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American Morning

Bush to Speak at U.N.

Aired September 12, 2002 - 08:01   ET

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

PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: President Bush gets ready to make the case against Iraq at the U.N. We're going to have previews. We will be hearing from a former U.S. ambassador to the U.N. on what he expects to happen. And the message seems to be cooperate or else. That apparently is what the president will be telling the U.N. a little bit later on this morning as he speaks to the U.N. General Assembly on Saddam Hussein.
Senior White House correspondent John King is traveling with the president. We have a rare sighting of him this morning in our New York studios -- good morning, John.

And joining us from the U.N. this morning, Richard Roth.

Richard, let's start with you. Tell us what the U.N. can expect, what we can expect to hear from the president.

RICHARD ROTH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, President Bush is going to lay out the case here, as John King knows also very well. He's going to challenge the United Nations to try to not be irrelevant and live up to its existing Security Council resolutions on Iraq and try to enforce them, the U.S. believing that President Saddam Hussein has been building up his weapons of mass destruction, a program that the U.N. has said he has not fully dismantled.

Of course, world reaction here, everyone not really eager to sign onto a unilateral military strike. Here, Secretary General Kofi Annan, echoing the views of many countries, saying, hey, don't go it alone. Kofi Annan will deliver a speech right before President Bush. U.N. officials describe it as a friendly warning to the U.S. Kofi Annan saying it's the United Nations that provides the legitimacy to any action by one state or a group of states against another -- Paula.

ZAHN: Thank you, Richard.

We're going to check in with John King now to hear this all from the president's perspective.

You have a copy of the white paper, which I guess is the road map the administration is using to lay out its case for a potential military action against Iraq.

JOHN KING, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, the president's bottom line today is, to the United Nations, why are you here? If you want to put it in simple English, why are you here? This is the reason the United Nations was formed, the president will say, so the world collectively could deal with threats. For the past 11, 12 years, Saddam Hussein has had resolutions promising to disarm, promising to allow the United Nations to verify that he has no chemical, no nuclear, no biological programs.

The president will essentially say, and he won't use these words, but that that inspections regime, those commitments have become a joke and that the United Nations must enforce them if it is to be a credible international organization and there will be no threats, no deadlines, but the president will make clear that if the U.N. does not act and act soon, he is prepared to act. And, of course, that is military action.

ZAHN: Does the military, I mean does the administration have the expectation that the U.N. is going to make a move to enforce any of these resolutions that have been so blatantly violated?

KING: It actually does. And there has been great criticism of the administration overseas, and I know Ambassador Holbrooke is here, that this president wants to act alone, he's a unilateralist, he doesn't consult. The administration thinks it has now what it has long wanted, an international debate about Iraq.

The White House would say if this administration six months ago said force Saddam to comply with the resolutions, the United Nations would have yawned, maybe had one meeting and gone away.

A lot of criticism of the administration's strategy, but what the White House says is now the world is riveted on Iraq and the Security Council and the United Nations as a whole will get a chance to act. The British will go next. They will introduce a resolution in concert with the White House saying put the inspectors back in now, meaning within a period of three, four, five weeks.

And as Prime Minister Blair laid out last week, the president, we are told, will not be this direct. But it works out like this -- send the inspectors back in. If they are turned away once, pull them out because we're going to move some military troops.

ZAHN: Let's talk about what's going on behind-the-scenes here. In a highly unusual move, the U.N. released the text of what U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan will say later today. And Richard Roth says, he would say that it essentially would be the first shot across the bow from the U.N. to this administration. How is it perceived by the White House this morning, Kofi Annan's speaking about 15 minutes before the president?

KING: They like what they see in some of the speech. They understand the criticism and it is a familiar criticism, that Bush comes to the world stage after going it alone for a long time, that the United Nations, Kofi Annan will say, would like to be involved from the beginning of this debate.

But he also says in that speech, even as he says do not act unilaterally, act within the United Nations, he also says the Security Council must enforce its resolutions if it is to be a meaningful body. So Kofi Annan will say just what the president says. The question then is can you get them together on the strategy as to how to make that happen? That will be the big debate.

ZAHN: We've got five seconds left. Characterize the importance of the speech today for the president compared to other addresses he's made.

KING: This is a pivotal moment. This is a man who is still finding his way, in some ways, on the world stage. This is a man who will say today the war on terrorism should be expanded to a second front, even as the United States government acknowledges with this higher threat level that al Qaeda is still out there and still out there to be dealt with.

ZAHN: You only went three seconds over. That's why you're in the television business.

Thank you, John.

KING: Thank you.

ZAHN: We will be checking in with you for other special coverage.

CNN, of course, will be covering the president's speech live, as well as Kofi Annan's, and we will be here for that all.

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