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CNN Newsnight Aaron Brown
Memorial Day: Wars of the Past and Present
Aired May 26, 2003 - 22:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN ANCHOR: Thank you very much and good evening to all our viewers tonight. I am Christiane Amanpour sitting in for Aaron Brown.
And it is Memorial Day in the United States, a day for reflecting on wars past. We'll do that tonight but much of the program involves the wars of the present, in Iraq where the war itself might be over but danger and disorder are still all around and the peace hangs very much in the balance; the war on terror with Iran under increasing pressure over alleged al Qaeda connections; and, the everlasting war between the Israelis and the Palestinians.
It's the push to end that war that we begin with tonight. And so, the whip starts off with Kelly Wallace in Jerusalem with the latest on the roadmap to peace and the creation of a Palestinian state -- Kelly.
KELLY WALLACE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Christiane, some stunning words from the Israeli prime minister tonight. It appears for one of the first times ever in public he used the word occupation and he called for an end to it in the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip, leading some to say that Ariel Sharon's push for that roadmap is genuine and not in response to American pressure -- Christiane.
AMANPOUR: OK, Kelly, and the pressure on Iran continues to intensify. David Ensor is on that story for us -- David.
DAVID ENSOR, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Christiane, a high level administration meeting tomorrow to look at policy towards Iran, its nuclear program, and support for terrorists. Some are advocating a much tougher policy for the U.S. including support for opponents of the regime in Tehran. Yet, there are also hints that Iran may be moving against al Qaeda personnel inside of its borders.
AMANPOUR: And we'll explore that.
Memorial Day as spent by the president of the United States. White House Correspondent Dana Bash is on that tonight -- Dana.
DANA BASH, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Christiane, a war time president makes the traditional Memorial Day pilgrimage to Arlington National Cemetery to lead a nation in remembering its fallen soldiers nearly 200 of whom died in Operation Iraqi Freedom -- Christiane.
AMANPOUR: And we'll be back with all of you in a moment. Also coming up on NEWSNIGHT, a tale of intrigue in the time of war and accusations that a British colonel who spoke so eloquently about treating Iraqis humanely did not live up to those words. We'll have the different sides of a very tangled story.
And, an idyllic English village could be yours for the low, very low price of $27 million, pub and babbling brook included. That's in Segment 7 tonight, all that to come.
We begin tonight in the Middle East with developments that are significant by the recent standards of that region, not just the news that another rare meeting is scheduled between the Israeli and Palestinian prime ministers, nor that President Bush is planning to hold a summit with them shortly.
It's what Israel's hawkish prime minister said today after narrowly securing his cabinet's approval of the international roadmap for peace. Here again CNN's Kelly Wallace.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
WALLACE (voice-over): Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon found himself in an unusual position on the defensive before his own right- wing Likud Party and advocating an end to what he called occupation.
ARIEL SHARON, ISRAELI PRIME MINISTER (through translator): You can not like the word but what is happening is an occupation, to hold 3.5 million Palestinians under occupation. I believe that is a terrible thing for Israel and for the Palestinians.
WALLACE: Stunning words coming from the long-time hawk and backer of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. But as one senior Israeli official told CNN, it is now a different ballgame.
On Sunday, the Israeli cabinet approved the Mid East roadmap with reservations marking the first time an Israeli government formally backed the creation of a Palestinian state, and now Mr. Sharon appears to be trying to urge Israelis to ultimately accept giving up land for peace.
SHARON (through translator): It can't continue endlessly. Do you want to stay forever in (unintelligible), in Nablus, in Ramallah, in Bethlehem? I don't think that's right.
WALLACE: But the Israeli prime minister is facing a skeptical public. In a newspaper poll Monday, when asked if implementation of the roadmap would lead to peace with the Palestinians, 43 percent said yes, a majority 51 percent said no.
The stakes will be high for this week's expected meeting between Mr. Sharon and Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas who huddled with the French foreign minister Monday.
Mr. Abbas, Palestinian advisers say, will call for immediate implementation of the roadmap including an end to Israeli military operations in Palestinian areas and a freeze on any settlement expansion, key steps Palestinians say to convince radical Palestinian groups to stop their attacks against Israel.
DIANA BUTTU, PALESTINIAN LEGAL ADVISER: This is not a military conflict. It's a political conflict and until we address the political situation that's underlying the violence it will be able to go nowhere.
WALLACE: But Israeli sources say Mr. Sharon will reiterate his long-held position that the first step must be a clear and visible Palestinian crackdown on groups like Hamas which claimed responsibility for four recent suicide bombings against Israelis.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
WALLACE: The two men failed to achieve a breakthrough during their first meeting more than a week ago but now they face American pressure to deliver with a possible Mid East summit hosted by the U.S. president perhaps hinging on what comes out of this week's talks -- Christiane.
AMANPOUR: Kelly, firstly, do you know when that summit is planned for and, with both sides still saying that one side has to make the first move, where do we go from here?
WALLACE: Well, two good questions. First, to the Israeli- Palestinian summit, Christiane, it could happen as early as Wednesday. Also, sources say it could be pushed to Thursday but we are expecting it to happen this week.
And the thinking is sometime after that perhaps there would be this formal announcement by the White House about a possible summit hosted by U.S. President Bush, and then that's the key question.
The Israelis are saying the Palestinians need to go first, need to be cracking down first on radical Palestinian groups. The Palestinians are saying no, we must take parallel steps.
Many believe, Christiane, it will come down to the Americans. Will the American president be able to convince the two sides to start taking steps right now? Many believe that would come at a possible U.S. hosted summit -- Christiane.
AMANPOUR: Kelly, thank you.
And now, we're going to turn to New York where there is Alon Pinkas joining us, Israel's Consul General to the United States. Welcome back to the show, Mr. Pinkas.
ALON PINKAS, ISRAELI CONSUL GENERAL: Thank you, Christiane.
AMANPOUR: What happens next? We've just been talking to Kelly about the steps. Are they meant to be parallel? What will Israel do next since I'm talking to you?
PINKAS: Well, they're not meant to be parallel. They're actually meant to be sequential if you read the document itself, the roadmap. We expect to see visible effort and visible results in the Palestinian clampdown on terrorism.
But in parallel, in order to be in good faith and good spirit in the implementation process, Israel will to ease some of the restrictions on movement in the West Bank and (unintelligible) as well as remove some of the roadblocks and we will do whatever is necessary and whatever is good and expedient for the Palestinians to allow them and to help them facilitate the war on terrorism.
AMANPOUR: And the freeze on the settlements and the dismantling of the illegally built settlements?
PINKAS: Well, these are obviously two different issues, Christiane, as you very well know. Illegal settlements or illegal outposts will be removed as the prime minister and the defense minister, for that matter, have pledged to do because they are illegal period.
As for the freeze on settlements, that awaits to be seen in terms of the sequence of the implementation of the plan. We're not building new settlements. This has been true for the last five years, definitely for the last two and a half.
What you call the enlargement of settlements or the building of settlements is, I in fact, the natural growth of existing settlements which I concede is controversial in that the Palestinians don't see it that way and many others do.
But that in terms of the implementation of the roadmap or any other piece process, any other form of a peace process awaits to be seen. The first and most important thing is to combat terrorism and to -- for Abu Mazen, for Mahmoud Abbas to show that the Hamas and the Islamic Jihad are illegitimate actors in this game and they will be dealt with.
AMANPOUR: You do say that that issue is controversial and, of course, many would dispute some of what you just said there. But let me ask you do you -- what exactly do you expect to be the result of the U.S. taking into consideration Israel's concerns and conditions? What exactly does that mean practically?
PINKAS: Practically it means that the U.S. can monitor, as could the media incidentally, the U.S. can monitor and could supervise whether or not the Palestinian government, the new Palestinian government is seriously and comprehensively and unequivocally fighting against terrorism.
After all, the Hamas, the Islamic Jihad, organizations that are partially funded by Syria, partially funded by the patron saint of all terrorism, Iran, are a damaging actor, a damaging agent to the entire process whether you're Palestinian or Israeli.
And, the first thing that the U.S. should bear in mind is to see whether or not the Palestinian plan, the Palestinian policy of clamping down, of destroying the infrastructure is viable and is it working?
That means -- that is the practical facet of it. Obviously, in line of your question -- along the line of your question that is there are bigger issues that we assume and we expect the U.S. to be attentive to in terms of our interests.
AMANPOUR: Let me just ask you very briefly, because we don't have much more time, do you expect the president of the United State to really continue to go to the mat, to expend that political capital he has to get results, not just from the Palestinians but from the Israelis as well?
PINKAS: Well, the short answer is yes. The longer answer is I don't think there is a lot of political capital to be expended here. In fact, I think it's quite the opposite.
And thirdly, and most importantly perhaps, it is not up to President Bush and it is most up to the Palestinians to show once and for all that they are serious because the constellation, the international, the regional, and the local, the constellation of forces is such that this could very well be the best opportunity under the best of circumstances that they have been handed in a very long time and I hope for their sake, for our sake, for all of our sake that they will not miss this opportunity.
AMANPOUR: Mr. Pinkas, thank you for joining us.
And, we heard a little already from Diana Buttu, the Palestinian adviser in Kelly Wallace's report. We had hoped to have her on right now but due to the logistics of getting her live from Ramallah in the West Bank, we won't be able to talk to her until about an hour from now, so stay with us for that.
But now we turn to the pressure piling up on Iran. The U.S. is focusing closely these days on two key issues. Is Iran harboring a number of senior al Qaeda leaders and is it working to build nuclear weapons?
The Iranian government says no to both of those questions but today there comes another sign that the United States is no longer willing to take that no for an answer.
Here again, CNN's David Ensor.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ENSOR (voice-over): The message to Tehran from Washington, delivered again this weekend by a U.S. ally, is increasingly blunt. Senior al Qaeda personnel in Iran may have played a role in the recent Riyadh bombings. They should be turned over quickly or there may be consequences.
ALEXANDER DOWNER, AUSTRALIAN FOREIGN MINISTER: I made it perfectly clear to the president and other officials that it was unacceptable for al Qaeda to be able to operate in Iran. KAMAL KHARRAZI, IRANIAN FOREIGN MINISTER: There is no way that Iranians would support al Qaeda. We have been fighting al Qaeda before even Americans (unintelligible).
ENSOR: But U.S. intelligence officials say this man, Saif al- Adel and other senior al Qaeda are in Iran.
DONALD RUMSFELD, DEFENSE SECRETARY: There is no question but that there are al Qaeda in Iran.
ENSOR: The U.S. is also deeply worried about Iran's nuclear program for peaceful energy says Tehran, most likely for nuclear weapons says the U.S. At a White House meeting scheduled for Tuesday, sources say officials will consider a tougher policy towards Iran.
Some administration hardliners advocate giving their tanks back to the troops of the Iranian opposition group the People's Mujahaddin, and allowing it to resume attacks on Iran from U.S. occupied Iraq. The Mujahaddin, which is on the State Department's list of terrorist groups, was recently forced to give up its heavy weapons by U.S. forces in Iraq.
ALI SAFAVI, NATIONAL RESISTANCE COUNCIL OF IRAN: If the Iranian people and the Iranian resistance, the Iranian Mujahaddin, are given the chance and the opportunity, I think they will succeed in bringing democracy and freedom to Iran and obviously peace and tranquility to the region.
ENSOR: As the U.S. builds pressure on Tehran, Senate Intelligence Committee members hint at progress behind the scenes.
SEN. JOHN ROCKEFELLER (D), INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE: There could be some better news on Iran that will be coming out.
ENSOR (on camera): And hints of progress in Tehran too. Officials there say they have arrested several suspected members of al Qaeda but do not yet know who they are. One Iranian official said after interrogation they could be turned over to Saudi Arabia.
David Ensor, CNN, Washington.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: Every Memorial Day every U.S. president pays tribute to America's fallen warriors, but this year's commemoration comes right on the heels of the war in Iraq. The sacrifices are fresh and the reckoning is done up close.
Here's CNN's Dana Bash.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BASH (voice-over): Presenting a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns is emotional for any commander-in-chief. For one who sent troops to battle twice in just two years that emotion was hard to hide.
GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Today, we honor the men and women who have worn the nation's uniform and were last seen on duty from the battles of Iraq and Afghanistan to the conflicts in Korea and Vietnam, to the trials of world war, to the struggles that made us a nation.
BASH: One hundred ninety-eight servicemen have died in Operation Iraqi Freedom. Nineteen were laid to rest at Arlington over the last few months, buried with honors in Section 60. The president told some of their stories.
BUSH: One of the funerals was for Marine Second Lieutenant Frederick (unintelligible), Jr. of Jacksonville, North Carolina. His wife Carolyn (ph) received a folded flag. His 2-year-old daughter Taylor knelt beside her mother at the casket to say a final goodbye. This nation does not forget.
BASH: Amid the song, the tribute, talk of past acts of bravery in the name of liberty, the defense secretary used the moment to issue a warning about the future.
RUMSFELD: Today, we face new threats to our freedom. They will be met with the same courage, the same commitment, and like the foes of times past, they too will be defeated.
BASH: Despite that pledge, the focus this Memorial Day, as it has been since the Civil War, was on those who died and those left behind.
BUSH: All Americans and every free nation on earth can trace their liberty to the white markers at places like Arlington National Cemetery and may God keep us ever grateful.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BASH: And, the president spent the rest of the holiday quietly here at the White House in the residence. His schedule kicks into high gear at the end of the week.
