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American Morning

Interview with Martin Indyk

Aired October 31, 2002 - 07:35   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: Israel's parliament is in disarray. The leader of the moderate Labor Party has quit. That leaves Prime Minister Ariel Sharon with support only from extreme right and religious parties. How would a far right government in Israel influence America's allies in the Middle East as the U.N. debates a resolution that would force Iraq to disarm?
Well, joining me now is former U.S. ambassador to Israel, Martin Indyk.

What a pleasure to see you in person for a change.

MARTIN INDYK, FORMER U.S. AMBASSADOR TO ISRAEL: My pleasure, Paula.

ZAHN: Usually you're in D.C. and we see you only on a monitor.

INDYK: That's right.

ZAHN: Let's start off with what appears to be maybe a potential meeting of the minds between the U.S. and France when it comes to this resolution. There's still a sticking point with some language, I guess this phrase "material breach" that the French are very concerned about.

Do you see a compromise being reached?

INDYK: Oh, I think it looks very close now. And although there may be some wordsmithing, the basic contours of the deal are there, that is to say that in return for a toughened inspection regime, the United States will indicate that it will be willing to go back to the Security Council if Saddam does not cooperate with the inspections before actually going to war, while reserving for itself, as the United States always has, the right to go if the Security Council then doesn't agree with it.

But...

ZAHN: Isn't that the French's chief concern about that phrase, "material breach," because they fear that it would allow the U.S. to go in there?

INDYK: What the French are concerned about is the automaticity, that it will be an automatic trigger, that if Saddam doesn't cooperate, that the United States will simply, President Bush will simply say OK, that's it, now we have the justification to go to war. Whereas what the French want is to drag the United States back into the Security Council, to go through another round of deliberations so that the permanent members of the Security Council, Russia and France, can have an ability to influence the United States.

In the Security Council, these other powers have an equal vote with the United States. They have a veto. So their interest is to keep it in the Security Council, whereas our interest is to avoid being timed down. So they'll work out a compromise where we'll come back if Saddam doesn't cooperate. But we still have the ability to remove the handcuffs that they would like to put on us.

ZAHN: Of course, the Bush administration has made it very clear it's including impatient with this process that they think is getting bogged down in the U.N. Do you see a situation where the president would step outside that international framework when it comes to potential military action against Iraq?

INDYK: Well, there was always that possibility, but I think that's now very unlikely. The fact that the president hosted Hans Blix, the U.N. inspector, chief inspector, yesterday, is an indication that that's where we're moving now, that the French and the United States will reach some kind of compromise on this and then we'll be in a new game, a cat and mouse game whereby the, Saddam Hussein, I expect, will accept the inspectors and then we'll be running around trying to find his weapons of mass destruction, trying to test whether he's willing to cooperate with us. And that, in a way, if that unfolds, could put the war on hold for some time.

ZAHN: Back to the issue of Ariel Sharon's imploding government. What is the impact of that on the peace process?

INDYK: Well, what we have in Israel is a situation where, with the Labor Party leaving, the prime minister is now dependent on right- wing parties to maintain his government. He will have to bring in the far right-wing Russian party of Ifyet Lieberman (ph) in order to maintain his government. And even if he doesn't bring him in and he has a minority government, he'll still be dependent on those seven votes from the right, far right-wing.

So instead of a national unity government combining Labor and Likud, left and right, it's going to be a right-wing government now. I don't think it's going to last for very long, maybe three months. But in that time, Sharon will be tacking to the right to stave off a threat from Bebe Netanyahu. If there's new elections, he will run in primaries against Sharon. And Lieberman, the far right minister, Russian party representative, is an ally of Bebe's. So ironically, it's Netanyahu who holds the whip hand now and will determine whether the government comes down and when the elections will be.

ZAHN: We've got 10 seconds left. In the end, then, does that, it certainly doesn't enhance the peace process, does it?

INDYK: No. I think that essentially the peace process will be on hold. It's not exactly been moving forward in any way. But it will be on hold now until Israel gets over its elections, which could be anywhere from three to six months. Ironically, Yasser Arafat just staved off any efforts by the Palestinian reformers to change his government, to have him elected prime minister. And so that part of the peace process, of getting Palestinian reform going, has stopped, as well. And I'm afraid we've got a stalemate there.

And the danger, of course, is that in this situation it's the terrorists who can dictate the pace of events.

ZAHN: And they certainly have done that in the past.

Ambassador Martin Indyk, thank you for dropping by. Nice to see you in person.

INDYK: Nice to see you.

