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Negotiations Ongoing for Kidnapped Israeli Soldiers; Rockets Continue to Fly Across Lebanon-Israeli Border; No Further Progress in Diplomacy; Bush Signs Child Protection Safety Act

Aired July 27, 2006 - 13:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

ANNOUNCER: CNN, the most trusted name in news.
KYRA PHILLIPS, HOST: Hello, everyone. I'm Kyra Phillips live at the CNN world headquarters in Atlanta. Will a kidnapped soldier be set free?

The Palestinian president speaks out. Making progress or misquoted?

A new tape, a new location. Osama bin Laden's right-hand man speaks out. What's the real message behind the latest videotape?

He beats all odds, but fails a drug test. Tour De France champ Floyd Landis in the middle of a doping controversy. The Tour De France announcer joins me live.

LIVE FROM starts right now.

A quick check now of what we know this hour. Israel's cabinet votes to continue but not expand the military campaign in Southern Lebanon. The cabinet also approves the call-up of about 30,000 Israeli reservists to active duty.

On the diplomatic front, CNN has learned that France, Italy, Turkey and Norway are willing to take part in an international peacekeeping force, but that force, if it's created, can't be deployed until a cease-fire is in place.

And the fighting continues, with Hezbollah firing more than 150 rockets into Israel in the last day or so, while Israeli defense forces hammer Hezbollah targets across Southern Lebanon.

Well, CNN has reporters all across the region. LIVE FROM has live reports throughout the program. Stay tuned to CNN.

Days before Hezbollah abducted two Israeli soldiers and set off the current crisis, another Israeli soldier was abducted in Gaza. Today, Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas weighed in on the status of Israeli Corporal Gilad Shalit.

CNN's Paula Hancocks is in Jerusalem with more on what Abbas had to say. Do you think he was misquoted in a way, Paula?

PAULA HANCOCKS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Kyra, I think it may have been a case of lost in translation. What one of the agencies reported, he said, was that the release of Shalit could be imminent. Now, obviously, this stirred a lot of interest from all sides.

But it turns out that what he actually said was intense negotiations to secure the release of Gilad Shalit are still ongoing.

Now we heard immediately afterwards from Saeb Erakat, chief Palestinian negotiator, who does have the right hand, the right ear, of Abbas himself, saying this is not what he meant. He wanted to point out that negotiations are ongoing. There are still Egyptian mediators involved. This is exactly what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SAEB ERAKAT, CHIEF PALESTINIAN NEGOTIATOR (through translator): I assured the prime minister that as far as the issue of the abducted Israeli soldier, there are intense efforts going on to resolve this problem as soon as possible.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HANCOCKS: Now, he didn't elaborate on exactly what the negotiations ongoing were. But even if in public the Israeli politicians are saying there are no negotiations, there's no prisoner swap option.

And also Hamas saying they're not talking to the Israelis. In this region there are always back channels, so there could be talks behind the scenes.

Now, of course this was a month and two days ago that Gilad Shalit, this 19-year-old corporal, was taken on the border with Gaza and two other soldiers killed in that particular attack. And there have been intense negotiations since that point.

Now, of course, with the fighting on that second front in Lebanon what is going on in Gaza has been overshadowed somewhat. But the violence is continuing. Over the past two days, at least 25 Palestinians have been killed according to security and medical sources.

And since Gilad Shalit actually was taken on June 25, we understand close to 150 Palestinians have been killed. And many of those have been civilians. What this has done is it has brought it to the forefront once again, as did Condoleezza Rice's visit to President Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank on Wednesday, bringing to the public, once again, the fact that Israel is fighting on a second front, the fact that there is still military operations ongoing in Gaza.

And Palestinians in Gaza are still pretty much locked in by land, sea and air, and unable to move at the moment -- Kyra.

PHILLIPS: Paula Hancocks, thanks so much.

More attacks today on the Lebanese port city of Tyre. Standing by there, CNN's Karl Penhaul -- Karl.

KARL PENHAUL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Kyra, yes, the shelling and bombing started off about midmorning and ran through to about mid- afternoon, and then there's been a lull for several hours. There are signs that things may be picking up again.

In the last 10, 15 minutes, we've seen a couple of Israeli warplanes circling overhead. And at one stage, they dive-bombed down, unloaded a couple of bombs there. And then about five minutes ago, we saw a flash off in the distance. But that's a little ways off. It's about a mile and a half, two miles off. And certainly not picking up like it did last night.

You'll remember that about this time of day, there was a very large attack in downtown area of Tyre. A 10-story building was destroyed in that strike and 12 civilians were wounded -- Kyra.

PHILLIPS: And Karl, you bring up a good point, and we don't want to lose sight of that, as we are covering the destruction, we're covering the rocket war, at the same time, the civilian toll, that number keeps growing.