He embarks on a multi-stop European tour and a potential trip to the Mid East as you were talking about earlier in the program, Christiane, for a three-way summit with Israeli and Palestinian leaders, but White House officials insist those plans are still in flux -- Christiane.
AMANPOUR: Dana, thanks, and we'll be keeping a close eye on those plans.
And ahead on NEWSNIGHT for Memorial Day, police in Louisiana name a suspect in the killings of five women there and ask the public to help find him.
And, a setback for Canada in its fight against SARS as new cases are identified.
This is NEWSNIGHT from London.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
AMANPOUR: It's been more than a year and a half since the first woman was found strangled to death in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Four more have been murdered since then, and as police sought the killer, people who live in the area have spent a lot of time looking over their shoulders.
Now, the police say they've got the break they've been looking for but they still haven't caught the suspect. We get the story now from CNN's Ed Lavandera.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CHIEF PAT ENGLADE, BATON ROUGE POLICE: An arrest warrant has been issued for the arrest of Derrick Todd Lee (ph).
ED LAVANDERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Louisiana authorities believe 34-year-old Derrick Todd Lee is a serial killer still on the loose.
ENGLADE: He is to be considered armed and dangerous and authorities should be notified immediately.
LAVANDERA: On May 5th, investigators say they took a DNA swab from Lee. Law enforcement sources tell CNN Lee was questioned at the time he provided the oral swab and then he was allowed to leave.
Authorities say it wasn't until a few days ago that DNA testing linked Lee to DNA evidence found at the five murder scenes. Lee's last known address led authorities to this abandoned house in St. Francisville, north of Baton Rouge.
AUSTIN DANIEL, WEST FELICIANA PARISH SHERIFF: We didn't find him. We don't really know where he is. We think he's probably skipped out. He took his child out of school about two weeks ago, along about the same time that he was DNA swabbed, so we feel as though he's on the run.
LAVANDERA: The five murders happened between September of 2001 and March of this year. All the victims were found between Baton Rouge and Lafayette. Since there were no break-ins at the murder victims' homes, authorities say the women probably fell into a trap.
In at least three cases, it's believed the killer came to the victim's house and asked to see a phonebook for information. In the same conversation he would try to figure out if the woman was home alone.
MIKE NEUSTROM, LAFAYETTE PARISH SHERIFF: Disarmingly charming, nice-looking fellow, smooth-talking fellow, non-threatening fellow, gains the confidence of a female and then again attacks.
LAVANDERA: In recent months, authorities investigating the serial killer case have come under intense pressure and criticism. Lynne Marino is the mother of one of the victims. She says investigators have made crucial mistakes like not paying closer attention to leads reported by the victims' neighbors. News of a suspect in the case isn't cooling her anger.
LYNNE MARINO, VICTIM'S MOTHER: Do they think I'm going to take this like a good sport? No, I'm not going to take it like a good sport. I'm going to scream and holler even more than I ever did before because these mistakes cost my daughter her life.
LAVANDERA (on camera): Investigators say they're doing all they can and are now focused on finding Derrick Todd Lee. A statewide manhunt has been launched and federal authorities are helping in a nationwide search for Lee, but they don't know what he might be wearing or how he's moving around.
Ed Lavandera, CNN, Dallas.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: And a few more stories from around the world now before we take a break starting in Iraq. Proof today that the war might be over but the danger isn't two ambushes today, one of them deadly.
It happened near Baghdad International Airport. Somebody threw a bundle of explosives under a humvee wounding four American soldiers, one of whom later died. Soldiers returned fire and say they wounded the attacker but didn't pursue him because they were busy tending to their own.
Canada is once again a hot spot for SARS. The World Health Organization is putting it back on the watch list after eight new cases were reported. All the cases have been traced to a 96-year-old man who died May 1st. All were confined to hospitals and for this reason World Health officials have not reinstated an advisory against traveling to Toronto.
And, northeastern Japan was rocked today by a major earthquake measuring magnitude seven. It triggered landslides, set off fires, and left dozens of people injured. Fortunately, only a few or the injuries were serious and damage was limited because the quake struck deep within the earth instead of closer to the surface.
Coming up on NEWSNIGHT, is he a hero or a villain, the story of an honored British officer accused of war crimes by an ally.
This is NEWSNIGHT from London.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
AMANPOUR: It was a remarkable speech on the eve of war, a British colonel urging hundreds of his troops to show the better part of their valor in Iraq, to fight with bravery but also humanity.
Now, there is an accusation that Lieutenant Colonel Tim Collins did not heed his own call, more in a moment from someone who knows well the heat of battle, but first the accusations and where they come from.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR (voice-over): British Lieutenant Colonel Tim Collins was hailed for the speech he gave the troops under his command on the eve of the war in Iraq.
"We go to liberate not to conquer," he said. "Show respect for them." And he went on to warn his men: "You will be shunned unless your conduct is of the highest."
Both Prince Charles and President Bush are said to have praised the speech and even requested copies of it. But now actions he is alleged to have taken are threatening to undue those words. Collins has been accused of war crimes by an American reservist for his treatment of Iraqi citizens and prisoners of war.
The British ministry of defense is investigating incidents said to include pistol whipping this Ba'ath Party official, using arms to threaten Iraqi civilians, and depriving prisoners of war of food. But Collins has many defenders, including an American major who served with him and they're all calling the allegations a case of sour grapes.
Collins' accuser is Major Ray Biastra (ph) of upstate New York who had had a run-in with him. But Biastra doesn't claim to have seen any of the abuse that he says Collins committed. He says he was just told about it. Collins has told friends that he denies all the charges and he claims that he is being set up. Meanwhile, he's on leave pending a formal investigation.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: The Collins case has dominated the news in this warrior nation. He has his distracters but mostly he's being vigorously defended in the media, including by retired Colonel Bob Stewart (ph) who was commander of British forces in Bosnia in the early '90s. I spoke with him here in London earlier tonight.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: Colonel Stewart, Tim Collins accused of pistol whipping an Iraqi, a war crime?
COL. BOB STEWART (RET.), COMMANDER BRITISH FORCES IN BOSNIA '92- '93: It's not a war crime, it's a breach of discipline. No one should -- no officer should pistol-whip anyone, if that happened. Remember, it's still under investigation, and so we can't actually discuss it because we don't know the facts of the matter.
AMANPOUR: And how common are these kinds of breaches of discipline, would you say?
STEWART: Well, I'm guilty -- if he's white, I'm a bit darker than white because I have hit a woman in Erat (ph) in 1970 when I was 20 in Northern Ireland. She was going berserk. I just didn't know what to do. And she'd been throwing petrol bombs at me and my soldiers, and we had taken a lot of casualties. Then the soldiers grabbed hold of her. And she was kicking, screaming, all the rest of it, going for it. And I just didn't know what to do. And it was my first riot, and I was frightened. So I stepped up to her and slapped her on the cheek and said, Quiet. You're arrested. That's the end of it. She calmed down, thank goodness.
And in Bosnia, when we first met, I mean, I had a similar problem. A Bosnian Croat commander was having a real go at me, and I was being pushed in the chest by this guy. Now, I don't mind that because I've been insulted by experts all my life. The British army is used to that. I didn't mind that. But then he said something unpardonable to me. He said, I am going to kill your soldiers! That was it. I saw red. I grabbed him by the front of his shirt, pushed him to the ground, stood over him, and said, You touch one of my soldiers, and I'll kill you.
Now, I am quite clear that that is not a war crime. We know what war crimes are. But I had a breach of discipline which could have been investigated and might have resulted in something wrong with me.
AMANPOUR: How has this affair, the Collins affair, so to speak, reached such a level? You have a reservist from the United States who is apparently subordinate to Collins, accusing him, and this is now a major story in the press. How has it got to this point? How has that been able to happen?
STEWART: God knows. What a mistake! For goodness sake, the first thing that should have happened, it should have been kept under the covers until it's investigated properly. Then after that, if there is a case to answer, then gently brought forward. But at the moment, we've got this situation where it looks like British soldiers against Americans, and American Marine majors are coming up and saying the British officer's good. This is just what we don't want.
What has gone wrong is it was made public. Why it was made public is a good question. It should have been kept quiet, not because this is allowable, if what is alleged happened did happen, not because of that, but because it's actually silly to have done it, and it causes such damage.
AMANPOUR: What do you think is going to happen to Tim Collins now? Somebody who's been lionized as a hero by many people, although there have been complaints about him as a bully by others, but certainly, his eve of war speech drew a lot of plaudits, even from the president of the United States, we hear.
STEWART: Well, look, one thing is clear. When you're commanding an infantry battalion going into battle, you're not running a nursery school, and you've actually got to motivate them and run that battalion. You've got to take people to war. So I understand Collins's robust form of leadership, and I hope to think -- or I venture to suggest that I practiced it myself when we first met. But what's going to happen to him now? If the military, the British military, think that he has offended and done something wrong, he will be reprimanded. If he's reprimanded, it will be a very big slight on his career.
AMANPOUR: What are precisely the rules of engagement? And of course, we have seen Americans who have caused quite a few civilian casualties, in some instances, being -- force protection is often their prime mission.
STEWART: Well, I think that the most important matter about rules of engagement are the following key rules. The first one is you may open fire if your life is in danger or those you are protecting are in danger. Secondly, if you do open fire, you open fire precisely, not in a scattergun effect, not with overwhelming force, with the minimum force required.
And there's a third rule, as well. And that third rule is politics. And that's the difficult one. The politics of it is, is it better for me not to open fire, or should I open fire because of the effect I might or might not have? And those three rules are the strands for rules of engagement, whether they're British or American. And the British ones tend to be restrained, but the Americans tend to -- I suggest, to open fire more willingly, with more fire as required.
AMANPOUR: Thank you, Colonel Stewart.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: Neither Tim Collins nor his American accuser are speaking publicly to journalists right now, but we are going to go to Kuwait and journalist Peter Maass, who's written extensively for "The New York Times" and others about military conduct during the Iraq war -- American military conduct, that is.
Peter, thank you for joining us at this late or very early hour from Kuwait. You traveled with American forces in Iraq. Tell me a little bit about procedures, about what you saw, in light of what's being accused right now, even though I know you don't know the Collins case.
PETER MAASS, JOURNALIST: Well, the battalion that I was traveling with and the ones around it was an infantry battalion, a front-line battalion. And its rules of engagement became much more, I would say, kind of lax, in certain respects, as the war went on, as suicide bombers were used against it. And basically, when they finally reached their biggest battle, they really had very loose rules of engagement in which -- it wasn't so much you were directly under threat you should fire, but if you felt that you were under threat, that you should fire. And this caused some problems.
AMANPOUR: What do you -- when you're reading and you know a little bit about this Collins case, I mean, how do you put it into perspective, given what you saw and given some of the very public things that the Americans have done out there?
MAASS: Well, I didn't see any behavior on the part of the Americans that was similar to what I've heard from Collins. I mean, I saw a lot of, you know, enemy prisoners of war being taken and not handled necessarily in a gentle manner, but you know, no war crimes committed and nothing that really kind of seemed to break any particular rules. So that, to me, wasn't the real issue, in terms of how the Americans were interacting with civilians who were in their custody. To me, the interesting issue was how Americans were interacting with civilians who were in their line of fire.
AMANPOUR: And describe a little bit some of those instances. For instance, I think you were talking about at the Diyala (ph) Bridge, one of the key battles before entering Baghdad.
MAASS: Right. Well, this was a key battle for this Marine battalion. And basically, what happened is that they took this bridge and they set up a defensive perimeter. And basically, their rules of engagement at that time were to shoot at any vehicle that came towards them. The problem was that there were lots of civilians who were trying to leave Baghdad, and they were heading towards the Americans and couldn't see the Americans because the Americans were dug in.
And basically, what happened is that every vehicle that came up this road was shot at. First a couple of warning shots, though not always so many, and then pretty much immediately, a fuselage of shots from all of the soldiers. And as a result, a number of civilians were killed on this road. I saw the cars and the corpses myself and talked to survivors afterwards. And they were killed from a distance of several hundred yards, so it really wasn't a distance at which they could have been -- even if they were suspected of being soldiers in cars with bombs, that they could have been a real immediate danger to the soldiers.
AMANPOUR: Peter, just very briefly, because we don't have a huge amount of time -- but we've both covered issues that required war crimes allegations and prosecutions, and it's a very fine line to draw. How do you think this kind of accusation against Lieutenant Tim Collins is going to affect the whole very serious nature of war crimes and the procedures for it?
MAASS: Well, perhaps it might trivialize it. I mean, you know, punching somebody here or there is really very, very small stuff compared to what war -- you know, the real sorts of war crimes that, you know, journalists and others see all over the world. And that's where people are being killed not just in, you know, individual numbers or by fives or tens but by much larger numbers. I think those are the issues that you really have to keep your eye on and not trivialize it with these kinds of things. Serious though they are, they really don't compare to really are war crimes.
AMANPOUR: Peter, thank you very much indeed for joining us from Kuwait. And we'll obviously be watching that investigation and its results.
And still to come on NEWSNIGHT, we'll look at rebuilding Iraq. And we'll talk with General Wesley Clark about what needs to be done to win the peace there.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
AMANPOUR: We want to take a broader look now at Iraq and the state of play there, as the United States and Britain grapple with restoring order and rebuilding and striking some kind of balance on an eventual transition of power to Iraqi hands. Here to help us, CNN analyst and retired general Wesley Clark. He's with us tonight from Little Rock, Arkansas.
