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Leaders Scramble to Stop Chaos in Ukraine: Jordan: 'This is Just the Beginning'; Engine Failure Cited in TransAsia Crash; More Snow for Midwest, Northeast

Aired February 06, 2015 - 06:00   ET

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

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's time to provide Ukraine the ability to defend itself.

JOHN KERRY, SECRETARY OF STATE: We cannot close our eyes to tanks that are crossing the border from Russia.

GEN. PHILIP BREEDLOVE, SUPREME ALLIED COMMANDER EUROPE, NATO: We will not be able to give the Ukrainian forces enough equipment.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: To get peace, you have to defend your country.

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Jordanian F-16s took to the skies over Syria striking nearly 20 ISIS targets.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're going after them wherever they are with everything that we have.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They are not as bold as they once were.

BRIAN WILLIAMS, NBC ANCHOR: I want to apologize. I said I was traveling in an aircraft that was hit by RPG fire.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I don't think that apology went far enough.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Should he be fired? I think the honorable thing is for him to resign.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ANNOUNCER: This is NEW DAY with Chris Cuomo, Alisyn Camerota, and Michaela Pereira.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning. Welcome to your NEW DAY. It is Friday, February 6, just about 6:00 in the East. And right now, world leaders are scrambling to save Ukraine from the possibility of an all-out war. That is growing as a chance by the minute.

The State Department is calling the stepped up violence there a grave situation. Vice President Joe Biden is involved.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: That's right; he's in Brussels at this hour while the president of France and the German chancellor meet with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, for these high stakes talks.

We're covering this story the way only CNN can. Let's begin in Kiev with CNN's chief national security correspondent, Jim Sciutto. Jim, what do we know?

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Alisyn.

Angela Merkel traveling to Moscow in just a few hours, joined by, as you said, the French president, Merkel saying as she travels, that her goal there is to, in her words, stop the horror in eastern Ukraine. Those are the terms that German officials, French officials and certainly Secretary of State John Kerry, when he was in Kiev yesterday, are describing the situation there. And I'll tell you, the sense of urgency is one I have not heard in months of covering this crisis.

Some minor progress on the ground today. A short-term cease-fire in one of the hardest-hit towns. But the worry is with each of these cease-fires, the front line moves forward further into the west with more area under control by those pro-Russian separatists and by Russia. That's the accusation, remember, that Russia is behind this. That is who Merkel and Hollande will be negotiating with in Moscow, with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin.

I'll tell you: Secretary of State John Kerry leaving no question as to who he, who the U.S., the Obama administration and the west blames for the violence, the severe escalation, in fact, of the violence in the east, Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: Jim, has President Obama talked at all about a timeline in terms of sending some sort of arms to rebels?

SCIUTTO: Absolutely not, because no decision has been made yet. There are more people in the administration who are in favor of that. We are told they're taking another look at this.

But I'll tell you, there's not just disagreement within the Obama administration. There's disagreement within this western coalition. Angela Merkel saying today as she prepares to go to Moscow, that there is no military solution to this crisis. And I think hidden in that is the message that they don't believe that arms will change the situation on the ground positively.

But just one more thought, Alisyn. When I speak to U.S. officials, they don't describe this just as a Ukrainian crisis. They describe this as a threat to Europe. It is war in Europe. They see it as a threat to NATO. You really can't underestimate how serious this is, Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: Jim Sciutto, live for us on the ground in Kiev. Thanks so much for that.

CUOMO: Well, whether they admit it or not, Russia is driving this situation. Erin McLaughlin is in Moscow about the critical meeting with Putin this morning. Erin, who will be there? What is the goal? ERIN MCLAUGHLIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Chris.

The goal of the talks today very much focused here on Moscow, on deescalating this conflict and ending the bloodshed. Yesterday, French President Francois Hollande making the surprise announcement of this German-and-French-led initiative to create a new negotiating document alongside the Ukrainians and the Russians.

But the big question is will this work? Especially when you consider that the Russian defense ministry has announced military drills along the Russian/Ukrainian border. Those drills expected to last through mid-February.

We have heard from a spokesperson for Russian President Vladimir Putin who says that today's talks are considered to be a positive step, a welcome step. We've also seen from Russian state media this morning, the Kremlin saying that they have not seen the details of this German and French proposal, although they're hoping for a constructive conversation.

President Putin has made a number of proposals and initiatives leading up to this point. Those have been largely rejected so far, though, by the west. So we're going to have to see what happens later today -- Chris.

CAMEROTA: I'll take it, Erin. Thanks so much for that report.

