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CNN Live At Daybreak

America's New War: Changing World Schematics

Aired September 25, 2001 - 07:49   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.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: Boy, there are a lot of developments to follow today. And I'm going to bring my colleague John King into the mix now as the president tries to continue his coalition. You reported earlier there's some good news from Russia and from Saudi Arabia. John, also joining us in our discussion will be Joshua Cooper Ramo, who is with me here in New York this morning.

But John, why don't you walk us through the paces now on what everybody needs to know right now.

JOHN KING, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, certainly if you try to connect the dots of the president building this international coalition, the early news is quite favorable from the administration's standpoint. A 45 minute to one hour conversation with President Vladimir Putin of Russia over the weekend, a nationally televised address from President Putin yesterday saying Russia would fully cooperate in this war on terrorism. We're told he has promised the United States over flight rights, meaning U.S. war planes could fly over, talking of helping out, participating in search and rescue operations if that is necessary.

So certainly strong statements of public support from the Russian president. That helps Mr. Bush out as he tries to build a coalition in the central Asian region. Saudi Arabia today following the lead of the United Arab Emirates, breaking ties with the Taliban. That leaves only Pakistan with formal diplomatic relations with the Taliban government in Afghanistan. And countries around the world, the key test will come in the days and weeks ahead. But initial response around the world favorable to the administration's request -- you might call it a demand yesterday -- that international banking systems crack down on the financial support of terrorism.

So on the surface so far, progress, but we should know we are early in this process and this coalition has not been tested yet. Once there is military action that would obviously test it. There could be other diplomatic bumps along the way, as well. But so far the White House quite encouraged.

ZAHN: It should come, though, as no surprise, John and Joshua, that Iran is not going to cooperate in this. Is there anything you've learned to shed some light on what Iran's position might continue to be?

RAMO: Well, we saw Javier Solana running off to a meeting with the Iranians in U.S....

ZAHN: Literally running off, on camera.

RAMO: Right. And there is going to be a lot of pressure. I mean it is a race to try and get the Iranians on board. One of the problems the Bush administration has right now is trying to assemble a credible Islamic coalition in support of this. Saudi Arabia obviously helps a lot. They'll look to other countries around the Gulf to continue to back their actions.

But it's super important going forward that this not look like it's a war on Islam. And so trying to get some of these moderate Islamic states in line -- that means Syria, Jordan -- are very important. And then trying to get the more sort of outlying Islamic states like Iran to at least agree to provide some modicum of cooperation is a very important thing the Bush administration needs to have happen. It's proving much more difficult than I think they had anticipated last week.

ZAHN: Well, John, what about that? What are the White House expectations as far as Iran is concerned?

KING: Well, obviously Iran has a long running feud with the Taliban so any intelligence information Iran could provide would be helpful to the United States. A lot of this will be done back channel. As Joshua was just saying, the Iranian government could be at risk if it too publicly sides with the United States. You would set off a tug of war within Iran if that happens.

So in the short-term the administration hoping for some private help with intelligence matters, continued public statements of support to the point you were just making, to try to build some sort of an Islamic coalition, back channel conversations with Iran. Nobody in the administration confident that they will bear significant fruit, but Secretary Powell certainly wants to explore it just to see.

We have a situation where you might call this amnesty. The United States is going around to governments that it believes has sponsored terrorism in the past saying side with us now, we can move forward and try to build relationships. If you don't, then we're going to leave you on the list of potential targets down the road from a military, diplomatic and financial standpoint.

ZAHN: All right, Joshua, one of the things John I have been talking about the last couple of days is the extent to which the administration has to continue to prepare the American public for a prolonged campaign. Do you think the American public, including all of us, truly understand the extent to which we are hated in some parts of the world?

RAMO: I think there's not an understanding of that and it's a complicated question because people don't purely hate Americans, per se. You have a very complicated engagement with America as you travel around the world. There's a tremendous fascination with American culture. Our movies are still incredibly popular, our food, our clothes, our music continues to dominate the world's cultural scene and people are fascinated by that.

At the same time, there are a lot of people who are really repelled by American politics and particularly American international politics, which has involved a lot over the last decade the U.S. telling other nations to do particular things.

So American engagement overseas doesn't necessarily mean we have to go convince all these people to love our way of life. There's a tremendous fascination with American culture that still exists around the world. The challenge is figuring out a political modus vivendi (ph) that allows us to operate in such a way that we're not aggravating the tensions that are already out there. And this is nowhere more true than in the Islamic world, where there is a lot of ambivalence about modernity, there's a lot of ambivalence about the process of bringing capital markets on line and that is all represented in the United States.

The U.S. has a sales job to do overseas, not only of our way of life, but also of what's really motivating us to try and clean up the world of terrorists right now.

ZAHN: But, John, it would seem to me the fundamental criticism at the moment, if you were to go back and reread the statement that came out of the Taliban yesterday, is, of course, U.S. policy in the Middle East.

KING: Longstanding position of Osama bin Laden and other Islamic fundamentalist groups that one way for the United States to be less of a target for terrorists, if you will, is to pull out of the Middle East, stop supporting Israel and stop being the broker in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Pull all the troops out of Saudi Arabia and elsewhere in the Persian Gulf region.

That has long been a position of Islamic fundamentalists. It has also long been the position of the United States government that that simply is not going to happen. That is one of the flash points in this debate and one of the difficulties as the president tries to build a coalition.

The Saudis have allowed a large U.S. military presence since the Persian Gulf War. They'd prefer not to talk about it publicly because of domestic political concerns. Obviously, if U.S. war planes start taking off from Saudi bases in military activities, that would be an asset for the United States because to proximity and those bases are quite modern. At the same time, it could prove quite difficult for the Saudi government.

ZAHN: All right, gentlemen, thanks.

Joshua will continue to stand by here in New York.

John, see you in a couple minutes.

We're going to take a short break here.

Just a reminder that Russian President Putin will be holding a news conference after his meeting with German leaders and we will try to bring that to you as quickly as we can.

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