General Clark, a great plan to win the war, but it looks very much like not a great plan to maintain the peace.
GEN. WESLEY CLARK (RET.), FORMER NATO COMMANDER, CNN ANALYST: Well, I think there has been -- in the build-up to the war, there was a reluctance to confront the full range of difficulties that they might face when they actually succeeded with the military operation. And this success came relatively rapidly, and we've seen the difficulties.
AMANPOUR: But General, I mean, what's going to happen now, seriously? There aren't enough troops on the ground. Security is still a big problem. And it's not just little looting here and there. It's having a big impact on actual rebuilding and political transformation. What needs to happen?
CLARK: I think the first thing is that you've got to have a means of communicating with the people in Iraq. So they've got to get more interpreters there for the soldiers that are present, trying to do the patrolling, and for the team under Ambassador Paul Bremer and Jay Garner, so that they can actually communicate. Secondly, they've got to get the means of communication back in order. So if they can't establish a local telephone exchange quickly, then they've got to requisition the military means from the U.S. forces over there and set up telephones.
The third thing they've got to do is decentralize inside Baghdad. They've got to develop neighborhoods. They've got to put people in charge of neighborhoods, small units. They've got to bring emergent leaders forward in neighborhoods. You've got to get to see people by name and by face and by home. It's a big city. It's tough to do. But that's the requirement, if you want to stabilize this country.
AMANPOUR: You know, a lot of the aid community there, a lot of the administrators there, are basically saying you can't do any of that without first having security.
CLARK: Well, I think that's right. I mean, I think security is the first thing, but you can't get the security by simply driving back and forth, up and down the streets. Now, the new 1st Armored Division commander who's coming in there, Major General Rick Sanchez, is experienced from Kosovo. He knows how to break down the units so they can do effective patrolling locally. But still, those units have to be able to communicate. So you've got to get people out on the street. You've got to be armed still because there's still a threat. And you've got to have means of communication.
Then you've got to work with the local populace because they want the security. They can tell you who the troublemakers are. And if you're there and communicate, they will tell you. I don't think this is impossible, but it does require resources. AMANPOUR: General Clark, the resources aren't quite there yet. My question is, given the experience of, let's say, Afghanistan or, as you mention, Kosovo and Bosnia before that, how long a window does the United States and Britain have to establish the security before it really turns for the worst?
CLARK: Well, that's difficult to say, Christiane. I think it's a bunch of two things. One is the patience of the people in Iraq. And the second is whether there's any strong organized force from the outside or inside that's determined to go against the U.S.-British presence. We don't know about the latter yet. There are still some Ba'athists there. There are still, obviously, people who are shooting. Are they organized? Do they have command-and-control? How strong is this element?
If this element's very strong, then the mission's going to be very difficult and the window's short. If there's no organized resistance countrywide, if it's possible for the U.S. forces to get the resources in there, then we're dealing with a matter of weeks, maybe months, because, really, the people of Iraq will have no alternative. So they may be frustrated and unhappy, but that window is not going to close as long as the United States can still make progress.
AMANPOUR: General Clark, thank you very much indeed for joining us tonight.
And as NEWSNIGHT continues: al Qaeda and Iran. Are there links? We'll talk with the Iranian ambassador to the United Nations in a moment. This is NEWSNIGHT from London.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
AMANPOUR: Earlier tonight, CNN's David Ensor gave us a snapshot of a U.S.-Iranian relationship that is messy and complicated and clearly evolving as we seek. Now we want to talk to Javad Zarif, Iran's ambassador to the United Nations. He joins us by telephone from the Iranian capital, Teheran.
Welcome to NEWSNIGHT, Mr. Ambassador. You heard in David's piece there that an American official said that there may be better news coming from Iran. Have there been any arrests? Have you made any new progress in the cooperation on al Qaeda or not?
JAVAD ZARIF, IRANIAN AMBASSADOR TO U.N.: Well, first of all, good evening to you and to your viewers. I wanted to tell you that this -- the news that are coming out of Iran are not news to the United States. Some people in the administration have been trying to play with certain misinformation that they have been spreading. Iran has announced since very -- since long time ago, since January of 2002, that we had started arresting al Qaeda and other Arab-Afghans or other suspicious elements entering Iranian territory through our eastern front, from either Pakistan or Afghanistan.
This operation has continued ever since. So it has hardly been any time in the past 14 or 15 months when we did not have somebody from al Qaeda or connected to al Qaeda in prison in Iraq. We have expelled, extradited, kept in prison hundreds of al Qaeda people in the last 15 months. Probably, we have extradited more al Qaeda people to European and Arab countries than anybody else.
AMANPOUR: Mr. Zarif, do you...
ZARIF: In this process, we have had a number of people who are connected with al Qaeda in prison for few weeks. And now they are trying to play with the story, one day saying that they are out in the open, the other day saying they are colluding with the government. And now they're saying they're in prison. This is all a smokescreen. They have always been in prison or they have been in areas that we have no control over and we cannot find them, just like the fact that there are al Qaeda cells in the United States.
AMANPOUR: OK, very briefly -- do you know whether those suspects in the Saudi and Moroccan bombs are in prison in Iran or not? You know the U.S., some in the intelligence community, believe that there is a link between Iran and those bombs.
ZARIF: Well, I can tell you with certainty that people who are in prison had nothing to do with any of these operations during the time they were in prison. Prior to their imprisonment, we do not know what they have been doing. We do not know where they were operating from. And we are continuing to interrogate the people who are in prison to determine whether they have any information that can help us and help our friends prevent further terrorist attacks. This is what we are committed to, and this is what we will do and have done in the past and will continue to do.
AMANPOUR: Mr. Zarif, you know that the pressure is piling up from various quarters in the United States on Iran. There's an article in "The Washington Post" that the United States is ready or has already cut off contacts, the few contacts they had with Iran on matters of bilateral interest. First of all, can you confirm that? And secondly, they're saying that there may be a policy, a plan formulated to basically destabilize the government. How do you react to that?
ZARIF: Well, first of all, we are used to United States pressure. This has been imposed on Iran. The policy of pressure and the policy of attempting to intimidate Iranian people has been the same policy that has been pursued by the United States for so many years. And it is, in fact, regrettable that they don't learn a lesson from their past mistakes.
And if there are attempts to destabilize the Iranian government, those are not new ideas. We've had legislation coming out of U.S. Congress as long back as 10, 15 years ago, in fact, putting into law an illegal international act of destabilizing another government, and these efforts have continued.
We hope that rationality could finally prevail and Washington and they could be prepared to deal with other countries on the basis of mutual respect, rather than on the basis of believing that they're the policemen of the world and can put pressure whenever and wherever they want on other people. This policy is bound to fail.
On the other hand, if the United States is prepared to deal seriously with the issues of concern to us, and probably with the issues of concern to the United States, then there won't be any problem. And we are interested in a process of reducing tension with the United States, but we will not certainly respond to a language of pressure and intimidation.
AMANPOUR: On that note, Ambassador Zarif, thank you very much indeed for joining us from Teheran.
Still ahead on NEWSNIGHT, a chance for a great real estate investment. The English village that's up for sale lock, stock and pub. This is NEWSNIGHT from London.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
AMANPOUR: In some of Britain's best pheasant-shooting country this bank holiday weekend, a real estate listing that might read like this: Make your Merchant-Ivory dream come true, picture-perfect English village for sale. All of it. Seeking $27 million -- or pounds. CNN's Robyn Curnow gives us a tour.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ROBYN CURNOW, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Nestling in the English countryside, a little village, strangely reminiscent of a fantasy England, conjured up by wistful writers and nostalgic filmmakers. But this is no imagined location. Here in Hambleden (ph), there really is a babbling brook, rolling green hills, sleepy cows and perfect little stone cottages. And it's all for sale. And the asking price is $27 million.
DAVID ECKERSLEY, CARTER JONAS, PROPERTY CONSULTANT: It comprises about 1,600 acres of farmland and woodland, together with the village of Hambleden, 44 cottages and houses in the village, the Stag and Huntsman pub.
CURNOW: For generations, all this owned by one family, a feudal- type lifestyle still common in parts of Britain. No one's sure, though, why the current owner is selling his inheritance, but these prospective buyers don't really care.
(on camera): If you're interested in buying this piece of old England, be warned. For centuries, locals have lived and died here, and the current residents of Hambleden are suspicious, worried about any changes a new owner might bring.
(voice-over): Suspense, suspicion and mystery pretty common in these parts. For years, film directors have drawn on the eerie perfection of this village, using it as a backdrop for tales of murder and mayhem. "Sleepy Hollow," "Midsummer Murders," "The Avengers" and "Band of Brothers" have all been filmed at Hambleden. Now locals feel threatened, not by a headless horsemen but by an uncertain future. They were only informed of the sale a month ago. Since then, much speculation about who'll buy the village. ANDY STOAKES, STAG AND HUNTSMAN, PUB MANAGER: There's a lot of concern, a lot of people that are a bit worried about it.
CURNOW: (on camera) About their future?
STOAKES: Yes. So you know, to say what's 'round the corner, we don't know at the moment. We just have to wait and see.
CURNOW (voice-over): Whatever happens, folks here hope things don't change too much. Robyn Curnow, CNN, Hambleden, England.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: Ahead in our next half hour of NEWSNIGHT from London, the missing man in the Middle East piece equation, Yasser Arafat, and the effect he may have anyway. We'll also talk with a PLO adviser about Israel's vote today on the road map for peace. And we'll meet an American soldier who's scrambling to get Iraq's oil industry pumping again.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
AMANPOUR: On Friday, we talked about the continuing tensions between the U.S. and France after their diplomatic duel over Iraq. Today the French foreign minister was assuring Israel of Europe's commitment to its security and assuring the Palestinians of Europe's commitment to its independent state.
He did raise a few eyebrows by meeting Yassir Arafat, someone who U.S. and Israel would like to see forgotten, and someone of whom it is said his powers of political survival should never be underestimated.
More now from CNN's John Vause.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JOHN VAUSE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Leave it to the French to do exactly what we Americans don't want. Remember, Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin? There he is, all smiles, shaking hands with Yassir Arafat, who the U.S. and Israel says is irrelevant.
YASSIR ARAFAT, PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) they have to understand that I have been elected from the Palestinian people, not from -- I am not here in Afghanistan.
VAUSE: He's been chairman of the PLO since 1969, 34 long years. And those who know him say being sidelined challenges everything he is.
HANAN ASHRAWI, PALESTINIAN COUNCIL MEMBER: It would be extremely difficult for any leader who's been used to having sole control and power, let alone for Arafat, a person who has combined many aspects of Palestinian reality, Palestinian history, Palestinian identity, a revolutionary of symbolic value, the sort of Moses who led his people, you know, through the desert. VAUSE: But in some ways, the American and Israeli plan has only made Yassir Arafat stronger. He's grown more popular at home. Approval ratings are up, winning over people like Laila Mari'i, a single mother with two young boys. She says she lost her job in Jericho last year because she couldn't leave her home in Ramallah during the Israeli incursions. Now her savings are gone, and for the first time, she's supporting a politician. And it's Yassir Arafat.
LAILA MARI'I, RAMALLAH RESIDENT (through translator): Arafat will not budge on the national right of the Palestinian people, that it is our right to have our own independent state, that it is our right to live a normal, free life.
VAUSE: Internationally too, the U.S.-Israeli tactic may have backfired. Europeans especially don't like to follow American foreign policy.
DOMINIQUE DE VILLEPIN, FRENCH FOREIGN MINISTER: And when you want peace, you need to have everybody on board, everybody playing an active role.
VAUSE: And while Yassir Arafat may not be publicly calling the shots, there's every indication that, for now, the new Palestinian prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas, has little choice but to consult with his president every step of the way.
(on camera): Because if there is ever to be an agreement on a peace plan, right now there is only one man who has the legal right, as chairman of the PLO, to sign international treaties on behalf of the Palestinian people. That man has been holed up here in this compound for more than a year, the not-so-relevant Yassir Arafat.
John Vause, CNN, Ramallah.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: And as promised earlier, we're joined now by Palestinian legal adviser Diana Buttu. She's in Ramallah tonight.
Diana, thank you very much for joining us from there. It's morning your time.
Tell me, what do you, the Palestinian Authority, view of Israeli Prime Minister Sharon's declaration today saying that they cannot continue occupation, and basically moving this road map along?
DIANA BUTTU, LEGAL ADVISER TO THE PLO: Well, he's absolutely right on this account. Israel has now been occupying the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, now for 36 years, denying the Palestinians their freedom.
It's -- it makes it -- one realize that Israel cannot have peace and security at the same time while denying peace, security, and freedom to the Palestinians. It's therefore important for Israel not only to go along the path of the road map, but to take all of the steps outlined in the road map, particularly the freezing of the settlements, and as well as stopping assassinations against Palestinians.
AMANPOUR: What do you make and what do you expect will be the practical result of the U.S. basically getting Israel to agree to this road map by taking into consideration its conditions or concerns? How do you think that's going to affect, if at all, the next steps?
BUTTU: Well, we were encouraged by the fact that the United States government said that they would not be changing the text of the road map whatsoever, but are still concerned that they are going to be taking into consideration Israel's conditions, Israel's reservations.
Some of these conditions relate to the very essence of the road map itself. Israel is demanding that obligations not be conducted in parallel, and instead saying that the Palestinians have all of the obligations on their side, and none of the obligations on its side.
This is one of the conditions that is going to destroy the very essence of the road map.
Other conditions include things such as reservations with respect to the right of return.
