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CNN Saturday Morning News
Interview With Central Command British Spokesman
Aired April 12, 2003 - 05:14 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.
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: We want to take you now live to Doha, Qatar. Captain Al Lockwood is the British military spokesman for Central Command there, and he joins us live now to talk about plans to control civil disorder in the southern Iraqi city of Basra.
Good morning, and thanks for joining us.
CAPT. AL LOCKWOOD, BRITISH MILITARY SPOKESMAN: Good morning, Carol.
COSTELLO: Captain, I wanted to ask you, can you apply what's happened in Basra to what's happening now in Baghdad?
LOCKWOOD: Well, the difference between Basra and Baghdad, really, is that we're about three or four days advanced of Baghdad. And we've obviously been though the same sort of iteration with this being the letting off of steam, the celebration of the regime's demise with the subsequent looting and, you know, misbehavior that's been going on in Basra.
We find very much now Basra is calm, and what we're doing now is working with the local civic people there, the leaders of the communities, to bring some law and order to the situation.
COSTELLO: And I understand that British troops are going to go along with some Iraqi police types, but how do you decide which Iraqi citizens to trust?
LOCKWOOD: Well, that's very much done in conjunction with the local civic leaders. We're looking now at employing those sorts of lower-level policemen, obviously those that had not been tainted by the regime, and we will be vetting them very carefully. We'll start with patrols with them unarmed patrolling with our British troops, and we'll very much judge the community's reaction to them.
The intended aim obviously at the end to be able to hand over control and law enforcement to them in the sort of normal transitional way we would do with a situation like this.
COSTELLO: So there will come a time when those Iraqi police types will be armed, but not yet.
LOCKWOOD: No, certainly not yet. As I said, it's very much a tentative first look at it. We obviously -- the community itself in Basra is very keen to see law and order restored to the streets. And obviously, we play our part in it, but we need to introduce the responsibility for it back to the people of Basra itself, and using the police force is one way of doing it.
But obviously, we're very conscious of the reaction of the people themselves of Basra, the many decades of mistrust of organs of the state. But the police themselves, you must remember, were very much policemen. The terror regime that the people were held under was very much the special security type services that the regime ran, the Fedayeen.
So we're hoping that the policemen will be seen as the normal law and order, and will be trusted by the population in due course.
COSTELLO: So when troops run across people, let's say, stealing chairs from a building, I mean, will there be arrests? And how serious does the offense have to be to detain someone?
LOCKWOOD: Well, initially, what we'll do in a situation like that is attempt to persuade them to remove -- sorry -- to take the property back into the building concerned.
The majority of looting has gone on in government buildings and those buildings that were owned by Baath Party seniors. The local population is very conscious that they don't want people to start looting other citizens' houses, and we are very conscious of that as well.
So the self-discipline is coming to within the community anyway in that respect, and we're just aiding it by the use of our troops on the street to keep law and order. And predominantly we wish to hand over the responsibility as and when we can to the citizens of Basra, setting up those normal organs that exist with cities and towns throughout any country in the world.
COSTELLO: I guess I'm asking this because many citizens of Baghdad appear armed, and it would be difficult to control them in a non-violent way, wouldnt it?
LOCKWOOD: Well, it's obvious a sheer force is needed, and that's what our troops will do. But to speak of Baghdad, I do know that my American colleagues are actually doing the same as we are, you know, attempting to work with the local people now, and those people who are acknowledged leaders within their communities, to try and get the same sort of thing happening in Baghdad as is happening in Basra.
We have the advantage that we've actually been in Basra for some three or four days longer than our allies have been in Baghdad.
COSTELLO: Understand. Before you go, and I know you have to go, I wanted to ask you about weapons of mass destruction, and if British troops are actively looking for them.
LOCKWOOD: Throughout the theater, we're actively looking and we're enlisting help from any source we can to locate these weapons. We know they're there, and we will find them.
COSTELLO: But you have not found any as of yet. LOCKWOOD: I think actually Secretary Rumsfeld summed it up neatly the other day when he said, we've seen reported finds which have turned out to be error in the past few weeks. And I think very much to this stage what we'll do is if any find that we do happen upon will be very carefully checked before we make any further statements.
COSTELLO: Captain Al Lockwood, many thanks to you -- live from Doha, Qatar.
