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CNN Live At Daybreak
Many Arab Nations Blame U.S. for Making Bin Laden Larger Than Life
Aired October 29, 2001 - 05:25 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.
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: Just about 26 minutes past the hour. Let's go ahead and check our latest developments. A Justice Department mail facility in Landover, Maryland has tested positive for the presence of anthrax. As a result, officials have closed the mail room in the basement of the main Justice Department building. Mail delivery from the facility to the main building was stopped several days ago pending those test results.
LEON HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: An opposition leader in the effort to oust the Taliban who has been in exile for a decade was buried in Afghanistan. Former Mujahedeen leader Abdul Haq was tried and executed by the Taliban after his capture last week. A former colleague says that Haq had been in Afghanistan on a covert mission to convince several Taliban leaders to defect.
KAGAN: And Slobodan Milosevic returned to the United Nations War Crimes Tribunal today. In the second of three indictments, Milosevic is being accused of orchestrating ethnic cleansing in Croatia to create a Serb dominated state. The pretrial hearing marks Milosevic's third appearance before the court.
HARRIS: Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon reportedly started this day by notifying the White House that he may have to postpone his November 11 trip. Sharon cites security concerns as the reason, but this announcement is significant as one topic certain to be discussed is President Bush's call for Israel to completely withdraw from Palestinian ruled areas.
Now, late Sunday, Sharon's office said the prime minister gave the go ahead for Israeli forces to pull out of Beit Jala and Bethlehem provided the Palestinians there keep up their end of an agreement for a cease-fire. And the agreement was reached last week.
But weekend violence in Israel strained the accord. Four Israeli civilians were killed and 28 others were wounded during two drive-by shootings Sunday in Hadera.
Many of the Arab nations in the region support America's fight against terrorism, but all the while they blame the U.S. for making Osama bin Laden larger than life. But here's the linchpin.
As CNN's Brent Sadler reports, they feel that there is only one way this will ever be worked out. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BRENT SADLER, NBC CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): A Lebanese Army commando unit practices the storming of a hijacked plane at Beirut's once notorious international airport. The same airport where TWA Flight 847 ended up in the hands of real hijackers in 1985. Today's precision training underscores what the authorities here insist is their resolve to fight new terror in all its forms.
RAFIC HARIRI, LEBANESE PRIME MINISTER: We are cooperating with the United States in everything they are asking about information about security, about freezing money that is in here.
SADLER: Lebanon's violent history, though, when U.S. and Western interests were ruthlessly targeted during the 1980s, puts this nation uncomfortably in the back wash of America's war on terrorism. Osama bin Laden has sympathizers here, to be found among a minority of hard- line Islamic and Palestinian groups. Their leaders dream of a U.S. defeat in Afghanistan.
The Afghan mud (ph) that tore down the Soviet Union and the Afghan mud that tore down the British Empire, says this holy man, will tear you into pieces.
Prime Minister Hariri raises alarm the U.S. is failing to take into account another crucial issue that unless there's a just settlement to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the fight against terror will be undermined.
HARIRI: If the Israeli government continue killing Palestinians, innocent Palestinians every day, it is jeopardizing the interests of the United States and the interests of the coalition because it is embarrassing and cornering all the governments in the Islamic world and the Arab world.
SADLER: A view shared by the government and, it believes, the majority of people here, like worshipers at this Sunnite Muslim mosque in Beirut.
UNIDENTIFIED ARAB: The terrorism is here in Palestine and nobody sees it. And nobody talks about it. The terrorism only in America? No. The terrorism is all around the world.
SADLER: Officially speaking, Lebanon, with its U.S.-associated businesses under military guard, stands with America and against Osama bin Laden, with his Taliban protectors.
(on camera): Yet on the streets here, where you can buy an Osama bin Laden Halloween mask for $3, there's sympathy for Afghan people and a common understanding that America should shoulder blame for creating bin Laden, the anti-Soviet warrior, before he turned against the United States.
UNIDENTIFIED ARAB: Who made this mistake? Who fight him from the beginning? We or America, Arab people or America, Muslim people or America? It's her mistake from the beginning. We can't correct the mistake by another mistake.
SADLER: And mistakes, say authorities here, like overlooking what they claim is Israel's harsh policy towards the Palestinians, a root cause of terror, must be corrected.
Brent Sadler, CNN, Beirut.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
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