All of these conditions, while put forward, were put forward simply as a means to delay implementation of the road map and to simply undermine the very essence of the road map. It makes one wonder why it is that Israel is entering into the road map if it's simply kicking and screaming, whether it's really interested in -- whether it's truly interested in peace, if it has all of these conditions and all of these reservations.
The Palestinians also had their reservations, but we cast them aside in favor of peace, and we were hoping that the United States would do the same thing with (UNINTELLIGIBLE) -- with Israel to make sure that Israel casts aside its reservations in the interests of peace.
AMANPOUR: Diana, the Palestinians are -- their obligation is to crack down, to basically stop the militant violence, and there have been reports that Abu Mazan, Mahmoud Abbas, has been talking to Hamas and trying to negotiate some kind of ceasefire in terms of suicide attacks inside Israel, at the very least.
Can you give us any notion of where that stands?
BUTTU: Well, this is something that was also done back in 1996 and was very successful. From the period of 1997 to the year 2000, there wasn't a single Israeli who died inside Israel of suicide bombings. And this is also something that the Israeli authorities have acknowledged.
The -- it's important to remember that this is not a military conflict. This is a political conflict. And because it's a political conflict, we have to address the political underlyings of this conflict, for Hamas and for Islamic Jihad, this means that we have to start looking at this conflict in a way as to understand that there's a link between Israel's lack of security and the Palestinians' lack of freedom.
And the only way that we'll be able to move forward is if we address that lack of freedom and address it in a concrete way.
The approach that's currently being taken is to try to gain a consolidated approach towards attacks on Israel, trying to encourage and talk to Hamas and Islamic Jihad, to encourage them not to attack Israel and Israelis.
But we don't have the political -- sorry, we don't have the military force to be able to stop them. The only thing that we do have is to try to convince them that Israel is truly interested in a two-state solution. That's the only tool that we have in our back pocket.
And we're hoping that Israel won't undermine that simple tool by continuing to assassinate Palestinians, by continuing to build more and more settlements. Just the other day they expanded more and more settlements. And by continuing to kill Palestinian civilians and restrict their freedom of movement.
This is where Israel's help is absolutely necessary, and this where the world community's help is absolutely necessary.
AMANPOUR: Diana Buttu, thank you very much indeed for joining us from Ramallah.
And as NEWSNIGHT continues, we'll turn to Iraq again and talk with Michael Weisskopf from "TIME" magazine.
Also, the story of the American soldier trying to get the oil industry running again there.
And then, Jeff Greenfield looks at the job of building both democracy and freedom in a country with a tradition of neither.
This is NEWSNIGHT from London.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
AMANPOUR: Chances are you know one, and if you don't, you wish you did -- somebody who can fix anything, no service manual, wrong tools, no problem. A tweak here, a thump there, some chewing gum, and some guile, and pretty soon the TV works or the dishwasher is washing.
And in this case, the oil pipeline is pumping again.
CNN's Ben Wedeman now in Mr. Fix-it, or Major Fix-it to the U.S. Army.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
MAJ. JOE HANUS, U.S. CORPS OF ARMY ENGINEERS: We're going to go in and lead us down to IT-1.
BEN WEDEMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Joe Hanus is a man with a mission, to get Iraq's oil pumping again. A major in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Hanus spends his days driving from one oil facility to another in northern Iraq, pressing the flesh.
HANUS: You're doing a great job.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thank you.
HANUS: OK. You keep it up. Keep up the great work.
WEDEMAN: Every day, he and his small team of Army engineers and civilian contractors survey the damage left by war and anarchy, trying to solve dozens of small problems and a few big ones too.
These workers have been waiting all day long for days for delivery of one last segment of a pipeline.
HANUS: You shouldn't have to wait no more. You've done good work.
WEDEMAN: Plenty of frustrations, made bearable by the occasional triumph.
HANUS: Good day?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, good day.
HANUS: Well, where are we at?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We are producing about 540,000...
HANUS: Yes! Broke 500. That's over a half a million barrels.
WEDEMAN: Daily oil output in northern Iraq has grown tenfold in just a few weeks.
HANUS: Very good day. Half a million barrels. I think I owe you something then.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You have to make (UNINTELLIGIBLE).
HANUS: No, I got something for you. I'd like to give you some...
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What is this?
HANUS: ... some cookies, yes.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: OK, thank you.
HANUS: You know where these are from? These are from Wisconsin.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh, good.
HANUS: Yes, they're made by my mother-in-law, Jan.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: OK. WEDEMAN: American ways are sometimes hard for Iraqis to fathom.
Crude oil leaking from a 25-year-old pipeline has been burning for days. Here the culprit isn't war, just time.
HANUS: You know, it was just one kind of stuff that happens with older infrastructure like this.
WEDEMAN: Down the road, another problem. Ali Farfar (ph) guards a communications tower linking Iraq's remote pumping stations. Threatened by local toughs, he asks Major Hanus for protection. He takes up Ali's case with a nearby armored unit.
HANUS: What we got here is this power that's part of the oil system, and I want to get the guard at the tower convinced, or, you know, confident that if he has any trouble, he can come to the gate here and you guys can help him.
Did he tell his boss?
WEDEMAN (on camera): (speaks in Arabic)
(voice-over): In the absence of a translator, a CNN correspondent pitches in.
To Hanus, all these little acts add up.
HANUS: You know, every day, every day we measure success sometimes here by helping just one Iraqi, and we add those up each day, and they keep adding up to more pluses than minuses each day, so we're doing good.
WEDEMAN: At a refinery near Tikrit, just minuses. What the looters couldn't take, they destroyed.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Have to take it all off and start over, it's just nonrepairable.
WEDEMAN: Hanus, a civil engineer by training, isn't keen to get into the controversial politics of oil and occupation. He has a job to do, and he'll do it.
HANUS: You know, every American here wants nothing more than to go home as soon as we can. But I don't think anyone here wants to go home unless the job's done. So we're going to make sure the job's done, and, you know, we have no regrets when we leave.
WEDEMAN: Given the job to be done, that might not be for a while.
Ben Wedeman, CNN, northern Iraq.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: And from there we turn to another unfinished project, that of finding or finding out what has happened to Saddam Hussein and his two sons.
"TIME" magazine's Michael Weisskopf has uncovered some tantalizing details on the subject, and he joins us now from Washington.
Mr. Weisskopf, thank you very much for joining us.
MICHAEL WEISSKOPF, "TIME" MAGAZINE: Pleasure.
AMANPOUR: Do you know where, what -- tell us about Saddam Hussein, Uday, and Qusay.
WEISSKOPF: We understand they are operating in an arc between Baghdad, Tikrit to the north, and Ramadi (ph) to the west, moving from place to place from day to day. They're divided into two groups, Uday with aides in one camp, Saddam and his son Qusay, the younger son, with him together.
AMANPOUR: And how are they evading the radar screen, if you like? How are they keeping out of the hands of the Americans, or indeed, angry Iraqis?
WEISSKOPF: It's a good question. We don't know that. All we know is there have been sightings, and there have been reports. We have some information from a domestic servant, another from a friend of the family.
AMANPOUR: And do you know how they're living? I mean, are they going from safe house to safe house, or are they disguised? Do you know any of those details?
WEISSKOPF: Early on, as Baghdad fell, we understand that they were moving in large groups, family groups, from one family or relatives' home to another, disguised as -- in traditional Arab outfits.
AMANPOUR: And you know, a week or so ago, maybe less than that, there were all sorts of reports that perhaps Uday was getting ready to negotiate a surrender, hand himself over. Did you uncover any kinds of details that would lead to what he might be planning to do?
WEISSKOPF: We've heard the same, and that for some reason he feels some type of affinity to the United States, and is hopeful for some type of a deal. This seems totally unrealistic, of course, to Americans on the other end, but that's the understanding, that he would like some type of immunity.
AMANPOUR: Michael, do you get the impression from the people that you're talking to that they could be on the lam for a long, long time, that Iraq is in fact going to be a very big place for them, or that the net may be tightening?
WEISSKOPF: The latter. They're -- they have a limited amount of money. They're only allowed -- they were only able to get out with as much money as they could carry. Large caches of money that -- belonging to them have been found in palaces and other places. The money is what's getting them through.
And it's only limited -- they only have a limited amount of time before somebody will identify their positions.
AMANPOUR: Is there any notion that there may be any kind of third party who may take them in before their money runs out?
WEISSKOPF: We don't know. They are appealing to intermediaries. We know at least Uday is. He may be more hopeful than Qusay and Saddam. But we just don't know at this point. There was some indication early on that Uday wanted to go to Syria. We're not sure how far he got.
AMANPOUR: OK, Michael Weisskopf, thank you very much for joining us tonight.
WEISSKOPF: Pleasure.
AMANPOUR: We've heard many times that a key goal of the war in Iraq is to allow the Iraqis to choose their leaders for themselves, free and democratically. But does democracy guarantee freedom? The fact is, history is littered with the names of freely chosen dictators.
More on that from CNN's Jeff Greenfield.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JEFF GREENFIELD, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST (voice-over): With Saddam Hussein gone, America's goal for Iraq seems clear -- democracy, freedom.
GEN. TOMMY FRANKS, U.S. CENTRAL COMMAND: ... Iraqi freedom...
GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: ... democracy and freedom...
TONY BLAIR, BRITISH PRIME MINISTER: ... democracy...
BUSH: ... freedom...
BLAIR: ... democracy...
BUSH: ... freedom...
GREENFIELD (on camera): But here's something to think about. Are democracy and freedom really the same thing? And, in fact, if we move too quickly to bring democracy to Iraq, might we be undermining freedom?
(voice-over): For instance, does anyone think of Adolf Hitler's Germany as democratic? Of course not. But in fact, Hitler came to power through the ballot box, and then wiped out the liberties of Germans.
While Cuba's Castro and Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini were not elected, they were swept into power on waves of popular support, then set out to stifle freedoms.
Robert Mugabe was an elected leader of Zimbabwe. Now he terrorizes and jails his foes.
And in Iraq, elections alone might well install into office a democratic government that would swiftly wipe out freedom.
Listen to what a leading Iraqi cleric says.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (through translator): The ballot box must be the foundation for the government and the nation. But we believe, because the Iraqi people are a Muslim people, that they will choose to implement Sharia law in at least some areas of daily life.
GREENFIELD: And that could mean a government democratically chosen but not fully free.
FAREED ZAKARIA, "NEWSWEEK" MAGAZINE: If you think of democracy as simply elections, you have no, you have no safeguard against a Shi'a majority saying, We want an Islamic state, we want mullahs to be in charge. And, by the way, we will have Sunni Muslims as second- class citizens.
GREENFIELD: "Newsweek"'s Fareed Zakaria has devoted a new book, the best-selling "Future of Freedom," to the argument that a truly free country means much more than elections, so that when Americans talk about democracy...
ZAKARIA: We mean the Bill of Rights, which tells the democratically elected Congress, These are the things you can't do. We mean a whole bunch of institutions that preserve and protect liberty, not just elections.
GREENFIELD: Those are the kinds of governments an occupying American military left behind in Japan and Germany after World War II. They're the kinds of governments slowly evolving today in South Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines, possibly Russia -- governments where a free press, independent courts, business and labor groups, academics, all are free to challenge and to limit the government.
And to build that kind of government in Iraq, Fareed Zakaria says, means a lengthy stay.
ZAKARIA: It's imperialism, I suppose, but all I'm saying is, it worked, and all the cases of having elections and running away and hoping it all works out haven't worked so well.
GREENFIELD: Jeff Greenfield, CNN, New York.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
GREENFIELD: And still ahead on NEWSNIGHT, a last look at Memorial Day 2003.
This is NEWSNIGHT from London.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
AMANPOUR: Finally tonight, Memorial Day 2003 in the United States, a day to honor those killed in wars centuries ago and those killed today, as an American soldier was in Iraq.
A look now at how America's fallen were remembered across the country as well as some of the faces of those who lost their lives in the war in Iraq.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIPS)
BUSH: Today we honor the men and women who have worn the nation's uniform and were last seen on duty. From the battles of Iraq and Afghanistan to the conflicts in Korea and Vietnam, to the trials of world war, the struggles that made us a nation,m today we recall that liberty is always the achievement of courage.
SGT. DANIEL MCVAY, U.S. ARMY: My father was a Vietnam vet. He served for 23 years. And he's not a very emotional man, but I always notice around Memorial Day time frame, he always kind of -- you know, he may mist up a little bit. He'll walk a little taller. He just has a whole different air about him.
FIRST SGT. ROBERT HAY, U.S. ARMY: I wish we had Memorial Day every day of the year. I think we sometimes forget in this -- you know, it's a shame that it's only once a year.
SEN. ELIZABETH DOLE (R), NORTH CAROLINA: Today, nearly 40,000 service men and women from North Carolina's military bases have been deployed for duty in Operation Iraqi Freedom. As I visited all of our military bases across North Carolina, I've been deeply moved by their dedication, their commitment, their patriotism. They just make me proud and thankful to be an American.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (singing): Oh, say can you see by the dawn's early light...
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (singing): Oh, say can you see by the dawn's early light...
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (singing): Oh, say can you see by the dawn's early light...
GEN. RICHARD MYERS, JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF: So today let's honor our fallen, and let's resolve to vigorously protect America's future and secure in their name our precious freedoms for tomorrow's generations. May God bless the men and women of our armed forces.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: And that's NEWSNIGHT for tonight. I'm Christiane Amanpour in London. I hope you'll tune in again tomorrow. Good night.
