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CNN Sunday Morning
Reporter's Notebook: What is Bush's Trip All About?
Aired February 17, 2002 - 09:19 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.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: It's the moment you've been waiting for, we hope, "Reporter's Notebook." We're talking about President Bush's trip to Asia. He's in Tokyo at this hour. He's - what do they call those places he's having the grilled chicken? It's not a Karaoke Bar, it's a -
JEANNE MESERVE, CNN ANCHOR: I don't know. That's a question we can ask our guests.
O'BRIEN: Spacing out.
MESERVE: As promised we are joined today from Washington by Francine Kiefer of the Christian Science Monitor and from Japan, CNN Tokyo Bureau Chief Rebecca MacKinnon. They are standing by to take your questions about the President's trip. But Rebecca, first answer this one.
O'BRIEN: Yacatori (ph). Yacatori, did I get it right?
REBECCA MACKINNON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yacatori, that is correct.
O'BRIEN: Yacatori, it is. Rebecca, I've assumed you've done Yacatori at some point or another in your stint there?
MACKINNON: I love it.
O'BRIEN: Oh, this is good. You know what? We've got a great first question here from Billy Woodson out of Abilene, Texas. It doesn't get any more basic than this, but sometimes we forget the basic questions, because we try to pretend like we're smart up here sometimes. Billy Woodson asks this: "What is the main reason of the President's trip to Asia?" Rebecca, you go first.
MACKINNON: Sounds good. Well, this trip was originally scheduled to happen last fall, but the events of September 11th got in the way. Now he's coming out again.
There are several reasons why he's coming. One is to Japan, Japan is the U.S.' most important ally in Asia, and President Bush is making his first trip here as President to reaffirm that alliance. South Korea also very important, the U.S. has a lot of troops in South Korea, wanting to reaffirm that relationship there. And then on to China, where of course, the United States has a much more complex relationship, but yet is hoping to improve upon it. O'BRIEN: Francine, do you want to do a quick kind of summation of what the purpose of the trip is?
FRANCINE KIEFER, CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR: Sure. Sure. I thought I'd point out that it's a bit of a double-edged message, because while he is coming with all of these affirmative messages of friendship and thank you for support for the War on Terrorism and so on.
He has a few test messages. In Japan, he's very concerned about the sliding Japanese economy. In South Korea, he wants to call for the North Koreans to pull back their conventional arms from the border, and also he wants to blast them for being perpetrators of weapons of mass destruction.
And then in China, he wants to get them to pull back on their exports of technology and missile components to other countries that we're not that happy about, and to bring up the issue of political and religious human rights abuses.
MESERVE: The President, of course, has had a lot to say about North Korea lately. We have a question about that coming in by phone. Barbara's on the phone from New Jersey, go right ahead Barbara.
BARBARA FROM NEW JERSEY: Yes, hi. Thanks for taking my call. Yes. I was just wondering, particularly from Rebecca MacKinnon, what you thought the impact might be on these talks of the President's rather aggressive statements regarding North Korea, particularly in light of the fact that it's seen that South Korea and North Korea were working toward reunification when Clinton left.
MESERVE: Rebecca.
MACKINNON: Well that is a very good question. Officials here in Japan have told me and Prime Minister Koizumi just said on Friday, that Japan is concerned that the United States may be closing off some avenues for dialog, hoping that those avenues will remain open. Japan making it clear that they don't exactly share the United States approach, but still hoping to work with the United States, hoping that those avenues can be kept open.
So, yes it is very tricky. There are a lot of people here privately who say, "well you know, we wish that the United States might have consulted its allies a little more closely before President Bush made the statements that he did." But yet again, President Bush coming here to explain why exactly he found it necessary to characterize North Korea as he did.
MESERVE: But Francine, the President in recent days saying he's willing to revive dialog. Is that going to mitigate the effects of the "axis of evil" comment?
MACKINNON: Yes, well what's interesting is we're kind of going back to the Reagan years and his comments about the "evil empire" being the Soviet Union. This is an administration that thinks it can do both, if they can still foster dialog and also carry a big stick at the same time.
O'BRIEN: All right, we have time for one more e-mail. Let's put it on here. This comes from Richard Longley at Lake City, Florida: "How will the economic reforms that President Bush and The World Bank insist on for Japan affect the average Japanese citizens, and why are Japan's leaders reluctant to implement these reforms?" Rebecca.
MACKINNON: Well, that's a complicated question but an important one. What we have here is a situation where, because of the political system in place, the ruling party has a lot of members who are in Parliament who want to remain elected, whose major voting interest groups do not want to see a change in the status quo.
We're talking about construction unions, people who have been benefiting from current policies. And so, these people in the Parliament are constituting a major blockage to Koisumi, Prime Minister Koizumi's attempts to change the way in which the economy is run, to change the way in which banks give loans to businesses, even if the businesses might not be able to pay them back, that kind of thing. So it's going to require a lot of tough political shoving.
O'BRIEN: Ladies, thank you very much. Unfortunately, our time has expired. We appreciate you both being with us. Rebecca MacKinnon, our Tokyo Bureau Chief here at CNN, and Francine Kiefer with the "Christian Science Monitor" joining us from Washington, thanks very much.
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