You've had a chance to get right there in the thick of things. You have had to watch how the dead have had to have been -- or have to be buried in these large trenches, because they're not able to do or give the respect of one on one time to each lost civilian.

Do you feel that that's still increasing? Is it -- is it becoming more safe for civilians in these certain areas? What's your take?

PENHAUL: No, there is no safety here for civilians, Kyra. The safest thing that they're doing right now is trying to clear out of Tyre altogether, especially after last night's attack. Because there was this kind of false sense of security over the past week that I detected that, because most of the attacks were on the southern and eastern edges of Tyre, yes, bad enough for the folks out in those villages. But here in the city, people felt a false sense of calm here.

But after yesterday's attack, we've seen a new flood of people out. And there was a bunker, for example, an underground basement where 40 people had been living yesterday, went back there today, only six people are left. They just threw up their hands and said, "Hey, everybody said that even here isn't safe." They've gone north. They've headed north to Sidon (ph), Beirut. We're just left here -- Kyra.

PHILLIPS: Karl Penhaul, thanks so much.

Hezbollah rockets struck targets across Northern Israel again today. Our John Roberts still in the region. He joins me now by phone. John, bring us up to date.

JOHN ROBERTS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hey, Kyra, how are you this afternoon?

We actually got some pictures out from Lebanon in Maroun al-Ras this morning. We've been pressuring the Israeli army to get us in across the border so we could try to assess for ourselves what's going on, what the situation is on the ground. But they sent a pool camera in last night and brought back the pictures from the other side of the border.

From what we can ascertain from the actual pictures, there certainly didn't seem to be a lot going on in Maroun al-Ras, a lot of soldiers standing around, taking care of their weapons, sort of being on guard. There were no engagements. There were no patrols, really, not much to suggest what the real situation on the ground is there.

They're considering taking another crew in, perhaps over the next couple of days. We're No. 1 on the list for that, so we hope to get some eyes on the ground. I don't know if they'd be taking us into Maroun al-Ras again. I don't see how that would serve any purpose. We'd certainly like to go a little further in-country and see what's going on in Bint Jbeil.

There are reinforcements on the border at this point where we are, there's a combat engineering brigade that stands at the ready. A lot of armored vehicles, armored personnel carriers, tanks and other weapons. I can't tell you when they're going across the border, but it could be sometime soon.

I talked with a couple of the members of that unit who will be seeing this type of combat for the first time. They had seen some duty in Gaza. They say what they're preparing to face against Hezbollah seems to be quite different. They expressed some concern that Hezbollah appeared to be much stronger than they had thought.

And after what happened in Bint Jbeil yesterday with those eight soldiers killed, three of those officers, the soldiers said to me, you know, it kind of frightens them a little bit as to what they might expect when they go on the other side, raises the level of anxiety.

But one 2nd lieutenant that I talked to said look, it just makes us more committed, makes us more motivated to win this fight, because it's not just now about the mission or defending Israel; it's actually personal now.

The country is so small and -- while everybody from the age of 18 has to register and is drafted by the military and has to do mandatory service, it's still a small country. And a lot of these people know each other.

One fellow I talked to said, "There's a good chance that I knew at least one of those people in the Galani Gate (ph) who lost their lives yesterday." So this does make it persona.

Regardless, though, of the success that the Israel army is claiming against Hezbollah in terms of being able to degrade its command and control facilities, destroy its infrastructure and gain intelligence, doesn't seem to stop those Katyushas from falling into Northern Israel.

In Kiryat Shmona today, when we were on our way to the front, we saw three rockets where they had landed. One hit a road we traveled on all the time, maybe a couple of minutes before we got there. It ignited a brushfire.

It looks like California or Colorado or New Mexico here, the number of fires that have been ignited by these Katyusha rockets. Really looks like the height of fire season.

Another one of those Katyusha rockets fell on a residential neighborhood about a quarter of a mile away, destroyed two cars. It hit on the sidewalk. And you can see the impact from those ball bearings, those large BBs. It wrapped around the warhead. It looked like somebody had raked those cars with machine-gun fire in addition to setting them on fire.

There were people in the apartment building at the time. They were all down in the bomb shelter. When you live in Kiryat Shmona, you know that when the air raid siren goes off, it's serious and you take cover.

And a third missile that we saw -- a third missile that we saw also landed near a shopping center in Kiryat Shmona, in between a children's playground and a shopping mall anchored by a Burger King.

It didn't do any damage to the building or the playground. There's no one in the playground at the time, just a lot of smoke and fire, which the fire department managed to put out very quickly.

You know, just goes to show, Kyra, that as much as the Israeli army believes it can try to control the situation here, as we saw in Bint Jbeil, control can be fleeting. As we see with these Katyusha rockets continuing to come into Israel, Hezbollah certainly maintains quite a capability to try to counterattack.

