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CNN Live At Daybreak

Ground Level Hunt for Bin Laden Aided by Aerial Reconnaissance; European Union Today Convening Conference to Discuss Reconstruction of Afghanistan

Aired December 20, 2001 - 05:23   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.
CATHERINE CALLAWAY, CNN ANCHOR: The ground level hunt for Osama bin Laden is aided by aerial reconnaissance, sometimes from miles in space.

And CNN's Steve Young shows us how it works.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

STEVE YOUNG, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The trail in search of terrorism is soaring from 65,000 feet to 250 miles out in space and advanced keyhole satellites. There are six in the fleet and they cost one billion bucks apiece. Compared with other reconnaissance technology, they have razor sharp vision. On a good day, they can focus down to six inches.

TIM BROWN, GLOBALSECURITY.ORG: These spy satellites have to be cued by other sensors or other intelligence sources. They can take a daily picture of a particular area regularly, depending on cloud cover, and they can check to see if there's any changes, if there's any tunnel openings that have opened up, if there are any movements or if there are anybody on particular trails, they can see where people might be out in the open.

YOUNG: The spy satellite images come into the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, NEMA, then are passed on to the rest of the intelligence establishment. They are classified and secret. We can show you this shot of Afghanistan taken by a commercial company back in 1999, and this space view of Pakistan in August from the same outfit. But the Pentagon has bought exclusive rights to every image of the region from the company since September 11.

CHARLES VICK, FEDERATION OF AMERICAN SCIENTISTS: This is information warfare. Information warfare is designed to deny your enemy access to information, to know where your troops are, your facilities, your operations are going on, and therefore to dominate the battlefield. And that is what is going on here.

YOUNG (voice-over): The lower flying unmanned reconnaissance systems, Predator and Global Hawk, can loiter for many areas over target areas.

(on camera): By comparison, the satellites speed by, but their sharper images fill in the picture. And, of course, in countries where the U.S. does not have over flight rights, such as Russia, China and North Korea, spy satellites are the only way to go.

Steve Young, CNN Financial News, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CALLAWAY: So what to do about Afghanistan? It's a nation devastated by some 20 years of conflict. Well, the European Union today is convening a conference to assess the funding and the projects that will be needed to reconstruct Afghanistan, a tremendous task. The conference convening in Brussels.

And Chris Patten is the European Union's commissioner for external relations. He's actually joining us from Brussels for the latest on this meeting.

Thank you very much for joining us this morning.

CHRIS PATTEN, E.U. COMMISSIONER: A pleasure, Catherine.

CALLAWAY: First, can you tell me, we're talking about major donors in this meeting, the European Union, Japan, Saudi Arabia, the United States, a big task ahead of you. What exactly will be done at this meeting? Will you be down to where the money will be needed or just what the major goals need to be?

PATTEN: Well, the first thing we're doing is sending a very strong political signal of the commitment of the international community to the reconstruction of Afghanistan after the horrors of the last couple of decades.

But secondly we're getting down to some practical work. First of all, we're organizing a comprehensive assessment mission in Afghanistan to work out what the medium and long-term requirements for reconstruction are so that we can have another conference in Japan in January and actually start putting large amounts of money on the table for reconstruction.

We're also looking at how we can help the interim administration, which starts work this weekend, to get up and start moving, and I've signed a check to help them today.

We're looking at quick impact projects, how we can make the difference, the food security, getting people back to their homes, starting on demining, all those things which are essential in order to make it possible to carry out some of the longer term reconstruction.

So it's a very practical meeting and it's also laying the foundations for a much bigger meeting in January at ministerial level where we'll start, I think, talking about the big money.

CALLAWAY: Well, what kind of -- yes, let's talk about big money. I'm reading numbers like $1 billion to $2 billion over the next five years. That is big money. Where is that money going to come from? PATTEN: It's going to come from taxpayers and aid programs in Europe, in Saudi Arabia, in Japan and I guess in the United States. I've been having discussions with Mr. Netsius (ph), your director of U.S. aid, about that in the last day or two.

CALLAWAY: Yes.

PATTEN: There isn't actually a very accurate figure yet for how much we'll need but people are talking in the range of about $8 billion maybe over four or five years. So it is going to be big money.

CALLAWAY: Mr. Patten, are there any stipulations before we see this money going into Afghanistan, any kind of stipulations as perhaps that this new interim government, the new government will be a stable one?

PATTEN: Well, we'll be working within the terms of the U.N. Security Council resolution. Obviously it's not going to be possible to do long-term reconstruction if there's still fighting, if there are still law and order problems.

This interim administration is paving the way for the broader- based government after the conference, the so-called loyerga (ph), which will be held and which we'll be helping to finance the preparations for. But it's got to start work very rapidly.

It's also got to start addressing issues which, I think, are of concern to all of us like the gender problems in Afghanistan. It's got to provide an education service which gives a fair deal to young women as well as to men. We've got to work in the health sector. And we've also got to provide the basic services, which simply don't exist in Afghanistan, things like policing, things like sewage, things like tax collection, all those basics of government which you need in order to make an administration work.

But unless we get going now, we won't be able to stop more heroin production in the fields. We won't be able to get people back to their villages. We won't be able to demonstrate to people that they're better off working with the international community rather than against the international community hijacked by al Qaeda.

CALLAWAY: Mr. Patten, Chris Patten, the E.U. Commissioner, thank you very much for joining us. We're running out of time. You have a tremendous task ahead of you. Good luck to you.

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