, which the regime was responsible for.

And that operation was a success in the way that we were able to achieve the goal of the military operation, stopping the killings of civilians.

The challenge has been the follow-up afterwards, building institutions and development cooperation, making sure that we have the stable development

after the end of the NATO operation.

That's not obviously a NATO responsibility. That's more the whole international society, which has -- which should have been more present and

more focused on the follow-up.

AMANPOUR: NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, thank you so much for joining me tonight.

STOLTENBERG: Thank you.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: So many Libyans are looking for the proverbial savior to emerge from the shadows and ride a white horse to the rescue.

Trouble is, there are too many horses with too many riders. We'll try to sort them out with the British government's special envoy to Libya -- when

we come back.

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AMANPOUR: Welcome back to the program.

Three years after the NATO airstrikes that toppled the Gadhafi regime, the country remains in chaos. Militias rule the land and two rival governments

are vying for power. We have watched a parade of civilian and militia leaders coming -- claiming to be Libya's salvation.

Joining me now to decipher it all is Jonathan Powell. He's the U.K.'s envoy to Libya and he served as chief of staff to Tony Blair back when

Moammar Gadhafi came in from the cold.

See, I can't even get decipher out of my mouth; Libya is too difficult to figure out.

Do you know, can you give us some kind of rational lay of the land?

JONATHAN POWELL, U.K. ENVOY TO LIBYA: Yes. I mean, I think as your previous guest was saying, the problem in Libya was that NATO played its

role in getting rid of Gadhafi. But afterwards the West sort of walked away. They left it alone. They thought it was for the Libyans to sort

out.

And out of that arose chaos, arose a state of anarchy. No one was in charge. There were thousands of sides. But interestingly, what happened

over the last few months as the fighting has taken place is it's resolved itself into two sides. There are now two sides in Libya rather than

thousands of them, which at least makes it easier to understand.

AMANPOUR: And the two sides are, broadly speaking.?

POWELL: The two sides are, broadly, the Misratan militia in the west of the country that have taken over the larger part of the West and the Center

--

(CROSSTALK)

AMANPOUR: The Islamists?

POWELL: Well, people call them Islamists, but there are Islamists and Islamists. You have to bear in mind that the Muslim Brotherhood is not Al

Qaeda. These are not the sort of people where bombing in Syria. These are different sort of Islamists. They're basically business men. They're

interested in getting to a stable society.

AMANPOUR: And on the other side?

POWELL: On the other side, you have the legitimate parliament, sitting in Tobruk. It was elected freely and fairly. No one has contested those

elections or saying they were wrong. So they had the democratic legitimacy but the country's controlled by these armed groups.

AMANPOUR: Right. And those people have contested the legitimacy because they've caused this legitimate parliament to flee. So how does the

deadlock get broken?

POWELL: Well, they didn't make the parliament flee. The parliament, of its own volition, chose to meet in the far east of the country, because

they wanted to meet in an area that was controlled by General Haftar, who's another of the generals in this war.

So I don't think it's fair to say they forced it to flee. The issue really is can you bring this parliament together, this parliament is legitimate,

just not inclusive. A large number of the members are not participating.

What we're trying to do is bring them together, bring together those who are meeting in Tobruk and those who haven't agreed to go. And we had this

meeting on Monday this week. I was asked to it in Ghadames, chaired by the U.N., by Bernardino Leon, the U.N. special representative. It brought

together the two sides. They've agreed to a political dialogue and they agreed to call for a cease-fire.

So I think we're making some progress.

AMANPOUR: That is incredibly good news.

And now I want to play for you a snippet of an interview that I did with one of the militia leaders -- I don't know whether he was at these talks,

but he's certainly going around the world presenting himself as the rational, inclusive leader.

This is what Abdelhakim Belhadj told me.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ABDELHAKIM BELHADJ, LIBYAN POLITICIAN AND MILITARY LEADER (through translator): We have to unite our efforts, all Libyans, all patriotic

Libyans, regardless of their affiliations, regardless of their ideologies. We have to unite around one goal, which is a democratic state

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: So he says -- he's saying the right things.