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Aired May 26, 2003 - 22:00 Â ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN ANCHOR: Thank you very much and good evening to all our viewers tonight. I am Christiane Amanpour sitting in for Aaron Brown.
And it is Memorial Day in the United States, a day for reflecting on wars past. We'll do that tonight but much of the program involves the wars of the present, in Iraq where the war itself might be over but danger and disorder are still all around and the peace hangs very much in the balance; the war on terror with Iran under increasing pressure over alleged al Qaeda connections; and, the everlasting war between the Israelis and the Palestinians.
It's the push to end that war that we begin with tonight. And so, the whip starts off with Kelly Wallace in Jerusalem with the latest on the roadmap to peace and the creation of a Palestinian state -- Kelly.
KELLY WALLACE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Christiane, some stunning words from the Israeli prime minister tonight. It appears for one of the first times ever in public he used the word occupation and he called for an end to it in the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip, leading some to say that Ariel Sharon's push for that roadmap is genuine and not in response to American pressure -- Christiane.
AMANPOUR: OK, Kelly, and the pressure on Iran continues to intensify. David Ensor is on that story for us -- David.
DAVID ENSOR, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Christiane, a high level administration meeting tomorrow to look at policy towards Iran, its nuclear program, and support for terrorists. Some are advocating a much tougher policy for the U.S. including support for opponents of the regime in Tehran. Yet, there are also hints that Iran may be moving against al Qaeda personnel inside of its borders.
AMANPOUR: And we'll explore that.
Memorial Day as spent by the president of the United States. White House Correspondent Dana Bash is on that tonight -- Dana.
DANA BASH, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Christiane, a war time president makes the traditional Memorial Day pilgrimage to Arlington National Cemetery to lead a nation in remembering its fallen soldiers nearly 200 of whom died in Operation Iraqi Freedom -- Christiane.
AMANPOUR: And we'll be back with all of you in a moment. Also coming up on NEWSNIGHT, a tale of intrigue in the time of war and accusations that a British colonel who spoke so eloquently about treating Iraqis humanely did not live up to those words. We'll have the different sides of a very tangled story.
And, an idyllic English village could be yours for the low, very low price of $27 million, pub and babbling brook included. That's in Segment 7 tonight, all that to come.
We begin tonight in the Middle East with developments that are significant by the recent standards of that region, not just the news that another rare meeting is scheduled between the Israeli and Palestinian prime ministers, nor that President Bush is planning to hold a summit with them shortly.
It's what Israel's hawkish prime minister said today after narrowly securing his cabinet's approval of the international roadmap for peace. Here again CNN's Kelly Wallace.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
WALLACE (voice-over): Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon found himself in an unusual position on the defensive before his own right- wing Likud Party and advocating an end to what he called occupation.
ARIEL SHARON, ISRAELI PRIME MINISTER (through translator): You can not like the word but what is happening is an occupation, to hold 3.5 million Palestinians under occupation. I believe that is a terrible thing for Israel and for the Palestinians.
WALLACE: Stunning words coming from the long-time hawk and backer of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. But as one senior Israeli official told CNN, it is now a different ballgame.
On Sunday, the Israeli cabinet approved the Mid East roadmap with reservations marking the first time an Israeli government formally backed the creation of a Palestinian state, and now Mr. Sharon appears to be trying to urge Israelis to ultimately accept giving up land for peace.
SHARON (through translator): It can't continue endlessly. Do you want to stay forever in (unintelligible), in Nablus, in Ramallah, in Bethlehem? I don't think that's right.
WALLACE: But the Israeli prime minister is facing a skeptical public. In a newspaper poll Monday, when asked if implementation of the roadmap would lead to peace with the Palestinians, 43 percent said yes, a majority 51 percent said no.
The stakes will be high for this week's expected meeting between Mr. Sharon and Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas who huddled with the French foreign minister Monday.
Mr. Abbas, Palestinian advisers say, will call for immediate implementation of the roadmap including an end to Israeli military operations in Palestinian areas and a freeze on any settlement expansion, key steps Palestinians say to convince radical Palestinian groups to stop their attacks against Israel.
DIANA BUTTU, PALESTINIAN LEGAL ADVISER: This is not a military conflict. It's a political conflict and until we address the political situation that's underlying the violence it will be able to go nowhere.
WALLACE: But Israeli sources say Mr. Sharon will reiterate his long-held position that the first step must be a clear and visible Palestinian crackdown on groups like Hamas which claimed responsibility for four recent suicide bombings against Israelis.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
WALLACE: The two men failed to achieve a breakthrough during their first meeting more than a week ago but now they face American pressure to deliver with a possible Mid East summit hosted by the U.S. president perhaps hinging on what comes out of this week's talks -- Christiane.
AMANPOUR: Kelly, firstly, do you know when that summit is planned for and, with both sides still saying that one side has to make the first move, where do we go from here?
WALLACE: Well, two good questions. First, to the Israeli- Palestinian summit, Christiane, it could happen as early as Wednesday. Also, sources say it could be pushed to Thursday but we are expecting it to happen this week.
And the thinking is sometime after that perhaps there would be this formal announcement by the White House about a possible summit hosted by U.S. President Bush, and then that's the key question.
The Israelis are saying the Palestinians need to go first, need to be cracking down first on radical Palestinian groups. The Palestinians are saying no, we must take parallel steps.
Many believe, Christiane, it will come down to the Americans. Will the American president be able to convince the two sides to start taking steps right now? Many believe that would come at a possible U.S. hosted summit -- Christiane.
AMANPOUR: Kelly, thank you.
And now, we're going to turn to New York where there is Alon Pinkas joining us, Israel's Consul General to the United States. Welcome back to the show, Mr. Pinkas.
ALON PINKAS, ISRAELI CONSUL GENERAL: Thank you, Christiane.
AMANPOUR: What happens next? We've just been talking to Kelly about the steps. Are they meant to be parallel? What will Israel do next since I'm talking to you?
PINKAS: Well, they're not meant to be parallel. They're actually meant to be sequential if you read the document itself, the roadmap. We expect to see visible effort and visible results in the Palestinian clampdown on terrorism.
But in parallel, in order to be in good faith and good spirit in the implementation process, Israel will to ease some of the restrictions on movement in the West Bank and (unintelligible) as well as remove some of the roadblocks and we will do whatever is necessary and whatever is good and expedient for the Palestinians to allow them and to help them facilitate the war on terrorism.
AMANPOUR: And the freeze on the settlements and the dismantling of the illegally built settlements?
PINKAS: Well, these are obviously two different issues, Christiane, as you very well know. Illegal settlements or illegal outposts will be removed as the prime minister and the defense minister, for that matter, have pledged to do because they are illegal period.
As for the freeze on settlements, that awaits to be seen in terms of the sequence of the implementation of the plan. We're not building new settlements. This has been true for the last five years, definitely for the last two and a half.
What you call the enlargement of settlements or the building of settlements is, I in fact, the natural growth of existing settlements which I concede is controversial in that the Palestinians don't see it that way and many others do.
But that in terms of the implementation of the roadmap or any other piece process, any other form of a peace process awaits to be seen. The first and most important thing is to combat terrorism and to -- for Abu Mazen, for Mahmoud Abbas to show that the Hamas and the Islamic Jihad are illegitimate actors in this game and they will be dealt with.
AMANPOUR: You do say that that issue is controversial and, of course, many would dispute some of what you just said there. But let me ask you do you -- what exactly do you expect to be the result of the U.S. taking into consideration Israel's concerns and conditions? What exactly does that mean practically?
PINKAS: Practically it means that the U.S. can monitor, as could the media incidentally, the U.S. can monitor and could supervise whether or not the Palestinian government, the new Palestinian government is seriously and comprehensively and unequivocally fighting against terrorism.
After all, the Hamas, the Islamic Jihad, organizations that are partially funded by Syria, partially funded by the patron saint of all terrorism, Iran, are a damaging actor, a damaging agent to the entire process whether you're Palestinian or Israeli.
And, the first thing that the U.S. should bear in mind is to see whether or not the Palestinian plan, the Palestinian policy of clamping down, of destroying the infrastructure is viable and is it working?
That means -- that is the practical facet of it. Obviously, in line of your question -- along the line of your question that is there are bigger issues that we assume and we expect the U.S. to be attentive to in terms of our interests.
AMANPOUR: Let me just ask you very briefly, because we don't have much more time, do you expect the president of the United State to really continue to go to the mat, to expend that political capital he has to get results, not just from the Palestinians but from the Israelis as well?
PINKAS: Well, the short answer is yes. The longer answer is I don't think there is a lot of political capital to be expended here. In fact, I think it's quite the opposite.
And thirdly, and most importantly perhaps, it is not up to President Bush and it is most up to the Palestinians to show once and for all that they are serious because the constellation, the international, the regional, and the local, the constellation of forces is such that this could very well be the best opportunity under the best of circumstances that they have been handed in a very long time and I hope for their sake, for our sake, for all of our sake that they will not miss this opportunity.
AMANPOUR: Mr. Pinkas, thank you for joining us.
And, we heard a little already from Diana Buttu, the Palestinian adviser in Kelly Wallace's report. We had hoped to have her on right now but due to the logistics of getting her live from Ramallah in the West Bank, we won't be able to talk to her until about an hour from now, so stay with us for that.
But now we turn to the pressure piling up on Iran. The U.S. is focusing closely these days on two key issues. Is Iran harboring a number of senior al Qaeda leaders and is it working to build nuclear weapons?
The Iranian government says no to both of those questions but today there comes another sign that the United States is no longer willing to take that no for an answer.
Here again, CNN's David Ensor.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ENSOR (voice-over): The message to Tehran from Washington, delivered again this weekend by a U.S. ally, is increasingly blunt. Senior al Qaeda personnel in Iran may have played a role in the recent Riyadh bombings. They should be turned over quickly or there may be consequences.
ALEXANDER DOWNER, AUSTRALIAN FOREIGN MINISTER: I made it perfectly clear to the president and other officials that it was unacceptable for al Qaeda to be able to operate in Iran. KAMAL KHARRAZI, IRANIAN FOREIGN MINISTER: There is no way that Iranians would support al Qaeda. We have been fighting al Qaeda before even Americans (unintelligible).
ENSOR: But U.S. intelligence officials say this man, Saif al- Adel and other senior al Qaeda are in Iran.
DONALD RUMSFELD, DEFENSE SECRETARY: There is no question but that there are al Qaeda in Iran.
ENSOR: The U.S. is also deeply worried about Iran's nuclear program for peaceful energy says Tehran, most likely for nuclear weapons says the U.S. At a White House meeting scheduled for Tuesday, sources say officials will consider a tougher policy towards Iran.
Some administration hardliners advocate giving their tanks back to the troops of the Iranian opposition group the People's Mujahaddin, and allowing it to resume attacks on Iran from U.S. occupied Iraq. The Mujahaddin, which is on the State Department's list of terrorist groups, was recently forced to give up its heavy weapons by U.S. forces in Iraq.
ALI SAFAVI, NATIONAL RESISTANCE COUNCIL OF IRAN: If the Iranian people and the Iranian resistance, the Iranian Mujahaddin, are given the chance and the opportunity, I think they will succeed in bringing democracy and freedom to Iran and obviously peace and tranquility to the region.
ENSOR: As the U.S. builds pressure on Tehran, Senate Intelligence Committee members hint at progress behind the scenes.
SEN. JOHN ROCKEFELLER (D), INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE: There could be some better news on Iran that will be coming out.
ENSOR (on camera): And hints of progress in Tehran too. Officials there say they have arrested several suspected members of al Qaeda but do not yet know who they are. One Iranian official said after interrogation they could be turned over to Saudi Arabia.
David Ensor, CNN, Washington.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: Every Memorial Day every U.S. president pays tribute to America's fallen warriors, but this year's commemoration comes right on the heels of the war in Iraq. The sacrifices are fresh and the reckoning is done up close.
Here's CNN's Dana Bash.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BASH (voice-over): Presenting a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns is emotional for any commander-in-chief. For one who sent troops to battle twice in just two years that emotion was hard to hide.
GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Today, we honor the men and women who have worn the nation's uniform and were last seen on duty from the battles of Iraq and Afghanistan to the conflicts in Korea and Vietnam, to the trials of world war, to the struggles that made us a nation.
BASH: One hundred ninety-eight servicemen have died in Operation Iraqi Freedom. Nineteen were laid to rest at Arlington over the last few months, buried with honors in Section 60. The president told some of their stories.
BUSH: One of the funerals was for Marine Second Lieutenant Frederick (unintelligible), Jr. of Jacksonville, North Carolina. His wife Carolyn (ph) received a folded flag. His 2-year-old daughter Taylor knelt beside her mother at the casket to say a final goodbye. This nation does not forget.
BASH: Amid the song, the tribute, talk of past acts of bravery in the name of liberty, the defense secretary used the moment to issue a warning about the future.
RUMSFELD: Today, we face new threats to our freedom. They will be met with the same courage, the same commitment, and like the foes of times past, they too will be defeated.
BASH: Despite that pledge, the focus this Memorial Day, as it has been since the Civil War, was on those who died and those left behind.
BUSH: All Americans and every free nation on earth can trace their liberty to the white markers at places like Arlington National Cemetery and may God keep us ever grateful.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BASH: And, the president spent the rest of the holiday quietly here at the White House in the residence. His schedule kicks into high gear at the end of the week.