Jordan, meanwhile, vowing that yesterday's punishing airstrikes against ISIS only the beginning. Jordanian fighter jets unleashing on ISIS targets in Syria and naming their mission after the hostage fighter pilot who was burned alive by the terrorists.

Let's get to Jomana Karadsheh. She's in Amman, Jordan, with the latest. What do we know?

JOMANA KARADSHEH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Alisyn, according to the Jordanian military, they say that they carried out a multitude of air strikes against ISIS targets in unspecified locations in Syria. They say that they hit and destroyed training camps and weapons in ammunition storage facilities.

Now, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, at least ten militants were killed. And also, ISIS did post pictures of the destruction.

Now we were at the home town of the Jordanian pilot when this news broke about Jordan's airstrikes and at that point, we saw fighter jets flying at a low altitude in what seems to be, seemed to be a tribute to a fallen colleague. And the father of the Jordanian pilot said that the king told him during a visit to the home town, at that time, that these same fighter jets had just returned from mission after carrying out airstrikes on the de facto capital of ISIS in Syria, Raqqah. Jordan is saying that this is just the beginning of their retaliation -- Chris.

CUOMO: All right. Thank you very much for the report. We have a guest who couldn't be more helpful in terms of understanding

what's going on in Jordan and in Ukraine, former U.S. ambassador to both Russia and Jordan, Thomas Pickering. He's also a distinguished fellow at the Brookings Institution, Brookings also relevant in this discussion.

Mr. Ambassador, thank you for joining us.

THOMAS PICKERING, FORMER U.S. AMBASSADOR TO RUSSIA AND JORDAN: Thank you, Chris.

CUOMO: First, help us understand how Jordan got this huge turn-about in their intentions with fighting is. I want you to listen to some of the foreign minister talking with Wolf about where they are now in terms of their dedication to the fight. Let's look and listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We are upping the ante. We're going after them wherever they are with everything that we have. But it's not the beginning, and it's certainly not the end.

We are extremely fortunate to have friends and allies as part of the coalition. But we are at the forefront. This is our fight.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CUOMO: Coalition calls Jordan a very close ally, especially King Abdullah. They've been working them for months as you well know. Help us with intel, help us with your special forces. Do more with us in the air; you have a very capable air force. They've done maybe 600 hours.

And then one pilot is killed horribly, a horrible murder. And everything changes. Explain how that could be such powerful impetus.

PICKERING: It's a powerful impetus, Chris, because Jordan is a small country. It's a tribal society. The pilot's family is well- connected. The king was in the United States and obviously made a major effort, both from here and in his return, to meet the needs that people in Jordan felt with this brutal, horrible killing of the pilot. That's turned things around.

The really interesting question, Chris, is will they stay turned around?

CUOMO: Yes.

PICKERING: Jordan has a long and deep tradition with some of its people of being Muslim Brothers. And in fact, King Hussein co-opted the Muslim Brotherhood at various times, when difficulties came, and I'm sure his son, Abdullah, is trying to do the same kind of thing.

Abdullah over the years has had a rough go. The involvement against ISIS was beginning to produce backlash. Interestingly enough, the horrible death of this man has begun to change Jordanian public attitudes in many parts of the society.

But don't forget: Jordan has a lot of Palestinians. It has a lot of Syrian refugees. It still has Iraqis left over from the last war. It's a society which the king has to work hard to keep together. It's a society in which, in recent years, even some of the traditional areas of support for King Abdullah have made life difficult for him and for his leadership.

CUOMO: So we'll have to see if this horrible murder is enough to sustain the will and maybe, hopefully, spread to the region. Because it really is the region's war before it's anyone else's. So that's a wait and see. Thank you for the insight on that.

PICKERING: Very much so.

CUOMO: Now Ukraine, it seems from your tutelage on this to me over the months since July, this is not a wait and see. This is a situation that is no longer a police action, like when we first talked, even though even then you said the U.S. better provide some military aid or this gets worse. It has. People are saying it's getting worse; it's basically war. But they're still struggling over what "it" is.

There are two versions. Russian says it's humanitarian. These are ethnic Russians, and they're being oppressed by this horrible Kiev government. And we're just doing the minimum that we can.

The other version of what the secretary of state says. Let's listen to John Kerry.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN KERRY, SECRETARY OF STATE: We cannot close our eyes to tanks that are crossing the border from Russia and coming in to Ukraine. We can't close our eyes to Russian fighters in unmarked uniforms, crossing the border and leading individual companies of so-called separatists in battle.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CUOMO: Bottom line, is Russia providing, motivating military action in Ukraine?