Does he mean it?

Is he the man to be able to do it?

Can it be done?

POWELL: Now he was not (INAUDIBLE) -- he is not an elected MP. He has not been elected to the parliament. So he was not part of that dialogue.

On the other hand, he does represent a tendency inside Libya and he is a significant player from that point of view.

And I think it was very significant that in your interview he was talking about democracy; he was supporting the talks in Ghadames. He was not

opposing the attempt to come to a truly legitimate parliament. And I think that's a very good thing.

AMANPOUR: You said -- and Jens Stoltenberg, the new NATO general -- and, in fact, even President Obama said that one of the big mistakes after the

2011 NATO airstrikes was not having any follow-up on the ground.

What should have happened, either before the bombing or after the bombing?

How would it have been different had they even thought of a proper follow- up?

POWELL: Well, it's interesting. When I first went to Libya, taking on this job in April, this was the thing that everyone said to me. They said

you helped us overthrow Gadhafi but then you left. And you left us to our own devices.

Now I understand why people did that. They were trying to learn the lesson from Iraq. They felt that in Iraq, we'd been too controlling. We tried to

run everything in Iraq. And they thought it should be left to Libyans.

But I think in retrospect, that was a mistake. We should have accompanied them; we should have helped them get to a true democracy right away from

the beginning.

AMANPOUR: You obviously were in the Tony Blair government when the war in Iraq started. Without going into all the drama about that and the sort of

20-20 hindsight, wouldn't you agree that there's a massive irony there, that there was no terrorism in Iraq before you all went in?

And now there's massive terrorism emanating from there and Syria and everywhere else? But we don't even know -- the world doesn't know how to

combat right now?

POWELL: No, and it is interesting that we've had these attacks on the invasion of Iraq, saying that was the wrong thing to do. But then when we

tried to intervene light, if you like, from the (INAUDIBLE) in Libya, then that goes wrong. And in Syria, where we don't intervene at all, that goes

wrong, too.

So I don't think there's some sort of magic right answer one can get. Nor do I think you can blame the terrorism on -- in Iraq and in Syria simply on

the invasion of Iraq. Of course that had an impact. But that terrorism is something that we have to combat regardless of where it came from. We have

to find a way of dealing with it.

AMANPOUR: Do you have any idea of how to deal with it? Because airstrikes alone aren't going to work.

POWELL: I think that's absolutely right. (INAUDIBLE) right thing to do, but they are not the solution. You cannot deal with a terrorist problem

like this simply by bombing from the air. And I wish the people would try and learn some of the lessons from our history and try and think through a

long-term strategy. You can't just do it from the air nor can you actually just do it with boots on the ground.

If we're expecting the Kurdish forces to go marching into Sunni areas past the Kurdish border, they're not going to do that. If they're expecting the

Shiite army from the south to do it, they're not going to do it. We're going to need some Sunnis to do this fighting. We need to go back to the

Anbar awakening and those things that have happened in Iraq when we were battling with Al Qaeda in Iraq.

AMANPOUR: You've written your latest book, "Talking to Terrorists," and obviously -- "How to End Armed Conflicts" -- obviously you draw a lot on

your experience being the special envoy for Northern Ireland and the peace process there.

And now the U.N., these talks you're talking about in Libya, agree to talk to these militia leaders, who do control, because of money and arms, the

country.

How does talking to them make a difference?

And can one talk to an ISIS or an Al Qaeda, whatever?

POWELL: Yes. And I think you can -- because I spent a lot of time writing this book, going back to look at all the previous conflicts with terrorists

as the last 30-odd years to see what happened.

What happens every time is we say we will never talk to terrorists. We'll defeat evil; we won't talk to it or we don't actually. What happens, you

look at all these conflicts, is that we have to combine fighting them within the air talking to them. You can't have a simple strategy of just

fighting.

It wasn't just the case in Northern Ireland; it was the case everywhere else, from El Salvador to Colombia to Indonesia. You're going to succeed.