PHILLIPS: I'll be talking a lot more with John Roberts in Northern Israel by phone, appreciate it. Let's get an update on the diplomatic efforts that's happening in the Middle East crisis.

Our White House correspondent Ed Henry.

Hey, Ed.

ED HENRY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good afternoon, Kyra.

Tony Snow, the White House press secretary, getting a little feisty today as he defended the White House's diplomatic efforts, specifically saying he feels it's time to start pushing back on criticism that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's mission to the Mideast and Rome was a failure because she did not come up with a peace deal to end the violence and also because she was leading the effort to block a cease-fire that the Lebanese prime minister has been calling for.

Tony Snow asserting that Secretary Rice secured, quote, "significant victories in Rome," such as helping line up world leaders behind a humanitarian aid package.

I challenged Tony Snow on that a bit, asking why, if there were so many victories, we're hearing now that Secretary Rice is likely to head back to the Middle East as soon as this weekend.

Both Tony Snow, as well as the president, in a separate press availability, basically saying that success cannot be measured by a piece of paper, a cease-fire that they think Hezbollah will not follow.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TONY SNOW, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: You're laboring under the presumption that she was supposed to come with a magic wand and say cease-fire. What she's said is what on earth is the good of having another empty-handed cease-fire in the Middle East? What is the purpose of having something that is not enforceable at this juncture and is not realistic?

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: My goal is exactly what I said it was, and that is to hopefully end this as quickly as possible. And at the same time, making sure there's a lasting peace. Not a fake peace, not a fake, you know, circumstances that make us all feel better and sure enough the problem arises again.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HENRY: Well, I asked Tony Snow about the fact that critics are also saying why not let a cease-fire go forward so maybe some of the civilian deaths could stop in the short term, if they do not stop, because Hezbollah does not follow the cease-fire.

At that point, then the world community would know that, in fact, Hezbollah was to blame here. Both Snow, and again, the president, saying today, though, they do not just want a piece of paper. They say, both asserting that in fact the Middle East is littered with peace deals that have not followed through on and they don't want another one like that -- Kyra.

PHILLIPS: Ed Henry at the White House. Thank you so much.

And we want take you to the -- a live event, the other side of the White House from where Ed is, actually. We've been talking about this for a number of weeks. The president getting ready to sign the Children's Protection and Safety Act, as you remember, in honor of Adam Walsh, the son of John Walsh, who hosts "America's Most Wanted".

Let's listen in.

BUSH: ... attracting quite a crowd here.

JOHN WALSH, HOST, "AMERICA'S MOST WANTED": SWAT Team for kids.

BUSH: Yes, it is. SWAT Team for kids.

I appreciate very much the bill's sponsors, who joined us and the committee chairman and the leadership that has made this bill possible. It's a good piece of bipartisan legislation. And I'm really going to be proud to sign it. I want to thank all the family members of victims who have joined us today. Particularly want to say hello to Elizabeth Smart and Arnie Zila (ph). Thank you all for coming.

You know, having someone harm your child is one of the worst nightmares a parent could face. And the families who joined us today have felt that pain firsthand. In your suffering and loss, many of you have found the courage to become advocates for the safety of other children. Because of your efforts, this important measure is going to become the law of the land, and the children of parents you never meet will be spared the anguish your families have known. So thank you for your contribution.

Protecting our children is our solemn responsibility. It's what we must do. When a child's life or innocence is taken, it is a terrible loss. It is an act of unforgivable cruelty.

Our society has a duty to protect our children from exploitation and danger. By enacting this law, we're sending a clear message across the country. Those who prey on our children will be caught, prosecuted and punished to the fullest extent of the law.

I appreciate working with Congress in the past to give law enforcement the tools they need to go after criminals who kidnap and exploit children.

In 2003, I signed the Protect Act. That expanded the use of Amber Alerts and makes grants to all 50 states so law enforcement can quickly alert the public about missing children and their abductors.

We also launched Operation Predator to help law enforcement track down and arrest foreign pedophiles, human traffickers, sex tourists and Internet pornographers who prey on our children.

Earlier this year, the Department of Justice, led by Al Gonzales, launched Project Safe Childhood, to help federal, state and local enforcement officials investigate and prosecute crimes against children that are facilitated by Internet and other electronic communications.

This new law signed today builds on the progress in four important ways. First, the bill I sign today will greatly expand the national sex offender registry. By integrating the information in state sex offender registry systems and ensuring that law enforcement has access to the same information across the United States. Seems to make sense, doesn't it?

See, these improvements will help sex offenders from evading detection by moving from one state to the next. Data drawn from this comprehensive registry will be also made available to the public. So parents can have the information they need to protect their children from sex offenders that might be in their neighborhoods.

