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American Morning
Team of Travelers Just Back from Visiting Syria, Jordan, Egypt and Israel
Aired January 17, 2002 - 08:07 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: Now onto the Middle East, and yet another group of representatives on a mission overseas. Just last week, two separate Senate delegations were in Central Asia for a first-hand look at the situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan. And now, another team of travelers is just back from visiting Syria, Jordan, Egypt and Israel.
Congressman Saxby Chambliss of Georgia and Jane Harman of California are with us this morning to talk about their trip to the region -- welcome to both of you.
REP. SAXBY CHAMBLISS (R), GEORGIA: Good morning, Paula.
REP. JANE HARMAN (D), CALIFORNIA: Good morning.
ZAHN: Good morning. So Representative Harman, first of all, just before we talk about your trip, just a quick reaction to the reports that these Pashtun tribal leaders are saying they're not going to help U.S. forces make cave-to-cave searches. How troubled are you by these reports at a time, of course, when our secretary of state had pledged a long-term commitment to rebuilding this country?
HARMAN: Well, let me praise the courage of President Musharraf in Pakistan. I think he's doing an incredible job at taking a position that's very tough for him. But I think this policy has to change. These tribal leaders have to be helpful. What we learned from our trip to four countries in the Middle East and our meetings with five leaders, including Chairman Arafat, is that they get it now. They have to pick sides. They're either with us or they're not. And I think this message has to get to those tribal leaders, and we have to round up the al Qaeda leadership that's still in Pakistan or in the Afghan caves.
ZAHN: Representative Chambliss, are you confident that the tribal leaders will get this message?
CHAMBLISS: Well, I think they're going to have to get this message. You know, President Musharraf has done a great job of making difficult decisions and leading his country in the right direction, and these folks need to understand that if we're going to have peace in the world, if we're going to root out terrorism, that they've got to be on board with us. ZAHN: Representative Harman, let's come back to your trip. We mentioned some of the countries you visited. You also had the opportunity to meet with Yasser Arafat, Shimon Peres and Ariel Sharon. Secretary of State Colin Powell has now said he has not seen evidence that directly links Yasser Arafat to that shipment of explosives intercepted by the Israelis a couple of weeks ago. At the same time, a State Department person is saying -- an unnamed State Department official in the papers today -- that the U.S. has been shown credible evidence that Arafat did know about those shipments. Can you shed some light on that for us this morning?
HARMAN: Well, we don't know specifically whether Chairman Arafat was involved. However, we did see evidence, and it does -- we saw intelligence, and it does show that the Palestinian Authority, that Hezbollah, which is a major terrorist organization in the Middle East, involved in Iran and in Syria, and that possibly the Iranian government were involved in this shipment. That's very serious.
And we had a tough meeting with Chairman Arafat yesterday, making clear to him that we had seen this evidence, and he insists that's he going to do a thorough investigation. That investigation has to start now. It has to lead to arrests. It has to lead to prosecutions. It's not just rounding up the usual suspects. I think he gets the point that there is no time left for him to act.
ZAHN: Congressman Chambliss, Representative Harman just said that Yasser Arafat will launch this investigation. Did he, at any time in his conversations with your delegation, simply deny the fact that he had anything to do with these shipments of explosives?
CHAMBLISS: Yes, he was very defensive about the fact that he knew nothing about it. He said, "Why would I ask for arms to be shipped from Iran when the leader of Iran is saying that I need to be killed?" He was extremely defensive about it. But the important thing about that visit was that we delivered a strong message. That strong message was that the United States Congress stands behind the current administration with respect to their mandates upon Chairman Arafat that he stop the violence, No. 1, that he move the peace process forward, and that he does enter into an immediate investigation with respect to all of the facts surrounding this incident of this ship, and that we do have arrests and prosecution.
That ship, the contents of that ship indicate a major policy change by the P.A. towards Israel. It's an escalation of the war and the violence as opposed to decreasing the violence in the Middle East, and that's not the direction that we need to go in obviously.
ZAHN: Representative Harman, I know you said you had a tough conversation with him. Did you buy his denial that he knew nothing about this shipment of explosives?
HARMAN: No. I mean, he was claiming, "How could we possibly try to get arms into Gaza when the Israelis patrol our coast and it would be impossible?" We all know it's public information that this was a very -- as Saxby Chambliss has just said -- a large shipment of arms, 50 tons of arms, new kinds of arms, rocket-propelled grenades and Katyusha rockets, things that haven't been in the Palestinian territory before. And they were in canisters designed to be dropped into the sea and to roll into shore with the currents or to be picked up by divers. Clearly, the effort was to evade Israeli patrols, and I can't imagine that people in the P.A. had nothing to do with this shipment.
ZAHN: Well, Representatives Harman and Chambliss, we very much appreciate your dropping by to bring us up to date on this very important trip you have just completed. We look forward to having both of you back again -- thanks again for your time this morning.
CHAMBLISS: Thanks, Paula.
HARMAN: Thank you.
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