PICKERING: Of course it is. And you have to go back to the first CNN reports, almost a year ago, where they actually photographed Russian tanks going over the border. Or at least going to the border.

CUOMO: Then why do they deny it?

PICKERING: The Russians deny it, because it's part of their campaign to convince their own people that, in fact, they're fighting to try to rescue Russian speakers in Ukraine who have been oppressed.

There is some obvious need on the Ukrainians' part to continue to make clear, as President Poroshenko has, that he intends to treat all Russian speakers with a degree of fairness. CUOMO: Because they haven't.

PICKERING: And indeed, an offer of autonomy in those areas.

CUOMO: Right. The fairness -- the fairness point is they have had problems with the Ukraine government. There has been oppression.

PICKERING: Ukraine has had a lot of problems.

CUOMO: The east has been underserved.

PICKERING: Exactly right. And the Ukrainian economy has been a mess. And that may be a way for a turn-around.

What you see now happening with Merkel and Hollande is very important.

CUOMO: They're working on a peace process.

PICKERING: They're working on a peace process built on a previous agreement back to September in Minsk, which neither side I think has followed.

CUOMO: Minsk -- Minsk hasn't gone anywhere. We keep calling in the U.S. for Russia to follow Minsk. You know that's not going to happen.

PICKERING: Well, Minsk is a good basis for moving ahead for a future agreement, because it is a fair deal. Russia isn't following it, because Russia agreed, but now finds it awkward, if I could put it that way. They want to blame the Ukrainians, and the Ukrainians, of course, blame the Russian separatists and the Russian state for their intervention. There is no military solution to this. Breedlove just said that.

CUOMO: Then why do you call -- but why do we need -- the United States as "we" -- to give so much military aid? Brookings says $3 billion worth of aid. The money always gets a little scalably odd when we talk about military. But $3 billion in military aid is necessary in Ukraine. You told me in July you'd better give them military aid right away.

Do you start with that? Do we have to do that? And do we also have to do more? Is that your point?

PICKERING: We need to condition the environment in order to do everything possible to promote an immediate move to a political settlement. That's keeping the pressure on Putin. Military aid to Ukraine...

CUOMO: Better than sanctions and time?

PICKERING: Military aid to the Ukraine, in my view, needs to fill any gabs that may exist in Ukrainian capabilities to defend themselves. And we need to calibrate that carefully. It isn't big numbers that make the difference. It's smart actions that make the difference now. And we're in a very delicate stage. We don't want to undo what Merkel and Hollande are doing with too much early prior reaction. CUOMO: So you don't want to escalate the war too much. But you want

to make sure that Ukraine doesn't fall to this incursion.

PICKERING: Perfectly right. When we want to continue to have Putin understand two things: one, the pressure will keep up and continue, the Europeans are ready for a new set of sanctions next week.

And secondly, we are now trying to open a door for him to walk through. That door is Merkel and Hollande on a Minsk-based new process that can, in fact, give him what I think would be important for him: to say, "I have now made a deal which protects the Russian speakers in eastern Ukraine." But it does not break up Ukraine. It maintains the integrity of Ukraine, which is important for us, for Europe and for Ukraine.

CUOMO: Ambassador Pickering, nobody understands these situations better than you, with all the time on the ground. Thank you so much.

PICKERING: You're a kind man. Thank you. Nice to be with you.

CUOMO: No, no, no, no. I'm a man who needs help, and you're providing it.

PICKERING: Thanks. Great to see you.

CUOMO: Mick, over to you.

MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: All right, Chris.

We are learning new details about the final moments of the TransAsia Airways crash in Taiwan, the one that was caught on tape. Our David Molko has the very latest for us from Taipei.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DAVID MOLKO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Michaela, the plane is designed to be flown safely on one engine. In this case, though, there were problems with both of them.

The emergency began about 30 seconds after takeoff. There was an alarm related to the right engine. Investigators say a short time later, though, the pilots were discussing shutting down the opposite engine, the left engine. The data from the flight data recorder shows that indeed, did happen. Investigators saying at that point in the flight neither engine was actually producing thrust.

An interesting point: the pilots did attempt to restart one of the engines, and in fact did so, just a few seconds before hitting the river. Far too late, of course, to recover the flight and prevent the crash from happening.

Also, worth noting, 15 survivors from this crash, many of them in this hospital here behind me. The youngest, a 15-month-old toddler, according to his father, Brian, now out of ICU and, according to his father, just wants to be held by his mother -- Michaela.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

PEREIRA: I think everybody can understand that. What a tremendous story of survival for that little one.

