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CNN Live At Daybreak

Interview With Former Energy Secretary Bill Richardson

Aired November 14, 2001 - 08:14   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: And even though Kabul has fallen, President Bush is emphatic the U.S. mission in Afghanistan is not over and many issues key to the security of Afghanistan and the U.S. are still unresolved. Joining me now from Washington is former Energy Secretary Bill Richardson, a man who had lot of experience at the U.N. as well before becoming energy secretary, and we're going to rely on you to help us understand what the heck is going on, on the ground over there. Welcome, good to have you with us this morning.

BILL RICHARDSON, FORMER ENERGY SECRETARY: Thanks Paula, nice to be with you.

ZAHN: Thank you. So first of all, were you surprised the Northern Alliance made the advance into Kabul even though the U.S. and its allies did not want them to move that far south.

RICHARDSON: No, I wasn't surprised. One of my last missions as U.N. ambassador was meeting with the Taliban and the Northern Alliance. These are fierce fighters. They were hungry. I think they felt this was a strategic move and now it looks like that Kandahar in the southern part where al Qaeda and bin Laden are will be next.

Clearly the Northern Alliance has momentum, but the big issue now, Paula, is we have to start thinking -- we being the United States and the United Nations, about a transitional government because you don't want the whole process to fall apart.

ZAHN: And we've been talking the last couple of days about the group of six nations plus two who are trying to cobble together what might ultimately be a government that is satisfactory to population Kabul when you have to represent so many different ethnic factions. But in the meantime, are you -- do you think there's an appearance here that the U.S. and its allies can't control the Northern Alliance.

RICHARDSON: I think it's very important that we lean heavily on the Northern Alliance to recognize that there has to be a broad-based government. We have to take care of Pakistan that does not want total Northern Alliance domination by getting the Pashtun side. I think this 86-year old monarch, there are a lot of other factions that need to be brought in.

But this is where, Paula, I think it's very important to give the main role to the United Nations. They have an envoy Lock Harbor Heme that has credibility there to immediately form a transitional government, move ahead with reconstruction of the country, take care of the millions of refugees, but then get other countries like Turkey, like Iran, like even Russia, like countries that are bordering there, involving a number of Muslim states to keep our coalition together and not a fear like the U.S. back entity, the Northern Alliance, it's got to be the dominant force exclusively. But they're going to be big players and we should recognize that.

ZAHN: So what do you think is the extent of the control that the United States has over the Northern Alliance right now?

RICHARDSON: Well we have a lot of leverage. You know, we're providing the air cover. We're providing the special forces. We're providing key intelligence, but at the same time, we don't want to be the guarantor. We don't want to be the main entity that is there to pick up the pieces. What we want to be is a main leverage source through the United Nations, get other western powers involved, participate in the reconstruction, but just oversee Paula.

You don't want to have -- you want to have multi national peacekeeping force. You don't want to have U.S. forces there for the duration. So I think these next few days where it does appear that the Taliban is falling apart, I wouldn't be totally confident that it's happened already. But it doesn't look good for them. We have to immediately start thinking about reconstruction, rebuilding, but most importantly, quickly a transitional government so that elections can be held; so that a rebuilding process can happen.

We should have done that when the Soviets left. It didn't happen. That was a mistake. Now we should really participate in this reconstruction, rebuilding and a process of election so that there's a transitional government.

ZAHN: Mr. Secretary, one really quick question here. There was a very tough front-page story in "USA Today" two days ago suggesting that had President Clinton not been distracted by Monica Lewinsky and the ensuing impeachment controversy, that he could have made a much stronger effort to stamp out terrorism. What do you think of that characterization?

RICHARDSON: Well I think that's a bomb rap. The president tripled the counter terrorism budget. He went after bin Laden. I was sent to Afghanistan to try to get him extradited in 1998. We conducted military strikes. The problem, Paula, is that we didn't have the intelligence that we have now because Pakistan at that time was not terribly cooperative.

Now we have the intelligence. Now we have the Pakistanis turning against the Taliban. Now we have a broad-based alliance. Now we have broad-based intelligence that we didn't have before. But President Clinton was very, very strong. I can't -- I can't count the number of national security meetings on the subject. You know, we did try to get him out of Sudan, but we couldn't do it because there wasn't a legal case.

There was also the Saudis at the time who have been very helpful, by the way, in this process, didn't want to take him from the Sudanese and turn him over to us. So you know, it's easy to be a Monday morning quarterback, but this president established the kind of terrorism entity, President Clinton at the CIA, all around the government and made this a real focus.

ZAHN: Are you still working for him Mr. Richardson? Just ...

RICHARDSON: For President Clinton?

ZAHN: ... kidding. No, I know he has his own office now. We didn't have a chance to get to the issue of OPEC expected to cut oil production by six percent today. Just a 10-second answer, how significant is that?

RICHARDSON: I don't think it's significant as before Paula, because now we have countries like Russia, Mexico, and Norway that are non OPEC countries that are not cutting production. Demand is lower. There's an over supply of oil. OPEC has a lot of juice and they've been constructive, but they can't dominate the oil markets the way they did before. So it'll be a slight increase, but not a high increase for the price of oil.

ZAHN: Well Bill Richardson, it's always good to travel so much territory with us this morning. Thank you very much for your time.

RICHARDSON: Thanks Paula.

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