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Powell's Pitch

Aired February 06, 2003 - 13:02   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.


ANDREA KOPPEL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: First this hour, praise for Colin Powell. He's being lauded for his pitch against Iraq. And on Capitol Hill, even some Democrats are saying today, his speech was a tour de force.
CNN's Andrea Koppel standing by at the State Department to tell us more -- Andrea.

ANDREA KOPPEL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: After Secretary Powell's dramatic and historic presentation before the U.N. Security Council, he was on Capitol Hill being peppered with questions by U.S. senators who, as you just said, welcomed his presentation yesterday, but also pointed out, as Senator Biden summed up, that if the U.S. runs out of diplomatic options, it needs to be doing more now to prepare the American public for the possibility of war with Iraq.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. JOSEPH BIDEN (D), DELAWARE: There is an overwhelming expectation that this will be a repeat of what happened in the early '90s. And that is, that we will be swiftly successful. And I, for one, think that is a probability, that's the most likely outcome, and we have to plan for the worse. But that Johnny's going to come marching home very, very rapidly. And Johnny and Jane aren't going to come home immediately. It may be eight months, it may be 16 months, it may be three years, but it is going to be some period of time that they're going to be there. I don't think the American people understand that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KOPPEL: In the meantime, Secretary of State Powell and President Bush said they are going to be focusing on the diplomacy now. Obviously, this weekend, Hans Blix and Mohamed Elbaradei, two of the chief U.N. weapons inspectors, heading to Baghdad for meetings there, which the U.S. will be keeping a close eye on. The U.S. making it very clear that following Powell's presentation, they didn't expect to get an immediate reaction from the international community. As the White House said, they needed time for it to sink in, the depth and the breadth of Secretary Powell's evidence that he laid out there.

Nevertheless, the news today on the diplomatic front was sort of a mixture of both good and not so good news. Turkey -- the Turkish parliament said that it would allow U.S. troops to be positioned there, on its soil. NATO said while it was going to begin military preparations for possibly supporting Turkey, protecting Turkey in the event of war, they were postponing a decision on that until next week. But Secretary Powell also said that as far as the U.S. is concerned, the focus is still on diplomacy.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

COLIN POWELL, SECY. OF STATE: Within weeks, as this president has said, we will know enough to bring this to a conclusion one way or another. I can't tell you today when such a resolution might be appropriate to be offered by one member of the council or another, or when there might be a vote on such a resolution. But I think we are reaching an endgame in a matter of weeks, not a matter of months.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KOPPEL: Of course, the next date that everyone has their eyes on right now, Kyra, is February 14th, next Friday, when the two weapons inspectors will return for yet another report to the United Nations Security Council, a report that the U.S. is going to be underscoring as another example of how time is running out and U.N. Security Council members will need to start making their decisions as to whether or not they're going to join a U.S. coalition for possible war against Iraq -- Kyra.

PHILLIPS: Another topic of discussion, of course, North Korea.

KOPPEL: That's exactly right. As you laid out in the headlines there, North Korea has said it's starting up one of its nuclear power plants and also alluded to the fact that a preemptive military strike is not something that's exclusive to the United States, hinting that that's something that it could carry out as well.

Secretary Powell came under a lot of questions today from U.S. senators, Barbara Boxer among them, who said that the U.S. seemed to be rather cavalier about this, that it didn't seem to be treating this matter as being an urgent one. And, in fact, was impressing upon the Bush administration, through Secretary Powell, that it needed to do more, it needed to get more actively involved in trying to resolve this situation, and said that they really couldn't understand why the U.S. seemed to be rather blase about the whole matter, and not treating it as a crisis, the way that many on Capitol Hill believe that it is -- Kyra.

PHILLIPS: All right, Andrea Koppel, thank you.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com






Aired February 6, 2003 - 13:02   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
ANDREA KOPPEL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: First this hour, praise for Colin Powell. He's being lauded for his pitch against Iraq. And on Capitol Hill, even some Democrats are saying today, his speech was a tour de force.
CNN's Andrea Koppel standing by at the State Department to tell us more -- Andrea.

ANDREA KOPPEL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: After Secretary Powell's dramatic and historic presentation before the U.N. Security Council, he was on Capitol Hill being peppered with questions by U.S. senators who, as you just said, welcomed his presentation yesterday, but also pointed out, as Senator Biden summed up, that if the U.S. runs out of diplomatic options, it needs to be doing more now to prepare the American public for the possibility of war with Iraq.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. JOSEPH BIDEN (D), DELAWARE: There is an overwhelming expectation that this will be a repeat of what happened in the early '90s. And that is, that we will be swiftly successful. And I, for one, think that is a probability, that's the most likely outcome, and we have to plan for the worse. But that Johnny's going to come marching home very, very rapidly. And Johnny and Jane aren't going to come home immediately. It may be eight months, it may be 16 months, it may be three years, but it is going to be some period of time that they're going to be there. I don't think the American people understand that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KOPPEL: In the meantime, Secretary of State Powell and President Bush said they are going to be focusing on the diplomacy now. Obviously, this weekend, Hans Blix and Mohamed Elbaradei, two of the chief U.N. weapons inspectors, heading to Baghdad for meetings there, which the U.S. will be keeping a close eye on. The U.S. making it very clear that following Powell's presentation, they didn't expect to get an immediate reaction from the international community. As the White House said, they needed time for it to sink in, the depth and the breadth of Secretary Powell's evidence that he laid out there.

Nevertheless, the news today on the diplomatic front was sort of a mixture of both good and not so good news. Turkey -- the Turkish parliament said that it would allow U.S. troops to be positioned there, on its soil. NATO said while it was going to begin military preparations for possibly supporting Turkey, protecting Turkey in the event of war, they were postponing a decision on that until next week. But Secretary Powell also said that as far as the U.S. is concerned, the focus is still on diplomacy.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

COLIN POWELL, SECY. OF STATE: Within weeks, as this president has said, we will know enough to bring this to a conclusion one way or another. I can't tell you today when such a resolution might be appropriate to be offered by one member of the council or another, or when there might be a vote on such a resolution. But I think we are reaching an endgame in a matter of weeks, not a matter of months.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KOPPEL: Of course, the next date that everyone has their eyes on right now, Kyra, is February 14th, next Friday, when the two weapons inspectors will return for yet another report to the United Nations Security Council, a report that the U.S. is going to be underscoring as another example of how time is running out and U.N. Security Council members will need to start making their decisions as to whether or not they're going to join a U.S. coalition for possible war against Iraq -- Kyra.

PHILLIPS: Another topic of discussion, of course, North Korea.

KOPPEL: That's exactly right. As you laid out in the headlines there, North Korea has said it's starting up one of its nuclear power plants and also alluded to the fact that a preemptive military strike is not something that's exclusive to the United States, hinting that that's something that it could carry out as well.

Secretary Powell came under a lot of questions today from U.S. senators, Barbara Boxer among them, who said that the U.S. seemed to be rather cavalier about this, that it didn't seem to be treating this matter as being an urgent one. And, in fact, was impressing upon the Bush administration, through Secretary Powell, that it needed to do more, it needed to get more actively involved in trying to resolve this situation, and said that they really couldn't understand why the U.S. seemed to be rather blase about the whole matter, and not treating it as a crisis, the way that many on Capitol Hill believe that it is -- Kyra.

PHILLIPS: All right, Andrea Koppel, thank you.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com