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CNN Live At Daybreak

While Monitoring Developments in Anti-Taliban War and American Airlines Plane Crash, Bush Has Had to Prepare for Summit with Putin

Aired November 13, 2001 - 05:12   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.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: CNN's Matthew Chance reports from inside Kabul, Afghanistan there is no evidence Taliban forces remain in the capital, but a large number of Northern Alliance fighters have been seen in Kabul and the bulk of their forces remain outside of the capital.

And the father of a U.S. aid worker who's been held in Kabul says the Taliban have taken his daughter and seven other aid workers from Kabul to Kandahar. The Taliban tells Heather Mercer's father the eight were moved for their own safety. The Taliban supreme court has indefinitely postponed the aid workers' trial on charging of spreading Christianity.

LEON HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: Well, while monitoring major developments in the anti-Taliban war and the American Airlines plane crash, Mr. Bush has had to prepare, as well, for a summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Mr. Putin arrived at Andrews Air Force Base late last night and CNN has learned that Mr. Bush is going to be telling the Russian president the U.S. is ready to slash its nuclear weapons stockpile by two thirds or more.

Joining us now from London to preview the summit is Kim Holmes of the Heritage Foundation. Good morning. Thank you very much for taking time to talk with us, sir. How are you?

KIM HOLMES, HERITAGE FOUNDATION: Good morning. Fine, thank you.

HARRIS: All right, let's begin with, you know, we've been talking here in this country about how so much of the world has changed after September 11. And one of the changes has been Russia's change, that of President Putin, rather, there, his change on stances that President Bush has taken on the ABM treaty.

Now, what is likely to be seen here in development on that with these discussions taking place this week?

HOLMES: Well, this could be a truly historic summit. Much depends on what happens with the anti-ballistic missile treaty, which bans defenses against ballistic missiles. If President Bush and President Putin can agree to put the ABM treaty aside and also agree to the deep reductions in strategic offensive forces, the United States and Russia could enter into a new era of cooperation not only on terrorism, but also on economics, trade, and most importantly, on strategic issues.

HARRIS: All right, specifically then, what is in it for Russia here? For them to change their stance on this so dramatically in such a short period of time there's got to be something very big at stake for them.

HOLMES: Russia does not want to be isolated. President Putin has made it very clear that he wants Russia to join the rest of the world and to become more economically integrated into the international economy and to the Western economy. He has made it very clear that the only way to do this is to put aside some of these problems that have existed since the end of the cold war on strategic forces. So he thinks if he can get a deal with President Bush on the strategic issues, including missile defense, then that would open the door to greater cooperation on economics and other issues that are far more important to President Putin as statistic arms.

HARRIS: As things often do, it all boils down to money then, again, in this case, as you see it. All right, how about the fact that, will you see here at the end of this talk here a significant, the signing of some new forged, new agreement that forges a brand new path here for Russia and the U.S.? Will we see this big significant development that some are predicting here?

HOLMES: Well, I don't know for certain whether or not we will see some kind of a big statement. I think that probably the most you can expect to see happen is the United States and Russia agreeing on some kind of a regime where the United States is allowed to do more testing in missile defense, that there will be some kind of an agreement and deproductions of strategic warheads, for example, down to perhaps as low as 2,500 warheads on each side. So there may be some statement on that.

Whether or not there will be an agreement to actually set aside the anti-ballistic missile treaty, I don't know, and no one knows at this point.

HARRIS: All right, final word this morning. We're going to be talking, I'm sure they're going to be talking, as well, about developments in Afghanistan. What, how, what do you think the talks are going to be like on that particular topic?

HOLMES: I think they're going to be talking about what kind of new government needs to be formed in Kabul. There's certainly an urgent need to create a multi-ethnic government in Afghanistan. The war seems to be moving ahead of the political process at this point so there will be cooperation, I'm sure, and a lot of talks on how to create a new government there.

HARRIS: Kim Holmes in London, thank you very much for the insight. We sure do appreciate it -- Kyra.

PHILLIPS: Now to inside Kabul. We're talking about the Taliban forces withdrawing from the capital.

Our Matthew Chance is there to describe the scenes on the streets -- Matthew, good morning.

MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's right, Kyra. You joined me in this position overlooking the Afghan capital, Kabul. Until just a few hours ago, this was, of course, in the hands of the Taliban. That force has completely abandoned the city now and the forces of the opposition Northern Alliance are gradually spreading through these streets and taking over. Throughout the course of today we've been watching Northern Alliance troops move in trucks through the streets of central Kabul. We've also been seeing them victor -- celebrating, victorious, of course, from their dramatic victories in the north and in the west of Afghanistan.

We've also been seeing hundreds of people come out onto the streets cheering them, chanting anti-Taliban slogans. "Death to Mullah Omar!" they have been saying, also changing anti-Pakistan slogans, as well. The mood here at places and at times has appeared almost festive, one of relief. Certainly we've seen a lot of men who said they've just been to the barber shop to have their beards shaved off. Of course, under the Taliban regime, they were made to grow their beards long.