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 April 12, 2003 - 05:14 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: We want to take you now live to Doha, Qatar. Captain Al Lockwood is the British military spokesman for Central Command there, and he joins us live now to talk about plans to control civil disorder in the southern Iraqi city of Basra.
Good morning, and thanks for joining us.
CAPT. AL LOCKWOOD, BRITISH MILITARY SPOKESMAN: Good morning, Carol.
COSTELLO: Captain, I wanted to ask you, can you apply what's happened in Basra to what's happening now in Baghdad?
LOCKWOOD: Well, the difference between Basra and Baghdad, really, is that we're about three or four days advanced of Baghdad. And we've obviously been though the same sort of iteration with this being the letting off of steam, the celebration of the regime's demise with the subsequent looting and, you know, misbehavior that's been going on in Basra.
We find very much now Basra is calm, and what we're doing now is working with the local civic people there, the leaders of the communities, to bring some law and order to the situation.
COSTELLO: And I understand that British troops are going to go along with some Iraqi police types, but how do you decide which Iraqi citizens to trust?
LOCKWOOD: Well, that's very much done in conjunction with the local civic leaders. We're looking now at employing those sorts of lower-level policemen, obviously those that had not been tainted by the regime, and we will be vetting them very carefully. We'll start with patrols with them unarmed patrolling with our British troops, and we'll very much judge the community's reaction to them.
The intended aim obviously at the end to be able to hand over control and law enforcement to them in the sort of normal transitional way we would do with a situation like this.
COSTELLO: So there will come a time when those Iraqi police types will be armed, but not yet.
LOCKWOOD: No, certainly not yet. As I said, it's very much a tentative first look at it. We obviously -- the community itself in Basra is very keen to see law and order restored to the streets. And obviously, we play our part in it, but we need to introduce the responsibility for it back to the people of Basra itself, and using the police force is one way of doing it.
But obviously, we're very conscious of the reaction of the people themselves of Basra, the many decades of mistrust of organs of the state. But the police themselves, you must remember, were very much policemen. The terror regime that the people were held under was very much the special security type services that the regime ran, the Fedayeen.
So we're hoping that the policemen will be seen as the normal law and order, and will be trusted by the population in due course.
COSTELLO: So when troops run across people, let's say, stealing chairs from a building, I mean, will there be arrests? And how serious does the offense have to be to detain someone?
LOCKWOOD: Well, initially, what we'll do in a situation like that is attempt to persuade them to remove -- sorry -- to take the property back into the building concerned.
The majority of looting has gone on in government buildings and those buildings that were owned by Baath Party seniors. The local population is very conscious that they don't want people to start looting other citizens' houses, and we are very conscious of that as well.
So the self-discipline is coming to within the community anyway in that respect, and we're just aiding it by the use of our troops on the street to keep law and order. And predominantly we wish to hand over the responsibility as and when we can to the citizens of Basra, setting up those normal organs that exist with cities and towns throughout any country in the world.
COSTELLO: I guess I'm asking this because many citizens of Baghdad appear armed, and it would be difficult to control them in a non-violent way, wouldnt it?
LOCKWOOD: Well, it's obvious a sheer force is needed, and that's what our troops will do. But to speak of Baghdad, I do know that my American colleagues are actually doing the same as we are, you know, attempting to work with the local people now, and those people who are acknowledged leaders within their communities, to try and get the same sort of thing happening in Baghdad as is happening in Basra.
We have the advantage that we've actually been in Basra for some three or four days longer than our allies have been in Baghdad.
COSTELLO: Understand. Before you go, and I know you have to go, I wanted to ask you about weapons of mass destruction, and if British troops are actively looking for them.
LOCKWOOD: Throughout the theater, we're actively looking and we're enlisting help from any source we can to locate these weapons. We know they're there, and we will find them.
COSTELLO: But you have not found any as of yet. LOCKWOOD: I think actually Secretary Rumsfeld summed it up neatly the other day when he said, we've seen reported finds which have turned out to be error in the past few weeks. And I think very much to this stage what we'll do is if any find that we do happen upon will be very carefully checked before we make any further statements.
COSTELLO: Captain Al Lockwood, many thanks to you -- live from Doha, Qatar.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com.