He embarks on a multi-stop European tour and a potential trip to the Mid East as you were talking about earlier in the program, Christiane, for a three-way summit with Israeli and Palestinian leaders, but White House officials insist those plans are still in flux -- Christiane.
AMANPOUR: Dana, thanks, and we'll be keeping a close eye on those plans.
And ahead on NEWSNIGHT for Memorial Day, police in Louisiana name a suspect in the killings of five women there and ask the public to help find him.
And, a setback for Canada in its fight against SARS as new cases are identified.
This is NEWSNIGHT from London.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
AMANPOUR: It's been more than a year and a half since the first woman was found strangled to death in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Four more have been murdered since then, and as police sought the killer, people who live in the area have spent a lot of time looking over their shoulders.
Now, the police say they've got the break they've been looking for but they still haven't caught the suspect. We get the story now from CNN's Ed Lavandera.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CHIEF PAT ENGLADE, BATON ROUGE POLICE: An arrest warrant has been issued for the arrest of Derrick Todd Lee (ph).
ED LAVANDERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Louisiana authorities believe 34-year-old Derrick Todd Lee is a serial killer still on the loose.
ENGLADE: He is to be considered armed and dangerous and authorities should be notified immediately.
LAVANDERA: On May 5th, investigators say they took a DNA swab from Lee. Law enforcement sources tell CNN Lee was questioned at the time he provided the oral swab and then he was allowed to leave.
Authorities say it wasn't until a few days ago that DNA testing linked Lee to DNA evidence found at the five murder scenes. Lee's last known address led authorities to this abandoned house in St. Francisville, north of Baton Rouge.
AUSTIN DANIEL, WEST FELICIANA PARISH SHERIFF: We didn't find him. We don't really know where he is. We think he's probably skipped out. He took his child out of school about two weeks ago, along about the same time that he was DNA swabbed, so we feel as though he's on the run.
LAVANDERA: The five murders happened between September of 2001 and March of this year. All the victims were found between Baton Rouge and Lafayette. Since there were no break-ins at the murder victims' homes, authorities say the women probably fell into a trap.
In at least three cases, it's believed the killer came to the victim's house and asked to see a phonebook for information. In the same conversation he would try to figure out if the woman was home alone.
MIKE NEUSTROM, LAFAYETTE PARISH SHERIFF: Disarmingly charming, nice-looking fellow, smooth-talking fellow, non-threatening fellow, gains the confidence of a female and then again attacks.
LAVANDERA: In recent months, authorities investigating the serial killer case have come under intense pressure and criticism. Lynne Marino is the mother of one of the victims. She says investigators have made crucial mistakes like not paying closer attention to leads reported by the victims' neighbors. News of a suspect in the case isn't cooling her anger.
LYNNE MARINO, VICTIM'S MOTHER: Do they think I'm going to take this like a good sport? No, I'm not going to take it like a good sport. I'm going to scream and holler even more than I ever did before because these mistakes cost my daughter her life.
LAVANDERA (on camera): Investigators say they're doing all they can and are now focused on finding Derrick Todd Lee. A statewide manhunt has been launched and federal authorities are helping in a nationwide search for Lee, but they don't know what he might be wearing or how he's moving around.
Ed Lavandera, CNN, Dallas.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: And a few more stories from around the world now before we take a break starting in Iraq. Proof today that the war might be over but the danger isn't two ambushes today, one of them deadly.
It happened near Baghdad International Airport. Somebody threw a bundle of explosives under a humvee wounding four American soldiers, one of whom later died. Soldiers returned fire and say they wounded the attacker but didn't pursue him because they were busy tending to their own.
Canada is once again a hot spot for SARS. The World Health Organization is putting it back on the watch list after eight new cases were reported. All the cases have been traced to a 96-year-old man who died May 1st. All were confined to hospitals and for this reason World Health officials have not reinstated an advisory against traveling to Toronto.
And, northeastern Japan was rocked today by a major earthquake measuring magnitude seven. It triggered landslides, set off fires, and left dozens of people injured. Fortunately, only a few or the injuries were serious and damage was limited because the quake struck deep within the earth instead of closer to the surface.
Coming up on NEWSNIGHT, is he a hero or a villain, the story of an honored British officer accused of war crimes by an ally.
This is NEWSNIGHT from London.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
AMANPOUR: It was a remarkable speech on the eve of war, a British colonel urging hundreds of his troops to show the better part of their valor in Iraq, to fight with bravery but also humanity.
Now, there is an accusation that Lieutenant Colonel Tim Collins did not heed his own call, more in a moment from someone who knows well the heat of battle, but first the accusations and where they come from.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR (voice-over): British Lieutenant Colonel Tim Collins was hailed for the speech he gave the troops under his command on the eve of the war in Iraq.
"We go to liberate not to conquer," he said. "Show respect for them." And he went on to warn his men: "You will be shunned unless your conduct is of the highest."
Both Prince Charles and President Bush are said to have praised the speech and even requested copies of it. But now actions he is alleged to have taken are threatening to undue those words. Collins has been accused of war crimes by an American reservist for his treatment of Iraqi citizens and prisoners of war.
The British ministry of defense is investigating incidents said to include pistol whipping this Ba'ath Party official, using arms to threaten Iraqi civilians, and depriving prisoners of war of food. But Collins has many defenders, including an American major who served with him and they're all calling the allegations a case of sour grapes.
Collins' accuser is Major Ray Biastra (ph) of upstate New York who had had a run-in with him. But Biastra doesn't claim to have seen any of the abuse that he says Collins committed. He says he was just told about it. Collins has told friends that he denies all the charges and he claims that he is being set up. Meanwhile, he's on leave pending a formal investigation.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: The Collins case has dominated the news in this warrior nation. He has his distracters but mostly he's being vigorously defended in the media, including by retired Colonel Bob Stewart (ph) who was commander of British forces in Bosnia in the early '90s. I spoke with him here in London earlier tonight.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: Colonel Stewart, Tim Collins accused of pistol whipping an Iraqi, a war crime?
COL. BOB STEWART (RET.), COMMANDER BRITISH FORCES IN BOSNIA '92- '93: It's not a war crime, it's a breach of discipline. No one should -- no officer should pistol-whip anyone, if that happened. Remember, it's still under investigation, and so we can't actually discuss it because we don't know the facts of the matter.
AMANPOUR: And how common are these kinds of breaches of discipline, would you say?
STEWART: Well, I'm guilty -- if he's white, I'm a bit darker than white because I have hit a woman in Erat (ph) in 1970 when I was 20 in Northern Ireland. She was going berserk. I just didn't know what to do. And she'd been throwing petrol bombs at me and my soldiers, and we had taken a lot of casualties. Then the soldiers grabbed hold of her. And she was kicking, screaming, all the rest of it, going for it. And I just didn't know what to do. And it was my first riot, and I was frightened. So I stepped up to her and slapped her on the cheek and said, Quiet. You're arrested. That's the end of it. She calmed down, thank goodness.
And in Bosnia, when we first met, I mean, I had a similar problem. A Bosnian Croat commander was having a real go at me, and I was being pushed in the chest by this guy. Now, I don't mind that because I've been insulted by experts all my life. The British army is used to that. I didn't mind that. But then he said something unpardonable to me. He said, I am going to kill your soldiers! That was it. I saw red. I grabbed him by the front of his shirt, pushed him to the ground, stood over him, and said, You touch one of my soldiers, and I'll kill you.
Now, I am quite clear that that is not a war crime. We know what war crimes are. But I had a breach of discipline which could have been investigated and might have resulted in something wrong with me.
AMANPOUR: How has this affair, the Collins affair, so to speak, reached such a level? You have a reservist from the United States who is apparently subordinate to Collins, accusing him, and this is now a major story in the press. How has it got to this point? How has that been able to happen?
STEWART: God knows. What a mistake! For goodness sake, the first thing that should have happened, it should have been kept under the covers until it's investigated properly. Then after that, if there is a case to answer, then gently brought forward. But at the moment, we've got this situation where it looks like British soldiers against Americans, and American Marine majors are coming up and saying the British officer's good. This is just what we don't want.
What has gone wrong is it was made public. Why it was made public is a good question. It should have been kept quiet, not because this is allowable, if what is alleged happened did happen, not because of that, but because it's actually silly to have done it, and it causes such damage.
AMANPOUR: What do you think is going to happen to Tim Collins now? Somebody who's been lionized as a hero by many people, although there have been complaints about him as a bully by others, but certainly, his eve of war speech drew a lot of plaudits, even from the president of the United States, we hear.
STEWART: Well, look, one thing is clear. When you're commanding an infantry battalion going into battle, you're not running a nursery school, and you've actually got to motivate them and run that battalion. You've got to take people to war. So I understand Collins's robust form of leadership, and I hope to think -- or I venture to suggest that I practiced it myself when we first met. But what's going to happen to him now? If the military, the British military, think that he has offended and done something wrong, he will be reprimanded. If he's reprimanded, it will be a very big slight on his career.
AMANPOUR: What are precisely the rules of engagement? And of course, we have seen Americans who have caused quite a few civilian casualties, in some instances, being -- force protection is often their prime mission.
STEWART: Well, I think that the most important matter about rules of engagement are the following key rules. The first one is you may open fire if your life is in danger or those you are protecting are in danger. Secondly, if you do open fire, you open fire precisely, not in a scattergun effect, not with overwhelming force, with the minimum force required.
And there's a third rule, as well. And that third rule is politics. And that's the difficult one. The politics of it is, is it better for me not to open fire, or should I open fire because of the effect I might or might not have? And those three rules are the strands for rules of engagement, whether they're British or American. And the British ones tend to be restrained, but the Americans tend to -- I suggest, to open fire more willingly, with more fire as required.
AMANPOUR: Thank you, Colonel Stewart.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: Neither Tim Collins nor his American accuser are speaking publicly to journalists right now, but we are going to go to Kuwait and journalist Peter Maass, who's written extensively for "The New York Times" and others about military conduct during the Iraq war -- American military conduct, that is.
Peter, thank you for joining us at this late or very early hour from Kuwait. You traveled with American forces in Iraq. Tell me a little bit about procedures, about what you saw, in light of what's being accused right now, even though I know you don't know the Collins case.
PETER MAASS, JOURNALIST: Well, the battalion that I was traveling with and the ones around it was an infantry battalion, a front-line battalion. And its rules of engagement became much more, I would say, kind of lax, in certain respects, as the war went on, as suicide bombers were used against it. And basically, when they finally reached their biggest battle, they really had very loose rules of engagement in which -- it wasn't so much you were directly under threat you should fire, but if you felt that you were under threat, that you should fire. And this caused some problems.
AMANPOUR: What do you -- when you're reading and you know a little bit about this Collins case, I mean, how do you put it into perspective, given what you saw and given some of the very public things that the Americans have done out there?
MAASS: Well, I didn't see any behavior on the part of the Americans that was similar to what I've heard from Collins. I mean, I saw a lot of, you know, enemy prisoners of war being taken and not handled necessarily in a gentle manner, but you know, no war crimes committed and nothing that really kind of seemed to break any particular rules. So that, to me, wasn't the real issue, in terms of how the Americans were interacting with civilians who were in their custody. To me, the interesting issue was how Americans were interacting with civilians who were in their line of fire.
AMANPOUR: And describe a little bit some of those instances. For instance, I think you were talking about at the Diyala (ph) Bridge, one of the key battles before entering Baghdad.
MAASS: Right. Well, this was a key battle for this Marine battalion. And basically, what happened is that they took this bridge and they set up a defensive perimeter. And basically, their rules of engagement at that time were to shoot at any vehicle that came towards them. The problem was that there were lots of civilians who were trying to leave Baghdad, and they were heading towards the Americans and couldn't see the Americans because the Americans were dug in.
And basically, what happened is that every vehicle that came up this road was shot at. First a couple of warning shots, though not always so many, and then pretty much immediately, a fuselage of shots from all of the soldiers. And as a result, a number of civilians were killed on this road. I saw the cars and the corpses myself and talked to survivors afterwards. And they were killed from a distance of several hundred yards, so it really wasn't a distance at which they could have been -- even if they were suspected of being soldiers in cars with bombs, that they could have been a real immediate danger to the soldiers.
AMANPOUR: Peter, just very briefly, because we don't have a huge amount of time -- but we've both covered issues that required war crimes allegations and prosecutions, and it's a very fine line to draw. How do you think this kind of accusation against Lieutenant Tim Collins is going to affect the whole very serious nature of war crimes and the procedures for it?
MAASS: Well, perhaps it might trivialize it. I mean, you know, punching somebody here or there is really very, very small stuff compared to what war -- you know, the real sorts of war crimes that, you know, journalists and others see all over the world. And that's where people are being killed not just in, you know, individual numbers or by fives or tens but by much larger numbers. I think those are the issues that you really have to keep your eye on and not trivialize it with these kinds of things. Serious though they are, they really don't compare to really are war crimes.
AMANPOUR: Peter, thank you very much indeed for joining us from Kuwait. And we'll obviously be watching that investigation and its results.
And still to come on NEWSNIGHT, we'll look at rebuilding Iraq. And we'll talk with General Wesley Clark about what needs to be done to win the peace there.
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AMANPOUR: We want to take a broader look now at Iraq and the state of play there, as the United States and Britain grapple with restoring order and rebuilding and striking some kind of balance on an eventual transition of power to Iraqi hands. Here to help us, CNN analyst and retired general Wesley Clark. He's with us tonight from Little Rock, Arkansas.
General Clark, a great plan to win the war, but it looks very much like not a great plan to maintain the peace.