So quite an atmosphere of relief here despite the fact that the Northern Alliance forces have essentially broken their commitment to stay on the outskirts or stay at the gates of Kabul and not enter the Afghan capital until some kind of ethnically broad-based political agreement has been reached for a future power sharing government. Certainly the United States has in the past expressed its concern about the Northern Alliance forces coming into Kabul without such an agreement on the table. But it just seems that those military forces of the Northern Alliance simply could not resist the temptation to seize their ultimate military prize here -- Kyra.

PHILLIPS: Matthew, you mentioned the men shaving their beards. How about the women? Are they losing the veils?

CHANCE: No, they're not in Kabul. We haven't been seeing that. We've certainly been hearing that that has what's been happening in the other cities that have fallen to the Northern Alliance in recent days, in Mazir-i-Sharif, also in Herat to a lesser extent. But here in Kabul, people are much more conservative. The women have been keeping on their veils, keeping on their burkas, which, of course, cover their whole bodies.

So we haven't been seeing much sign that the Taliban have left, certainly from the female point of view here -- Kyra.

PHILLIPS: Matthew Chance, we'll continue to check in with you throughout the next two hours. Thank you so much.

Well, Kabul is only one front where the situation is changing quickly. We have reports from Kandahar, Islamabad and the Pentagon, and we'll get to all those places in just a few minutes.

HARRIS: In the meantime, we come back to the U.S. and to New York. Let's get the latest now on the crash scene investigation taking place in Queens, New York. We're joined now by WABC reporter Lisa Colagrossi. She is in Queens this morning. Hello, Lisa. What can you tell us this morning?

LISA COLAGROSSI, WABC CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Leon.

It's been a long night for these crews. They've been working diligently, sifting through the wreckage of Flight 587. They've recovered 265 bodies. Now, it's difficult to determine if those bodies are all from the flight or if they are from some people who were on the ground. There are a little bit of a discrepancy, between six to perhaps nine people reported missing on the ground and that's what the neighbors here in Bal Harbor are just so anxiously awaiting word, to hear what happened to their neighbors.

Six homes were destroyed, six other sustained heavy, heavy damage when Flight 587 went down.

Now, in terms of the investigation, they have recovered the cockpit voice recorder. Investigators in Washington have listened to that. They're getting some good information. From what we understand there was no distress call, but the NTSB is in charge of this investigation and that certainly is a very strong indicator that they're really looking at this as an accident, some sort of mechanical failure instead of some form of terrorism.

They're still looking for that flight data recorder and they're going to continue to sift through the wreckage throughout the day. They have been able to make so much progress in these recovery efforts because shortly after the plane crash occurred, there were rescue crews, firefighters and police officers on the scene almost immediately, and they were really able to knock out the fire relatively quickly.

We were here within an hour of the crash and the smoke went from black to gray to white very quickly. So they were really able to knock down those flames. And that's why they were able to get in there so quickly and start the recovery efforts. And they've been working very diligently all night long -- Leon.

HARRIS: You know, Lisa, when you look at this, think of the idea of the plane coming down in a neighbor. I was amazed to hear that there were only six expected fatalities there on the ground. Can you give us an idea of how many people actually were in the path of this plane as it came down?

COLAGROSSI: Well, what's interesting was yesterday was Veteran's Day. So you had kids out of school and a lot of people either were, you know, we heard of one gentleman who was golfing for the day. So he wasn't even in his home. So a lot of people were taking advantage of the day off.

But Mayor Giuliani said it yesterday, was that the plane really seemed to drop in a very confined area. So he said they were so lucky this plane didn't skid along as it came down or else a lot more homes would have been damaged and a lot more people would have been killed. So right now they're just trying to go with reports of, you know, the homes that were there, who lived there, who can be accounted for and that's kind of what they're looking at right now. But it really is amazing that the crash site was so confined and that a lot more damage wasn't done. And, of course, you probably have seen the video of that engine that fell right in front of the gas station only a few yards from the gas pumps. They said if that had hit, it could have been a huge explosion and you would have had a lot, lot more fatalities.

HARRIS: Well, that could have been, and that could have been a heck of a lot worse situation here this morning.

COLAGROSSI: Absolutely.

HARRIS: Boy, Lisa Colagrossi, thank you very much. We sure do appreciate it. Good work out there. Thanks, much -- Kyra.

PHILLIPS: Well, in the next half hour, we're going to look at two diverse communities that are joined in their grief from the crash of American Airlines Flight 587. Also...

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN MERCER, FATHER OF DETAINED AID WORKER: With the Northern Alliance moving in there and things very unsettled, I think tit's probably for the detainees' own good that they were moved, although I had certainly hoped that a resolution to this case would have been found before now. I'm not pleased with what the detainees' lawyer has done to date. He hasn't been there in almost three weeks. They pleaded with him to return. He did not. So it's just kind of a mess.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARRIS: Reaction from the father of a U.S. student detained in Afghanistan since before September 11.

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