All right -- Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: Absolutely.

Well, national security adviser Susan Rice will lay out President Obama's security strategy this afternoon at the Brookings Institution. She will outline his foreign policy vision, which CNN has learned will focus heavily on diplomacy and coalition building. Also expected: a rebuke of Russia for its ramped-up violence in Ukraine.

CUOMO: The pope says spanking is OK -- that's your headline -- so long as their dignity is maintained. Pope Francis made the comments during his weekly general audience, which focused on the role of fathers in the family.

Now this comes a year after a U.N. committee recommended that the Vatican reject corporal punishment. So what does this mean? The pope seems to be exactly where the United States is after, remember, Adrian Peterson, the football player...

PEREIRA: Yes.

CUOMO: ... he beat his kid with a stick. People said, they took polls, hitting is wrong, spanking is OK. I'm not sure I get the difference.

PEREIRA: Well, you just used interesting words, because you talked about spanking and then you said beating. And those are two very -- there's nuance there. You always love nuance. There's nuance in spanking versus beating.

CUOMO: That's not what the social scientists say.

CAMEROTA: Hitting connotes a different part of the body. Spanking always means tushy.

PEREIRA: Tushy.

CUOMO: I agree with the pope. But the boss does not agree with the pope.

PEREIRA: The boss is your wife?

CUOMO: Yes.

PEREIRA: Just checking.

CUOMO: So we don't do it. I'm hoping that the pope, you know, may bring a little bit more rough justice into the Cuomo household.

PEREIRA: Speaking of rough justice, we're getting that again in the form of snow, people. It seems like there's no stopping it. The northeast and the Midwest are bracing for another round. That could mean we're going outside again, friends.

Our meteorologist, Jennifer Gray, joins with us the latest forecast. Looking like we're going to hit again by the C-O-L-D, huh?

JENNIFER GRAY, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Oh, yes. Big time. We had that clipper system move through yesterday. Dumped a couple of inches of snow across New England. Now we're left with very cold temperatures, anywhere from Maine all the way down to Georgia. We're looking at very cold temperatures. When you talk about wind chills, this morning, it feels like 10 below zero in Boston. Feeling like 17 below zero in Bangor, Maine. Portland the same, feeling like 29 below in Burlington.

Now, we do have another system rolling through. This is going to be a much slower system. It's going to last between Sunday and Tuesday. And snowfall totals are impressive, especially if you're in northern New England, upstate New York, all the way to Maine, we're looking at 12-24 inches. Boston potentially picking up 8-10 additional inches with this. New York City, guess what? You are on the line again. You could see a mix of rain and slushy mix, a wintry mix. So you could see up to two to four inches of snow. Still a little bit of time to watch this, guys. We're about two days out. So we will.

Tale of two different sides of the country. Very different thing. We have very warm temperatures across the Rockies, setting records in Denver and up to ten inches of rain across portions of California, an area that received zero rain last month.

But before I let you go, guys, check out this video. Look at this train plowing through the snow in Canada. That's what happens if you have snow on the tracks and a train has got to get through. And it just plows through. Just a second you can see it, as it goes on by.

CAMEROTA: Is that how you got to school every day in Canada?

PEREIRA: They have those...

GRAY: Boom. There it is. What is it, the device they have on the front to sort of push it along. That's what I'm talking about.

That's how I feel I move through the snow.

CUOMO: Not unlike how I ski. That's what it looks like.

PEREIRA: That was awesome, Jennifer. Thank you so much for that.

CAMEROTA: Thanks. All right. You have to see this. It's a new ISIS propaganda video. It has appeared online, and it shows a new strategy of the terrorists. You won't believe who they're targeting this time.

CUOMO: When you see that TransAsia crash, it is amazing that anybody made it out alive. But they did, and we're hearing from them. What were they told in the final moments, and how did they make it out?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) CAMEROTA: Jordan unleashing intense airstrikes on ISIS and vowing this is just the beginning. This as ISIS releases a new propaganda video going after a different target this time: children.

Let's turn to Daveed Gartenstein-Ross. He's a senior fellow at the Foundation of Defense of Democracies. And our CNN global affairs analyst, retired Lieutenant Colonel James Reese. Gentlemen, thanks to both of you for being here.

Colonel Reese, do we know what yesterday's airstrikes by Jordan accomplished in beating back ISIS?