GEN. WESLEY CLARK (RET.), FORMER NATO COMMANDER, CNN ANALYST: Well, I think there has been -- in the build-up to the war, there was a reluctance to confront the full range of difficulties that they might face when they actually succeeded with the military operation. And this success came relatively rapidly, and we've seen the difficulties.
AMANPOUR: But General, I mean, what's going to happen now, seriously? There aren't enough troops on the ground. Security is still a big problem. And it's not just little looting here and there. It's having a big impact on actual rebuilding and political transformation. What needs to happen?
CLARK: I think the first thing is that you've got to have a means of communicating with the people in Iraq. So they've got to get more interpreters there for the soldiers that are present, trying to do the patrolling, and for the team under Ambassador Paul Bremer and Jay Garner, so that they can actually communicate. Secondly, they've got to get the means of communication back in order. So if they can't establish a local telephone exchange quickly, then they've got to requisition the military means from the U.S. forces over there and set up telephones.
The third thing they've got to do is decentralize inside Baghdad. They've got to develop neighborhoods. They've got to put people in charge of neighborhoods, small units. They've got to bring emergent leaders forward in neighborhoods. You've got to get to see people by name and by face and by home. It's a big city. It's tough to do. But that's the requirement, if you want to stabilize this country.
AMANPOUR: You know, a lot of the aid community there, a lot of the administrators there, are basically saying you can't do any of that without first having security.
CLARK: Well, I think that's right. I mean, I think security is the first thing, but you can't get the security by simply driving back and forth, up and down the streets. Now, the new 1st Armored Division commander who's coming in there, Major General Rick Sanchez, is experienced from Kosovo. He knows how to break down the units so they can do effective patrolling locally. But still, those units have to be able to communicate. So you've got to get people out on the street. You've got to be armed still because there's still a threat. And you've got to have means of communication.
Then you've got to work with the local populace because they want the security. They can tell you who the troublemakers are. And if you're there and communicate, they will tell you. I don't think this is impossible, but it does require resources. AMANPOUR: General Clark, the resources aren't quite there yet. My question is, given the experience of, let's say, Afghanistan or, as you mention, Kosovo and Bosnia before that, how long a window does the United States and Britain have to establish the security before it really turns for the worst?
CLARK: Well, that's difficult to say, Christiane. I think it's a bunch of two things. One is the patience of the people in Iraq. And the second is whether there's any strong organized force from the outside or inside that's determined to go against the U.S.-British presence. We don't know about the latter yet. There are still some Ba'athists there. There are still, obviously, people who are shooting. Are they organized? Do they have command-and-control? How strong is this element?
If this element's very strong, then the mission's going to be very difficult and the window's short. If there's no organized resistance countrywide, if it's possible for the U.S. forces to get the resources in there, then we're dealing with a matter of weeks, maybe months, because, really, the people of Iraq will have no alternative. So they may be frustrated and unhappy, but that window is not going to close as long as the United States can still make progress.
AMANPOUR: General Clark, thank you very much indeed for joining us tonight.
And as NEWSNIGHT continues: al Qaeda and Iran. Are there links? We'll talk with the Iranian ambassador to the United Nations in a moment. This is NEWSNIGHT from London.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
AMANPOUR: Earlier tonight, CNN's David Ensor gave us a snapshot of a U.S.-Iranian relationship that is messy and complicated and clearly evolving as we seek. Now we want to talk to Javad Zarif, Iran's ambassador to the United Nations. He joins us by telephone from the Iranian capital, Teheran.
Welcome to NEWSNIGHT, Mr. Ambassador. You heard in David's piece there that an American official said that there may be better news coming from Iran. Have there been any arrests? Have you made any new progress in the cooperation on al Qaeda or not?
JAVAD ZARIF, IRANIAN AMBASSADOR TO U.N.: Well, first of all, good evening to you and to your viewers. I wanted to tell you that this -- the news that are coming out of Iran are not news to the United States. Some people in the administration have been trying to play with certain misinformation that they have been spreading. Iran has announced since very -- since long time ago, since January of 2002, that we had started arresting al Qaeda and other Arab-Afghans or other suspicious elements entering Iranian territory through our eastern front, from either Pakistan or Afghanistan.
This operation has continued ever since. So it has hardly been any time in the past 14 or 15 months when we did not have somebody from al Qaeda or connected to al Qaeda in prison in Iraq. We have expelled, extradited, kept in prison hundreds of al Qaeda people in the last 15 months. Probably, we have extradited more al Qaeda people to European and Arab countries than anybody else.
AMANPOUR: Mr. Zarif, do you...
ZARIF: In this process, we have had a number of people who are connected with al Qaeda in prison for few weeks. And now they are trying to play with the story, one day saying that they are out in the open, the other day saying they are colluding with the government. And now they're saying they're in prison. This is all a smokescreen. They have always been in prison or they have been in areas that we have no control over and we cannot find them, just like the fact that there are al Qaeda cells in the United States.
AMANPOUR: OK, very briefly -- do you know whether those suspects in the Saudi and Moroccan bombs are in prison in Iran or not? You know the U.S., some in the intelligence community, believe that there is a link between Iran and those bombs.
ZARIF: Well, I can tell you with certainty that people who are in prison had nothing to do with any of these operations during the time they were in prison. Prior to their imprisonment, we do not know what they have been doing. We do not know where they were operating from. And we are continuing to interrogate the people who are in prison to determine whether they have any information that can help us and help our friends prevent further terrorist attacks. This is what we are committed to, and this is what we will do and have done in the past and will continue to do.
AMANPOUR: Mr. Zarif, you know that the pressure is piling up from various quarters in the United States on Iran. There's an article in "The Washington Post" that the United States is ready or has already cut off contacts, the few contacts they had with Iran on matters of bilateral interest. First of all, can you confirm that? And secondly, they're saying that there may be a policy, a plan formulated to basically destabilize the government. How do you react to that?
ZARIF: Well, first of all, we are used to United States pressure. This has been imposed on Iran. The policy of pressure and the policy of attempting to intimidate Iranian people has been the same policy that has been pursued by the United States for so many years. And it is, in fact, regrettable that they don't learn a lesson from their past mistakes.
And if there are attempts to destabilize the Iranian government, those are not new ideas. We've had legislation coming out of U.S. Congress as long back as 10, 15 years ago, in fact, putting into law an illegal international act of destabilizing another government, and these efforts have continued.
We hope that rationality could finally prevail and Washington and they could be prepared to deal with other countries on the basis of mutual respect, rather than on the basis of believing that they're the policemen of the world and can put pressure whenever and wherever they want on other people. This policy is bound to fail.
On the other hand, if the United States is prepared to deal seriously with the issues of concern to us, and probably with the issues of concern to the United States, then there won't be any problem. And we are interested in a process of reducing tension with the United States, but we will not certainly respond to a language of pressure and intimidation.
AMANPOUR: On that note, Ambassador Zarif, thank you very much indeed for joining us from Teheran.
Still ahead on NEWSNIGHT, a chance for a great real estate investment. The English village that's up for sale lock, stock and pub. This is NEWSNIGHT from London.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
AMANPOUR: In some of Britain's best pheasant-shooting country this bank holiday weekend, a real estate listing that might read like this: Make your Merchant-Ivory dream come true, picture-perfect English village for sale. All of it. Seeking $27 million -- or pounds. CNN's Robyn Curnow gives us a tour.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ROBYN CURNOW, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Nestling in the English countryside, a little village, strangely reminiscent of a fantasy England, conjured up by wistful writers and nostalgic filmmakers. But this is no imagined location. Here in Hambleden (ph), there really is a babbling brook, rolling green hills, sleepy cows and perfect little stone cottages. And it's all for sale. And the asking price is $27 million.
DAVID ECKERSLEY, CARTER JONAS, PROPERTY CONSULTANT: It comprises about 1,600 acres of farmland and woodland, together with the village of Hambleden, 44 cottages and houses in the village, the Stag and Huntsman pub.
CURNOW: For generations, all this owned by one family, a feudal- type lifestyle still common in parts of Britain. No one's sure, though, why the current owner is selling his inheritance, but these prospective buyers don't really care.
(on camera): If you're interested in buying this piece of old England, be warned. For centuries, locals have lived and died here, and the current residents of Hambleden are suspicious, worried about any changes a new owner might bring.
(voice-over): Suspense, suspicion and mystery pretty common in these parts. For years, film directors have drawn on the eerie perfection of this village, using it as a backdrop for tales of murder and mayhem. "Sleepy Hollow," "Midsummer Murders," "The Avengers" and "Band of Brothers" have all been filmed at Hambleden. Now locals feel threatened, not by a headless horsemen but by an uncertain future. They were only informed of the sale a month ago. Since then, much speculation about who'll buy the village. ANDY STOAKES, STAG AND HUNTSMAN, PUB MANAGER: There's a lot of concern, a lot of people that are a bit worried about it.
CURNOW: (on camera) About their future?
STOAKES: Yes. So you know, to say what's 'round the corner, we don't know at the moment. We just have to wait and see.
CURNOW (voice-over): Whatever happens, folks here hope things don't change too much. Robyn Curnow, CNN, Hambleden, England.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: Ahead in our next half hour of NEWSNIGHT from London, the missing man in the Middle East piece equation, Yasser Arafat, and the effect he may have anyway. We'll also talk with a PLO adviser about Israel's vote today on the road map for peace. And we'll meet an American soldier who's scrambling to get Iraq's oil industry pumping again.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
AMANPOUR: On Friday, we talked about the continuing tensions between the U.S. and France after their diplomatic duel over Iraq. Today the French foreign minister was assuring Israel of Europe's commitment to its security and assuring the Palestinians of Europe's commitment to its independent state.
He did raise a few eyebrows by meeting Yassir Arafat, someone who U.S. and Israel would like to see forgotten, and someone of whom it is said his powers of political survival should never be underestimated.
More now from CNN's John Vause.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JOHN VAUSE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Leave it to the French to do exactly what we Americans don't want. Remember, Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin? There he is, all smiles, shaking hands with Yassir Arafat, who the U.S. and Israel says is irrelevant.
YASSIR ARAFAT, PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) they have to understand that I have been elected from the Palestinian people, not from -- I am not here in Afghanistan.
VAUSE: He's been chairman of the PLO since 1969, 34 long years. And those who know him say being sidelined challenges everything he is.
HANAN ASHRAWI, PALESTINIAN COUNCIL MEMBER: It would be extremely difficult for any leader who's been used to having sole control and power, let alone for Arafat, a person who has combined many aspects of Palestinian reality, Palestinian history, Palestinian identity, a revolutionary of symbolic value, the sort of Moses who led his people, you know, through the desert. VAUSE: But in some ways, the American and Israeli plan has only made Yassir Arafat stronger. He's grown more popular at home. Approval ratings are up, winning over people like Laila Mari'i, a single mother with two young boys. She says she lost her job in Jericho last year because she couldn't leave her home in Ramallah during the Israeli incursions. Now her savings are gone, and for the first time, she's supporting a politician. And it's Yassir Arafat.
LAILA MARI'I, RAMALLAH RESIDENT (through translator): Arafat will not budge on the national right of the Palestinian people, that it is our right to have our own independent state, that it is our right to live a normal, free life.
VAUSE: Internationally too, the U.S.-Israeli tactic may have backfired. Europeans especially don't like to follow American foreign policy.
DOMINIQUE DE VILLEPIN, FRENCH FOREIGN MINISTER: And when you want peace, you need to have everybody on board, everybody playing an active role.
VAUSE: And while Yassir Arafat may not be publicly calling the shots, there's every indication that, for now, the new Palestinian prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas, has little choice but to consult with his president every step of the way.
(on camera): Because if there is ever to be an agreement on a peace plan, right now there is only one man who has the legal right, as chairman of the PLO, to sign international treaties on behalf of the Palestinian people. That man has been holed up here in this compound for more than a year, the not-so-relevant Yassir Arafat.
John Vause, CNN, Ramallah.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: And as promised earlier, we're joined now by Palestinian legal adviser Diana Buttu. She's in Ramallah tonight.
Diana, thank you very much for joining us from there. It's morning your time.
Tell me, what do you, the Palestinian Authority, view of Israeli Prime Minister Sharon's declaration today saying that they cannot continue occupation, and basically moving this road map along?
DIANA BUTTU, LEGAL ADVISER TO THE PLO: Well, he's absolutely right on this account. Israel has now been occupying the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, now for 36 years, denying the Palestinians their freedom.
It's -- it makes it -- one realize that Israel cannot have peace and security at the same time while denying peace, security, and freedom to the Palestinians. It's therefore important for Israel not only to go along the path of the road map, but to take all of the steps outlined in the road map, particularly the freezing of the settlements, and as well as stopping assassinations against Palestinians.
AMANPOUR: What do you make and what do you expect will be the practical result of the U.S. basically getting Israel to agree to this road map by taking into consideration its conditions or concerns? How do you think that's going to affect, if at all, the next steps?
BUTTU: Well, we were encouraged by the fact that the United States government said that they would not be changing the text of the road map whatsoever, but are still concerned that they are going to be taking into consideration Israel's conditions, Israel's reservations.
Some of these conditions relate to the very essence of the road map itself. Israel is demanding that obligations not be conducted in parallel, and instead saying that the Palestinians have all of the obligations on their side, and none of the obligations on its side.
This is one of the conditions that is going to destroy the very essence of the road map.
Other conditions include things such as reservations with respect to the right of return.