You have to engage them. You have to persuade them to give up their weapons.

AMANPOUR: Now they've tried over and again to do that in Afghanistan, obviously trying to do something to get the Taliban to come to the peace

table (INAUDIBLE) even the new president, Ashraf Ghani, has once again said we've got to negotiate and get this over with.

They don't want to.

POWELL: Well, I don't think that's quite right. I think it takes a long time to engage with these groups. What worries me is we always delay it so

long. General Petraeus said in the case of Iraq, that we had left it too late to talk to the people with the blood of U.S. soldiers on their hands.

And I think that's a mistake we make. We should have engaged the Taliban much earlier.

Now of course the American government has been talking with them, because they negotiated the release of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl. What we should have had

is a political negotiation. It takes a long time for them to come to terms to realize that their demands are not going to be acceptable. They are

going to have to compromise.

This is what we did with the IRA. It took us a long time to negotiate with the IRA to get them off demanding that Britain withdraw from Northern

Ireland and get them into a reasonable proposition, which was partnering in Northern Ireland.

AMANPOUR: Last question obviously on Libya, where do you see these talks going?

You say they've made a small step.

Do you see this being able to be, you know, the ripple effect and it actually being able to be the beginning of a resolution?

POWELL: I think so. You know, Libya is not Syria or Iraq. It hasn't got the division between Shia and Sunni. It hasn't got the division between

Kurds and Arabs. It hasn't even really got political divisions. This fighting mainly is being, as I say, a state of anarchy and fighting about

power and about money.

I think if we can get into real talks, if we can get a process going, that will give people hope. When there's no process, there's a vacuum and

that's still by violence. This case, I think we really can get something going. I hope so.

But it will need to involve the militia leaders, the sort of people like Mr. Belhadj you were talking to, as well as the parliamentarians. There

needs to be a parliamentary track, a political track but also an armed track to get those guys to put their weapons down and come to the table.

AMANPOUR: And briefly let me go to a break.

Do the parliamentarians agree with talking to the militias?

POWELL: The parliamentarians agree that we need to talk to militias and get them out of the airports, out of the cities and get them back home.

AMANPOUR: Jonathan Powell, fascinating. Thank you very much indeed.

POWELL: Thank you.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: So while Libyan rivals vie for power, in the world's largest democracy, the new prime minister is giving his country a clean sweep.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

Narendra Modi celebrated Mahatma Gandhi's birthday by grabbing a broom and joining millions of civil servants across the nation to sweep the streets

today, following Gandhi's example that the dirty jobs are for everyone and not just the poor.

Mr. Modi launched his "Clean India" campaign with a promise, too, of a toilet for every house by 2019. It's a vital step for health and hygiene

in a land where less than a third of the 1 billion people have access to sanitation.

After a break, imagine the most visited pilgrimage site in the world overshadowed by skyscrapers and megamalls. The clock is ticking in Mecca -

- when we come back.

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AMANPOUR: And finally tonight, for this year's Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca, which starts this week, a fatwa has been issued banning selfies, deeming

them a form of unacceptable, irreligious self-worship.

Now imagine a world where the drive against idolatry means that parts of Mecca itself has been bulldozed; any structure or historical religious

interest, even the home of the Prophet, is coming down in the name of piety and purity.

And yet they're spending billions on high-rise hotels and megamalls to accommodate the swelling number of wealthy pilgrims with religious fervor

and money to burn.

Surely just another kind of golden calf, towering over the Kaaba, Islam's holiest site, at nearly 2,000 feet, is an ultramodern skyscraper with the

world's tallest clock, tolling the end of Mecca as we've known it.

Once a traditional hodgepodge of ancient buildings dating back to the Prophet Muhammad himself, Mecca's architecture reflected the diversity of

worship as Sunnis, Shiites and others back then put aside their differences once a year at least to pray together.

That's it for our program tonight. Remember you can watch all our shows online at amanpour.com, and follow me on Facebook and Twitter. Thank you

for watching and goodbye from London.

END