LT. COL. JAMES REESE (RET.), CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: Well, CentCom right now and the coalition are conducting battle -- bomb damage assessment. Based off the aerial BDA that we saw and we can see from the gun cameras on the -- on the jets, it looks like they were successful. They were targeting infrastructure along the Euphrates River Valley. So it looks like there was initial -- initial success.

CAMEROTA: Meaning ISIS buildings.

REESE: Yes. Buildings, command and control areas, some places for staging equipment, things like that.

CAMEROTA: OK. Daveed, Wolf Blitzer had an interview yesterday with the Jordanian foreign minister, who talked about the lengths to which they are willing to go to fight ISIS. Listen to this exchange.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Is Jordan ready to commit combat ground troops to defeat ISIS?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It will require everything, Wolf. This is a fight along multiple tracks.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: OK. He says, "It will require everything, Wolf." They are willing, it sounds like, to commit ground troops. Is that the answer?

DAVEED GARTENSTEIN-ROSS, FOUNDATION FOR THE DEFENSE OF DEMOCRACIES: I'm a little bit skeptical that they're going to do so. If they're the only country putting ground troops in.

I mean, in Iraq, it's more feasible, in that ISIS is much more vulnerable in Iraq. But Syria is a very hostile environment, where even the Jordanians putting in ground troops by themselves would be a very perilous situation.

CAMEROTA: CNN -- I want to switch to this new propaganda video. CNN has just unearthed this ISIS video. And it purports to show that ISIS has opened 24 schools, they say 12 for boys, 12 for girls. And you see them here, teaching Arabic letters, teaching numbers. You've watched it now, Colonel Reese. What do you see going on in this video?

REESE: Well, first and foremost, if you want to get your ideology out there, you should start at the youngest age you can and start breeding that inside. That's No. 1.

No. 2 is you see a very -- lots of different ethnicities in the school. You see a red-headed child. You know, we saw that in Afghanistan because of the Russian influence in Afghanistan. You know, Syria has had a Russian fleet off the coast of Latakia for years, so you see lots of reasons. You see some black children there. Probably from the Islamic nations of the sub-Saharan nation (ph). What that tells me is they're bringing other people in from different nations of the world. And now they're there, and as we've talked about, they're trying to build their own nation state.

CAMEROTA: So Daveed, they say -- the announcer says that they've opened 12 schools for boys, 12 schools for girls. ISIS wants to educate girls?

GARTENSTEIN-ROSS: Well, the education of girls would, of course, be strictly gender-segregated. I mean, they do believe in educating girls, but their -- the standards for females are very different than the standards for boys would be. Females do not have an equal place within ISIS's society.

I agree with Colonel Reese that what they're trying to is to set up a long-term sustainable project which is, in their view, an Islamic utopia. And as such, education, not only of children, but also for example, of their military conscripts, is extraordinarily important in building that sustainable zeal for this operation.

CAMEROTA: So Colonel Reese, with this video, are they trying to say, "Look, not only do we burn people alive in cages, look, we also provide education"?

REESE: Yes. It's the softer side, you know. And the other thing about the women, remember we're seeing videos now where every once in a while you'll see a woman fighter in there. Now, she's all balaclavaed up and everything, but there is a role for women in ISIS. And as this continues on, it will be interesting to watch.

CAMEROTA: I guess what I'm getting at is are they doing this in response to the disgust that they've caused globally because of what they did to the Jordanian fighter pilot? Or is this just a parallel track?

GARTENSTEIN-ROSS: I don't think so. They've always had this mixed message, actually, where on the one hand they've shown these extreme brutal actions that they've undertaken. Before burning a man alive, it was beheadings. While on the other hand, even while they had all these beheading photos that they were putting out via Twitter this he were undertaking things like fun day for kids, in a Syrian city they controlled.

And part of their message is that they're able to provide humanitarian services. They're able to take care of kids and the like. And it's a very mixed message. With, on the one hand, these blow-up slides and kids having fun. And on the other hand, these extremes of brutality. But that's been something consistent for quite some time for the Islamic State.

CAMEROTA: Just incredible video when you juxtapose it to what else we've seen this week. Daveed, Colonel Reese, thanks so much for being here.

Let's go to Michaela.

PEREIRA: All right, Alisyn. Thank you.

Well, the measles outbreak is widening this morning. Babies, five of them, in fact, from one day care have contracted the virus, and there's concern there may be more.

CUOMO: Plus, survivors of that plane crash in Taiwan are telling us how soon they knew something was wrong. The question: how did they manage to get out alive when so many others didn't? Answers ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)