All of these conditions, while put forward, were put forward simply as a means to delay implementation of the road map and to simply undermine the very essence of the road map. It makes one wonder why it is that Israel is entering into the road map if it's simply kicking and screaming, whether it's really interested in -- whether it's truly interested in peace, if it has all of these conditions and all of these reservations.
The Palestinians also had their reservations, but we cast them aside in favor of peace, and we were hoping that the United States would do the same thing with (UNINTELLIGIBLE) -- with Israel to make sure that Israel casts aside its reservations in the interests of peace.
AMANPOUR: Diana, the Palestinians are -- their obligation is to crack down, to basically stop the militant violence, and there have been reports that Abu Mazan, Mahmoud Abbas, has been talking to Hamas and trying to negotiate some kind of ceasefire in terms of suicide attacks inside Israel, at the very least.
Can you give us any notion of where that stands?
BUTTU: Well, this is something that was also done back in 1996 and was very successful. From the period of 1997 to the year 2000, there wasn't a single Israeli who died inside Israel of suicide bombings. And this is also something that the Israeli authorities have acknowledged.
The -- it's important to remember that this is not a military conflict. This is a political conflict. And because it's a political conflict, we have to address the political underlyings of this conflict, for Hamas and for Islamic Jihad, this means that we have to start looking at this conflict in a way as to understand that there's a link between Israel's lack of security and the Palestinians' lack of freedom.
And the only way that we'll be able to move forward is if we address that lack of freedom and address it in a concrete way.
The approach that's currently being taken is to try to gain a consolidated approach towards attacks on Israel, trying to encourage and talk to Hamas and Islamic Jihad, to encourage them not to attack Israel and Israelis.
But we don't have the political -- sorry, we don't have the military force to be able to stop them. The only thing that we do have is to try to convince them that Israel is truly interested in a two-state solution. That's the only tool that we have in our back pocket.
And we're hoping that Israel won't undermine that simple tool by continuing to assassinate Palestinians, by continuing to build more and more settlements. Just the other day they expanded more and more settlements. And by continuing to kill Palestinian civilians and restrict their freedom of movement.
This is where Israel's help is absolutely necessary, and this where the world community's help is absolutely necessary.
AMANPOUR: Diana Buttu, thank you very much indeed for joining us from Ramallah.
And as NEWSNIGHT continues, we'll turn to Iraq again and talk with Michael Weisskopf from "TIME" magazine.
Also, the story of the American soldier trying to get the oil industry running again there.
And then, Jeff Greenfield looks at the job of building both democracy and freedom in a country with a tradition of neither.
This is NEWSNIGHT from London.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
AMANPOUR: Chances are you know one, and if you don't, you wish you did -- somebody who can fix anything, no service manual, wrong tools, no problem. A tweak here, a thump there, some chewing gum, and some guile, and pretty soon the TV works or the dishwasher is washing.
And in this case, the oil pipeline is pumping again.
CNN's Ben Wedeman now in Mr. Fix-it, or Major Fix-it to the U.S. Army.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
MAJ. JOE HANUS, U.S. CORPS OF ARMY ENGINEERS: We're going to go in and lead us down to IT-1.
BEN WEDEMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Joe Hanus is a man with a mission, to get Iraq's oil pumping again. A major in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Hanus spends his days driving from one oil facility to another in northern Iraq, pressing the flesh.
HANUS: You're doing a great job.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thank you.
HANUS: OK. You keep it up. Keep up the great work.
WEDEMAN: Every day, he and his small team of Army engineers and civilian contractors survey the damage left by war and anarchy, trying to solve dozens of small problems and a few big ones too.
These workers have been waiting all day long for days for delivery of one last segment of a pipeline.
HANUS: You shouldn't have to wait no more. You've done good work.
WEDEMAN: Plenty of frustrations, made bearable by the occasional triumph.
HANUS: Good day?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, good day.
HANUS: Well, where are we at?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We are producing about 540,000...
HANUS: Yes! Broke 500. That's over a half a million barrels.
WEDEMAN: Daily oil output in northern Iraq has grown tenfold in just a few weeks.
HANUS: Very good day. Half a million barrels. I think I owe you something then.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You have to make (UNINTELLIGIBLE).
HANUS: No, I got something for you. I'd like to give you some...
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What is this?
HANUS: ... some cookies, yes.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: OK, thank you.
HANUS: You know where these are from? These are from Wisconsin.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh, good.
HANUS: Yes, they're made by my mother-in-law, Jan.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: OK. WEDEMAN: American ways are sometimes hard for Iraqis to fathom.
Crude oil leaking from a 25-year-old pipeline has been burning for days. Here the culprit isn't war, just time.
HANUS: You know, it was just one kind of stuff that happens with older infrastructure like this.
WEDEMAN: Down the road, another problem. Ali Farfar (ph) guards a communications tower linking Iraq's remote pumping stations. Threatened by local toughs, he asks Major Hanus for protection. He takes up Ali's case with a nearby armored unit.
HANUS: What we got here is this power that's part of the oil system, and I want to get the guard at the tower convinced, or, you know, confident that if he has any trouble, he can come to the gate here and you guys can help him.
Did he tell his boss?
WEDEMAN (on camera): (speaks in Arabic)
(voice-over): In the absence of a translator, a CNN correspondent pitches in.
To Hanus, all these little acts add up.
HANUS: You know, every day, every day we measure success sometimes here by helping just one Iraqi, and we add those up each day, and they keep adding up to more pluses than minuses each day, so we're doing good.
WEDEMAN: At a refinery near Tikrit, just minuses. What the looters couldn't take, they destroyed.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Have to take it all off and start over, it's just nonrepairable.
WEDEMAN: Hanus, a civil engineer by training, isn't keen to get into the controversial politics of oil and occupation. He has a job to do, and he'll do it.
HANUS: You know, every American here wants nothing more than to go home as soon as we can. But I don't think anyone here wants to go home unless the job's done. So we're going to make sure the job's done, and, you know, we have no regrets when we leave.
WEDEMAN: Given the job to be done, that might not be for a while.
Ben Wedeman, CNN, northern Iraq.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: And from there we turn to another unfinished project, that of finding or finding out what has happened to Saddam Hussein and his two sons.
"TIME" magazine's Michael Weisskopf has uncovered some tantalizing details on the subject, and he joins us now from Washington.
Mr. Weisskopf, thank you very much for joining us.
MICHAEL WEISSKOPF, "TIME" MAGAZINE: Pleasure.
AMANPOUR: Do you know where, what -- tell us about Saddam Hussein, Uday, and Qusay.
WEISSKOPF: We understand they are operating in an arc between Baghdad, Tikrit to the north, and Ramadi (ph) to the west, moving from place to place from day to day. They're divided into two groups, Uday with aides in one camp, Saddam and his son Qusay, the younger son, with him together.
AMANPOUR: And how are they evading the radar screen, if you like? How are they keeping out of the hands of the Americans, or indeed, angry Iraqis?
WEISSKOPF: It's a good question. We don't know that. All we know is there have been sightings, and there have been reports. We have some information from a domestic servant, another from a friend of the family.
AMANPOUR: And do you know how they're living? I mean, are they going from safe house to safe house, or are they disguised? Do you know any of those details?
WEISSKOPF: Early on, as Baghdad fell, we understand that they were moving in large groups, family groups, from one family or relatives' home to another, disguised as -- in traditional Arab outfits.
AMANPOUR: And you know, a week or so ago, maybe less than that, there were all sorts of reports that perhaps Uday was getting ready to negotiate a surrender, hand himself over. Did you uncover any kinds of details that would lead to what he might be planning to do?
WEISSKOPF: We've heard the same, and that for some reason he feels some type of affinity to the United States, and is hopeful for some type of a deal. This seems totally unrealistic, of course, to Americans on the other end, but that's the understanding, that he would like some type of immunity.
AMANPOUR: Michael, do you get the impression from the people that you're talking to that they could be on the lam for a long, long time, that Iraq is in fact going to be a very big place for them, or that the net may be tightening?
WEISSKOPF: The latter. They're -- they have a limited amount of money. They're only allowed -- they were only able to get out with as much money as they could carry. Large caches of money that -- belonging to them have been found in palaces and other places. The money is what's getting them through.
And it's only limited -- they only have a limited amount of time before somebody will identify their positions.
AMANPOUR: Is there any notion that there may be any kind of third party who may take them in before their money runs out?
WEISSKOPF: We don't know. They are appealing to intermediaries. We know at least Uday is. He may be more hopeful than Qusay and Saddam. But we just don't know at this point. There was some indication early on that Uday wanted to go to Syria. We're not sure how far he got.
AMANPOUR: OK, Michael Weisskopf, thank you very much for joining us tonight.
WEISSKOPF: Pleasure.
AMANPOUR: We've heard many times that a key goal of the war in Iraq is to allow the Iraqis to choose their leaders for themselves, free and democratically. But does democracy guarantee freedom? The fact is, history is littered with the names of freely chosen dictators.
More on that from CNN's Jeff Greenfield.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JEFF GREENFIELD, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST (voice-over): With Saddam Hussein gone, America's goal for Iraq seems clear -- democracy, freedom.
GEN. TOMMY FRANKS, U.S. CENTRAL COMMAND: ... Iraqi freedom...
GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: ... democracy and freedom...
TONY BLAIR, BRITISH PRIME MINISTER: ... democracy...
BUSH: ... freedom...
BLAIR: ... democracy...
BUSH: ... freedom...
GREENFIELD (on camera): But here's something to think about. Are democracy and freedom really the same thing? And, in fact, if we move too quickly to bring democracy to Iraq, might we be undermining freedom?
(voice-over): For instance, does anyone think of Adolf Hitler's Germany as democratic? Of course not. But in fact, Hitler came to power through the ballot box, and then wiped out the liberties of Germans.
While Cuba's Castro and Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini were not elected, they were swept into power on waves of popular support, then set out to stifle freedoms.
Robert Mugabe was an elected leader of Zimbabwe. Now he terrorizes and jails his foes.
And in Iraq, elections alone might well install into office a democratic government that would swiftly wipe out freedom.
Listen to what a leading Iraqi cleric says.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (through translator): The ballot box must be the foundation for the government and the nation. But we believe, because the Iraqi people are a Muslim people, that they will choose to implement Sharia law in at least some areas of daily life.
GREENFIELD: And that could mean a government democratically chosen but not fully free.
FAREED ZAKARIA, "NEWSWEEK" MAGAZINE: If you think of democracy as simply elections, you have no, you have no safeguard against a Shi'a majority saying, We want an Islamic state, we want mullahs to be in charge. And, by the way, we will have Sunni Muslims as second- class citizens.
GREENFIELD: "Newsweek"'s Fareed Zakaria has devoted a new book, the best-selling "Future of Freedom," to the argument that a truly free country means much more than elections, so that when Americans talk about democracy...
ZAKARIA: We mean the Bill of Rights, which tells the democratically elected Congress, These are the things you can't do. We mean a whole bunch of institutions that preserve and protect liberty, not just elections.
GREENFIELD: Those are the kinds of governments an occupying American military left behind in Japan and Germany after World War II. They're the kinds of governments slowly evolving today in South Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines, possibly Russia -- governments where a free press, independent courts, business and labor groups, academics, all are free to challenge and to limit the government.
And to build that kind of government in Iraq, Fareed Zakaria says, means a lengthy stay.
ZAKARIA: It's imperialism, I suppose, but all I'm saying is, it worked, and all the cases of having elections and running away and hoping it all works out haven't worked so well.
GREENFIELD: Jeff Greenfield, CNN, New York.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
GREENFIELD: And still ahead on NEWSNIGHT, a last look at Memorial Day 2003.
This is NEWSNIGHT from London.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
AMANPOUR: Finally tonight, Memorial Day 2003 in the United States, a day to honor those killed in wars centuries ago and those killed today, as an American soldier was in Iraq.
A look now at how America's fallen were remembered across the country as well as some of the faces of those who lost their lives in the war in Iraq.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIPS)
BUSH: Today we honor the men and women who have worn the nation's uniform and were last seen on duty. From the battles of Iraq and Afghanistan to the conflicts in Korea and Vietnam, to the trials of world war, the struggles that made us a nation,m today we recall that liberty is always the achievement of courage.
SGT. DANIEL MCVAY, U.S. ARMY: My father was a Vietnam vet. He served for 23 years. And he's not a very emotional man, but I always notice around Memorial Day time frame, he always kind of -- you know, he may mist up a little bit. He'll walk a little taller. He just has a whole different air about him.
FIRST SGT. ROBERT HAY, U.S. ARMY: I wish we had Memorial Day every day of the year. I think we sometimes forget in this -- you know, it's a shame that it's only once a year.
SEN. ELIZABETH DOLE (R), NORTH CAROLINA: Today, nearly 40,000 service men and women from North Carolina's military bases have been deployed for duty in Operation Iraqi Freedom. As I visited all of our military bases across North Carolina, I've been deeply moved by their dedication, their commitment, their patriotism. They just make me proud and thankful to be an American.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (singing): Oh, say can you see by the dawn's early light...
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (singing): Oh, say can you see by the dawn's early light...
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (singing): Oh, say can you see by the dawn's early light...
GEN. RICHARD MYERS, JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF: So today let's honor our fallen, and let's resolve to vigorously protect America's future and secure in their name our precious freedoms for tomorrow's generations. May God bless the men and women of our armed forces.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: And that's NEWSNIGHT for tonight. I'm Christiane Amanpour in London. I hope you'll tune in again tomorrow. Good night.
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