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CNN Sunday Morning

Karzai to be Guest at 'State of the Union' Address

Aired January 27, 2002 - 11:02   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.
FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: Afghan interim leader, Hamid Karzai, is expected to arrive in the United States very soon. His schedule over the next three days is packed with important meetings, including one with President George W. Bush on Monday.

CNN White House correspondent Major Garrett has a preview of the visit -- hi there, Major.

MAJOR GARRETT, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Fredricka, and before we get to the report, let me just say welcome to CNN. It's great to have you with us. And I very much look forward to working with you, not only today, but in the weeks and months ahead.

WHITFIELD: Thanks very much -- glad to be on board.

GARRETT: Yes, Hamid Karzai does arrive here in Washington, any minute now as a matter of fact. He will meet with President Bush here at the White House tomorrow and be the president's special guest of honor at the State of the Union on Tuesday. And there's so much to discuss between the new interim leader of the Afghan government and the U.S. president, and let's go over some of the most important issues.

First and foremost, for this leader of the new Afghanistan, really what Secretary of State Colin Powell is a country really rebuilding itself in every definition of that word: security. There are literally thousands of people throughout Afghanistan who continue to carry arms. There are warlords positioning against Hamid Karzai and others within the Afghan government, still trying to cover pockets of Afghanistan with their own control. Those warlords have to be brought under control. There has to be some sense -- some semblance of security returned to the country before other important rebuilding goals can be achieved.

There is going to be some significant talk about formalizing diplomatic and military ties between those two governments. There's really nothing standing between the formalization of those ties, but talks will continue to accelerate that process.

And there's so much, Fredricka, about rebuilding Afghan society. We're talking a country of about 27 million people; per capita income, less than $800; 32 percent literacy. Hamid Karzai wants to open schools, reopen hospitals, try to build the foundations of a society that has really been ravaged by war for more than 20 years. And lastly, to do those things, the Afghan government needs some financial assistance. Now, just a week ago today, the world community ponied up about $4.5 billion in pledges over the next five years to the Afghan government, and $1.8 billion due to arrive this year. The United States government has offered millions in aids -- millions in aid, rather, and unfrozen some $200 million in frozen Afghan assets, frozen when the Taliban government took control of Afghanistan.

So all of those things will be discussed as President Bush sits down with Hamid Karzai for the first time, since he became the interim leader of Afghanistan, a very, very big job ahead of this new leader, trying to rebuild a society that as everyone has seen in the last couple of months could not be anymore ravaged by war -- Fredricka.

WHITFIELD: Well, Major, the Bush administration seems to awfully busy as he leads up to -- the president leads up to Tuesday's State of the Union address. And today, with Donald Rumsfeld going to GTMO, among the talk, this internal strife in the Bush administration about how to classify these detainees. What is the source of this argument going on? What are you learning there?

GARRETT: Well, it's essentially a disagreement between lawyers. Lawyers at the Justice Department, lawyers at the State Department, and lawyer at the Pentagon are all sending to the White House now, and through the National Security Council, their legal understanding of what the Geneva Convention says and does not say about these detainees, how should they be classified.

Within the next week, we are likely to hear from the president on exactly what the classification policy is going to be, so all these legal memoranda are coming to the White House. The president and the National Security Council will sift through those. And essentially, there's no disagreement on whether or not these detainees are prisoners of war. No one seems to think that they are. However, Secretary of State Colin Powell has said they should be given some Geneva Convention protections as unlawful detainees.

Vice President Cheney, earlier today on one of the Sunday talk shows, described some of the legal wrangling underlying this policy disagreement.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DICK CHENEY, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: There is a legal issue involved, as to whether they should be treated in the confines of the Geneva Convention, which does have a section that deals with unlawful combatants, or whether they should be dealt with outside the Geneva Convention.

There's another school of thought that says that Geneva Convention doesn't apply to terrorist attacks. It was set up to deal with a war between sovereign states. It's got provisions for dealing with civil war, but in a case where you've got non-state actors out to kill civilians, and there's a serious question about whether or not the Geneva Convention even applies. The bottom line is that that legal issue is being debated between the lawyers, and it will go to the president, and he'll make a decision.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GARRETT: And when the president makes that decision, he knows full well the U.S. government will be bound by that decision as to the way all of these detainees are dealt with and all future detainees are deal with. So, Fredricka, the administration wants to get it right the first time. It's responding to international pressure to be as humane as possible, but they are also responding to internal pressure from more hawkish voices in the administration saying these are very, very bad actors. We need to treat them very seriously. We need to interrogate them, and we need to get information from them as soon as possible -- Fredricka.

WHITFIELD: All right. Thanks very much. The nation and the world is watching. Thanks very much, Major Garrett, from the White House this morning.

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