Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Live Saturday

Interview With Donald Sylvan

Aired April 20, 2002 - 12:05   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.
FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: We turn to the crisis in the Middle East. The U.N. will look into what happened into the West Bank town of Jenin, during the Israeli offensive. The U.N. Security Council voted late yesterday to send a team to Jenin on a fact-finding mission. Palestinians say hundreds were killed in Jenin, the scene of the fierce fighting during the Israeli incursion. Israelis dispute the claims and are welcoming an investigation.

President Bush says there has been progress in U.S. efforts to solve the Middle East crisis. Mr. Bush touched on the crisis in his radio address today. Our Major Garrett is live from the White House with more on that.

Hi there, Major.

MAJOR GARRETT, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Good afternoon, Fredricka. You know, as Israeli troops have pulled out of Jenin and the world has gotten a better look at the devastation in that particular refugee camp, the Bush White House knew that it had to respond to growing calls for international relief agencies to get in there and a good deal of money to come after that to help rebuild Jenin.

Yesterday, while the president was touring a Secret Service training facility in nearby Beltsville, Maryland, he, for the first time, expressed his deep and growing concern about the humanitarian crisis in Jenin. The president's assistant secretary of state, William Burns, was the highest ranking U.S. official to actually tour the Jenin refugee camp, that happened earlier today, and what he saw there -- he said and told reporters -- he described as a terrible human tragedy and he said there is enormous human suffering for thousands of civilians.

How to respond to that suffering is something that's very much on the mind of the Bush administration. It has made clear this week it is going to support international calls for major relief efforts and millions of dollars to help rebuild Jenin and other Palestinian refugee camps damaged in the various Israeli incursions.

There is a large donors conference in Europe next week. The United States will participate in that as well. The Bush administration at least wants to establish a marker that it is concerned about relieving the humanitarian suffering in these refugee camps while at the same time saying that in some respects, the Israeli defense force's incursions were a legitimate reaction to acts of terrorism committed against Israeli civilians -- Fredricka.

WHITFIELD: Major, how is President Bush responding to Arafat's complaints that the Israeli troops are still outside of his compound, keeping him from emerging and leaving?

GARRETT: Well, this is a very difficult issue, Fredricka, for a couple of reasons. Israeli defense forces are surrounding Yasser Arafat's compound in Ramallah and what they say is they're not going to leave until five suspects inside that compound, who Israel believes are responsible for the assassination of the Israeli tourism minister last October, are brought to justice.

Now, generally speaking, the Bush administration supports that, that is to say, bringing those five suspects to justice. The question is -- who will actually carry out that justice? Israel wants to try those five suspects in its courts. The Palestinians say they're going to try them in their own courts.

What the United States has said is that there must be an expedited procedure to bring those five to justice and until that happens, it's going to be difficult to resolve the situation. The United States is working very intensely behind the scenes to work this out between the Israelis and Palestinians. As yet, there is no break through and until there is, it doesn't appear that that siege of the Ramallah headquarters of Yasser Arafat is going to end anytime soon and the United States does acknowledge that is a very big irritant in dealing with the larger issues between both sides -- Fredricka.

WHITFIELD: All right, Major Garrett, thank you very much from the White House.

Although President Bush views Secretary Powell's visit to the Middle East as a productive one, others might disagree. We'll explore that question with our guest, Donald Sylvan. He's an associate professor at Ohio State University and he joins us live from Columbus.

Thanks for joining us.

DONALD SYLVAN, OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY: Happy to be here.

WHITFIELD: All right, well, there have been many adjectives coming out of the White House as it pertains to Secretary Powell's visit, a productive one, constructive, we had very good conversations. How would you try to qualify that meeting?

SYLVAN: Fredricka, I guess the real answer is that we don't know yet. We're Americans and we're always impatient. We always want things to have happened yesterday. If you study the Middle East though, one finds out that things don't happen yesterday. We have to wait quite a while.

We don't know exactly what happened behind the scenes in the situation. We don't know precisely what the Israeli withdrawal plans will be. We don't know what possible future cooperation amongst the Palestinians will be. And we really need to answer all those questions before we know whether the secretary of state's visit was in fact a successful one or not.

WHITFIELD: And the secretary met yesterday in Washington this time with Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, both emerging from that meeting, saying that they are renewing their commitments toward peace. And then, just a few hours after that, the U.N. votes that yes, it is time to send some investigators to check out Jenin and see exactly what kind of damage.

At this juncture, now that we're hearing even from one U.N. special envoy who said what he saw was horrifying -- at this juncture now, how do you see this being useful, that more investigators might be going there?

SYLVAN: Well, actually, Fredricka, I think it probably is going to be useful that this happens because I don't think that either the Israelis or the Palestinians disagree with the fact that there was a tremendous amount of loss of life and that there was a human tragedy that occurred in Jenin. The question that remains, however, is what was the source of that? Was this simply a pitched battle between Israeli and Palestinian forces that led to this loss of life, or was this an asymmetrical vindictive raid on behalf of the Israelis as the Palestinians charged?

And since each side is convinced that what they are saying is accurate, I have not heard much rhetoric from either side that says they object to there being some type of impartial investigation to show which set of claims is the more reasonable one or the one's that have more -- has more empirical verification.

WHITFIELD: There are a number of Palestinian civilians who said last week though -- once they had an opportunity to talk with reporters from around the world directly, many of those Palestinians said that the Israeli troops removed a number of the bodies. So when the U.N. investigators make their way there, according to some of the Palestinian civilians, it's likely the U.N. will not see as many bodies as many of the civilians claim.

SYLVAN: There's one -- I heard that same exact report, Fredricka, except I think what we also need to understand is that Israel, as we know is a democracy, and if you look at the rulings from the Israeli supreme court in the last week that have dealt with that issue, they have put very, very strict limits on the amount of movement of bodies that the Israeli defense forces could undertake, and they have actually tried to regulate the situation because a number of people within Israel have sued to make sure that the Israeli defense forces did not disrupt the scene.

So it strikes me that if you look at those rulings in the Israeli court system, we find that it's less likely that there has been any tremendous disruption of the scene.

WHITFIELD: Now, you may have heard Major Garrett describe just moments ago about the Bush administration's reply to Arafat who says, "Now, what about the Israeli troops that are still surrounding my compound?" The Israelis say that they still want to see the arrests of at least five more Palestinian militants. They want to handle that. The Palestinians say no, we'll try and take care of that. Should the U.S. or a third party need to be involved in trying to relieve these requests or these demands that the arrests be made of these five militants?

SYLVAN: That, Fredricka, is also a very complex issue. The reason it's such a complex is that there had been a previous agreement between Americans, Israelis and Palestinians that said that these suspects would in fact be tried in the Palestinian justice system. In fact, if I'm not mistaken, it was actually an American attache whose car drove them to Palestinian territories.

Now, this was all before the latest set of extended violence took place. And some of the people involved, mostly the Israelis at this point are saying that means that all bets are off, that the rules that governed this previous agreement that said the Palestinians would, in fact, try them don't hold anymore because of the change in circumstances.

But I think what each side has to do, including the United States, is reassess the previous agreement, find whether there is, in fact, a compromise position. Everybody has spoken for it. That means the Palestinians, the Israelis and the Americans, that they need to be tried. The question is simply what the venue is and I believe there are negotiations going on right now, as to what that venue will be.

WHITFIELD: All right, Donald Sylvan, associate professor at Ohio State University, thanks very much for joining us.

SYLVAN: Thank you, Fredricka.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com