Second, the bill I sign today will increase federal penalty force crimes against children. This bill imposes tough mandatory penalties for the most serious crimes against our children. It increases penalties for crimes such as sex trafficking of children and child prostitution. It provides grants to states to help them institutionalize sex offenders who have shown they cannot change their behavior and are about to be released from prison.

Third, the bill I sign today will make it harder for sex predators to reach our children on the Internet. Some sex predators use this technology to make contact with potential victims. So the bill authorized additional new Internet regional crimes against children task forces. These task forces provide funding and training to help state and local law enforcement, combat crimes involving the sexual exploitation minors on the Internet.

Fourth, the bill I sign today will help prevent child abuse by creating a national child abuse registry. And require investigators to do background checks on adoptive and foster parents before they're approved to take custody of a child.

By giving child protective service professionals in all 50 states access to this critical information, we'll improve their ability to investigate child abuse cases and help ensure that the vulnerable children are not put into situations of abuse or neglect.

It's a comprehensive piece of legislation, and it's an important bill.

Our nation grieves with every family that suffered the unbearable pain of a child who's been abducted or abused. This law makes an important step forward in this country's efforts to protect those who cannot protect themselves.

Thank you for coming to witness this. It's now my high honor to sign the Adam Walsh Child Protection Safety Act of 2006.

PHILLIPS: It's now official. The president has just signed the Adam Walsh Child Protection Safety Act. It comes 25 years to the day of 6-year-old Adam Walsh's disappearance.

Adam's father, "America's Most Wanted" host John Walsh -- you can see him there with the president -- has been lobbying hard for tougher laws on pedophiles. But it was another fatal child abduction case, that of Jessica Lunsford, that helped convince lawmakers.

Walsh talked about the Lunsford case and the bill last week with us here on LIVE FROM.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WALSH: Everybody knows that they are serious repeat offenders. You look at this creep right there that you just showed a picture of, John Couey, had been arrested 22 times.

And Mark Lunsford, Jessica Lunsford's father, who's worked hard on this bill, and so has Ed Smart and even Elizabeth Smart -- I was with them yesterday -- have walked the halls of Capitol Hill.

Mark Lunsford said to me, "How could a guy who has been arrested and convicted 22 times, John, 22 times, noncompliance with his probation, didn't adhere to the sex offender law in Florida, how could he stay 150 yards away from my house, take my daughter in the middle of the night, murder her and bury her alive?"

Well, this will prevent guys like John Couey from going state to state, jumping bond, jumping bail. There's repeat offender statutes in here. There's even a federal statute that says if you kill a child under 16 years old, you could face the death penalty. It's about time.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIPS: The law will create a nationwide database for registered sex offenders. Those failing to register would face a penalty charge.

And this note: John Walsh, host of "America's Most Wanted" -- we just heard from him there -- he's going to join Larry King live tonight, 9 p.m. Eastern, right here on CNN.

A call for terrorists. Al Qaeda's No. 2 man puts out a new video to recruit more militants. See it on CNN, the most trusted name in news.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PHILLIPS: President Bush renews the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act. It gives another 25 years to a measure that opened the polls to millions of African-Americans. The signing ceremony took place on the South Lawn of the White House today.

The Voting Rights Act ended poll taxes, literacy tests, and other Jim Crow laws that kept blacks from voting. It requires nine Southern states to get Justice Department approval for ballot rule changes.

U.N. ambassador John Bolton is looking for permanent work now. He's being grilled this hour by a Senate panel. Lawmakers must recommend approval of his permanent position.

You'll remember, Bolton was appointed to the U.N. job last August. It happened during a congressional recess. The temporary job ends in January. If he's not permanently approved, well, President Bush could reappoint him during another recess.

A recess appointment is a temporary appointment by the president to a position that normally requires Senate confirmation.

He's not holding back. Democratic Party chairman Howard Dean takes aim at Iraq's prime minister.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HOWARD DEAN, DNC CHAIRMAN: The president made a big deal about bringing the Iraqi prime minister to address Congress, and met with him yesterday. The Iraqi prime minister's an anti-Semite. We don't need to spend $200, $300, $500 billion, bringing democracy to Iraq, to turn it over to people that believe that Israel doesn't have a right to defend itself.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIPS: Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has condemned Israel's offensive in Lebanon but not Hezbollah's attacks on Israel. His remarks also have drawn criticism from many lawmakers, and some Democrats boycotted his remarks at a joint meeting of Congress yesterday.

The Republican National Committee accuses Dean of trying to score political points.

A new Tour De France champ, but some of the same posts (ph) raise scrutiny. Is the victory by American cyclist Floyd Landis now in question? We'll have that, straight ahead on LIVE FROM.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PHILLIPS: Quick update now, what we know about the Middle East crisis this hour.

Israel to activate some 30,000 soldiers currently on reserve. That decision came in a cabinet meeting today. Another key decision, no expansion of the Israeli offensive in Lebanon, at least not now.

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