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CNN Live At Daybreak

Tony Blair Tries to Shore Up Support in the Middle East

Aired November 01, 2001 - 07:34   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.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: All right, we are tracking a live event which we want to give you a brief glimpse of, British Prime Minister Tony Blair in Jerusalem today with Ariel Sharon. They have been meeting, Mr. Blair shoring up support for the coalition on behalf of the Bush administration.

Let's listen in for just a bit.

(JOINED IN PROGRESS)

ARIEL SHARON, ISRAELI PRIME MINISTER (through translator): And this is a struggle supported by everyone who supports these values. Israel is a peace-loving country, and we have always stretched out our hand in peace to our neighbors. And today, too, we wish to make progress towards peace. We want to have peace in our Palestinian neighbors, a genuine peace, a peace for generations for the Israeli and the Palestinian generations.

As someone who has taken part in all of Israel's wars and as someone who has experienced the suffering and anguish of war, I know how important war is -- I'm sorry, how important peace is. I said several times in the past that for the sake of a genuine peace the state of Israel will be prepared to make painful compromises. But no compromise at all will be made that will affect the security of the residence, the inhabitants of the state of Israel and their welfare. We are perfectly prepared to defend ourselves and this government of Israel is entirely in favor of the Tenet and Mitchell plans.

Israel is not at all interested in staying for any length of time in area A (ph), and we wish to leave area A as quickly as possible. However, we will only be able to leave that area after Arafat has complied with the undertakings he has assumed.

I'd like to thank Prime Minister Tony Blair for all of his efforts and assistance. And I do trust that he will make it quite clear to Arafat that the quicker he complies with his own undertakings and the faster we will be able to proceed in the right direction.

I'd like to thank Prime Minister Tony Blair for his efforts and everything that he's done with regard to the Northern Ireland situation.

Prime Minister Blair, I wished you every success in that respect of Northern Ireland. And I know perfectly well that this evening also there is a football match between (INAUDIBLE) Tel Aviv and Chelsea. And I'm sorry, Prime Minister, but in this particular instance I can't wish you success.

Thank you very much. Thank you.

TONY BLAIR, BRITISH PRIME MINISTER: Thank you. And I'm well aware that tonight at 10:00 whatever the difficulties...

(LEFT IN PROGRESS)

O'BRIEN: Tony Blair talking about football, a soccer match which Ariel Sharon indicated some divided allegiance with, but nevertheless, the two men having met earlier. Mr. Blair on a tour of the Middle East hitting various locations, trying to shore up support for the coalition in this war against terrorism. Mr. Blair and Mr. Sharon referring directly to the Mitchell Plan, the peace plan for Israel, a difficult course indeed, but Mr. Sharon indicating he would support the Mitchell plan assuming Mr. Arafat does his part which makes it sound a lot more simple than it is.

PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: Absolutely. And for a man to give us a broader perspective on what a lot of this means this morning is former Chief U.N. Weapons Inspector Richard Butler, our ambassador in residence which we've taken to calling him -- welcome back.

All right, let's put this news conference into context. When you have Ariel Sharon meeting with Prime Minister Tony Blair, the Brits are very concerned right now that the European world is getting a very twisted notion of what this war effort is about. They don't think that the coalition is doing enough to show to the Arab world that there are Muslim leaders who are -- were fiercely opposed to the September 11 attacks.

RICHARD BUTLER, FORMER CHIEF UNITED NATIONS WEAPONS INSPECTOR: Well I...

ZAHN: What do they have to do?

BUTLER: I think Tony Blair is right to be out there fighting the public opinion battle just as hard as we're fighting the battle against terrorists. We need two things to be achieved. One, that the world knows exactly what is happening in the war on terrorists and so that we can defeat the propaganda that has already started to come that we're bombing kids in hospitals and so on. It's very, very important. Accidents like that do happen, but it's very important that the facts be kept in front of the public.

ZAHN: So their chief concern is that the Taliban news conferences basically those charges are going unanswered?

BUTLER: That's right, and that cannot be permitted to happen. That would cause chaos in the Arab world.

Now secondly, the underlying objective of what we're doing has got to be kept out there in front of the world at all times. It is not a war against Arabs or Muslims, it is a war against terrorists, and that needs to be said over and over again.

Now in this particular context of the conference we've just seen, of course we all know that the continuing problems between Israel and Palestine is of great interest in the Arab world, in particular, and great interest globally. And to go as Tony Blair has gone to go to Jerusalem to talk about that, to try to insist that progress has to be made there is intrinsically good, but it's also an important thing to do in this battle for public opinion.

ZAHN: But you no doubt know there are people who say this linkage is ridiculous, that Osama bin Laden has never cared about the Palestinians, didn't even talk about them until shortly after September 11.

BUTLER: Well that's right, with respect to him, but it -- as far as the whole Arab and Islamic world is concerned, most of which is made up of far more reasonable and decent people, I mean not that one would ever use those words to describe Osama bin Laden, they have an interest in the Israel-Palestine question and there's no doubt that it needs to be solved. And these efforts of course are important, but of course we should reject any suggestion that what happened here on September 11 was somehow our fault because we hadn't solved the Israel-Palestine problem. That's nonsense.

ZAHN: Before we let you go this morning, give us your understanding of what you think is going on on the anthrax front. We had Dr. Anthony Fauci...

BUTLER: Right. Right.

ZAHN: ... this morning talking about the great mystery now of this woman contracting...

BUTLER: Right.

ZAHN: ... inhalation anthrax who had apparently no exposure to a mail room...

BUTLER: Yes.

ZAHN: ... or isn't in the media and wouldn't be perceived as an obvious target.

BUTLER: I thought what Dr. Fauci said made a great deal of sense. I think he's doing a great job in keeping the public informed. But let's be honest about it, one of the things he told us is that the plot is thickening. It's becoming more of a mystery. Is this woman what is called an out-lier or is she part of a pattern, a pattern that we're seeing now broadening with anthrax showing up in Delaware and I think Indiana and other places and...

ZAHN: Even Kansas City now.

BUTLER: Kansas City. We don't know. We do know that the number of spores you apparently need to get lung anthrax is far smaller than we thought.

ZAHN: Originally thought, what, 8,000 to 10,000 spores...

BUTLER: That's right.

ZAHN: ... and now they're down to 2,500 spores?

BUTLER: Two and a half thousand to 3,000. Dr. Fauci also said some very interesting things about how it's the weapons people who know about this. I want to back that up. There's a very important one in this country, a man who used to run the Soviet program but who's come over to the United States and is now a citizen and works in the good parts of biology right now. He's made very clear that when he was leading that program making enormous quantities of anthrax in the old Soviet Union, it spread throughout their laboratory. They found it in the -- in the most unlikely places...

ZAHN: Wow.

BUTLER: ... through their laboratory. And what they had to do in order to continue work was be constantly and repeatedly vaccinated.

Fauci's right, it's the weapons people who know about this. And one of the problems we've got is that we've never really had it in civil society before, now we do, so we're on a steep learning curve.

ZAHN: And to me the most stunning thing is the fact that the two grams of anthrax they believe was in the Daschle letter would have been potentially enough to infect or at least make two million people sick if it had gone undetected.

BUTLER: Paula, maybe more -- maybe more.

ZAHN: Wow.

BUTLER: Millions of people.

ZAHN: Thank you for trying to keep us ahead of the learning curve here every morning. Dr. Richard Butler, thank you very much.

BUTLER: Thank you.

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