ZAHN: Appreciate your time.

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 October 31, 2002 - 07:35   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: Israel's parliament is in disarray. The leader of the moderate Labor Party has quit. That leaves Prime Minister Ariel Sharon with support only from extreme right and religious parties. How would a far right government in Israel influence America's allies in the Middle East as the U.N. debates a resolution that would force Iraq to disarm?
Well, joining me now is former U.S. ambassador to Israel, Martin Indyk.

What a pleasure to see you in person for a change.

MARTIN INDYK, FORMER U.S. AMBASSADOR TO ISRAEL: My pleasure, Paula.

ZAHN: Usually you're in D.C. and we see you only on a monitor.

INDYK: That's right.

ZAHN: Let's start off with what appears to be maybe a potential meeting of the minds between the U.S. and France when it comes to this resolution. There's still a sticking point with some language, I guess this phrase "material breach" that the French are very concerned about.

Do you see a compromise being reached?

INDYK: Oh, I think it looks very close now. And although there may be some wordsmithing, the basic contours of the deal are there, that is to say that in return for a toughened inspection regime, the United States will indicate that it will be willing to go back to the Security Council if Saddam does not cooperate with the inspections before actually going to war, while reserving for itself, as the United States always has, the right to go if the Security Council then doesn't agree with it.

But...

ZAHN: Isn't that the French's chief concern about that phrase, "material breach," because they fear that it would allow the U.S. to go in there?

INDYK: What the French are concerned about is the automaticity, that it will be an automatic trigger, that if Saddam doesn't cooperate, that the United States will simply, President Bush will simply say OK, that's it, now we have the justification to go to war. Whereas what the French want is to drag the United States back into the Security Council, to go through another round of deliberations so that the permanent members of the Security Council, Russia and France, can have an ability to influence the United States.

In the Security Council, these other powers have an equal vote with the United States. They have a veto. So their interest is to keep it in the Security Council, whereas our interest is to avoid being timed down. So they'll work out a compromise where we'll come back if Saddam doesn't cooperate. But we still have the ability to remove the handcuffs that they would like to put on us.

ZAHN: Of course, the Bush administration has made it very clear it's including impatient with this process that they think is getting bogged down in the U.N. Do you see a situation where the president would step outside that international framework when it comes to potential military action against Iraq?

INDYK: Well, there was always that possibility, but I think that's now very unlikely. The fact that the president hosted Hans Blix, the U.N. inspector, chief inspector, yesterday, is an indication that that's where we're moving now, that the French and the United States will reach some kind of compromise on this and then we'll be in a new game, a cat and mouse game whereby the, Saddam Hussein, I expect, will accept the inspectors and then we'll be running around trying to find his weapons of mass destruction, trying to test whether he's willing to cooperate with us. And that, in a way, if that unfolds, could put the war on hold for some time.

ZAHN: Back to the issue of Ariel Sharon's imploding government. What is the impact of that on the peace process?

INDYK: Well, what we have in Israel is a situation where, with the Labor Party leaving, the prime minister is now dependent on right- wing parties to maintain his government. He will have to bring in the far right-wing Russian party of Ifyet Lieberman (ph) in order to maintain his government. And even if he doesn't bring him in and he has a minority government, he'll still be dependent on those seven votes from the right, far right-wing.

So instead of a national unity government combining Labor and Likud, left and right, it's going to be a right-wing government now. I don't think it's going to last for very long, maybe three months. But in that time, Sharon will be tacking to the right to stave off a threat from Bebe Netanyahu. If there's new elections, he will run in primaries against Sharon. And Lieberman, the far right minister, Russian party representative, is an ally of Bebe's. So ironically, it's Netanyahu who holds the whip hand now and will determine whether the government comes down and when the elections will be.

ZAHN: We've got 10 seconds left. In the end, then, does that, it certainly doesn't enhance the peace process, does it?

INDYK: No. I think that essentially the peace process will be on hold. It's not exactly been moving forward in any way. But it will be on hold now until Israel gets over its elections, which could be anywhere from three to six months. Ironically, Yasser Arafat just staved off any efforts by the Palestinian reformers to change his government, to have him elected prime minister. And so that part of the peace process, of getting Palestinian reform going, has stopped, as well. And I'm afraid we've got a stalemate there.

And the danger, of course, is that in this situation it's the terrorists who can dictate the pace of events.

ZAHN: And they certainly have done that in the past.

Ambassador Martin Indyk, thank you for dropping by. Nice to see you in person.

INDYK: Nice to see you.

ZAHN: Appreciate your time.

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