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CNN Student News
Aired May 28, 2002 - 04:30 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.
ANNOUNCER: You're watching CNN STUDENT NEWS, seen in schools around the world, because learning never stops and neither does the news.
SUSAN FREIDMAN, CO-HOST: Welcome to the week.
We get things started with a look at President Bush's trip to Europe. After that, we pull the environmental report card on U.S. national parks. Later, we get a new "Perspective" on the effects of stress. Then, Student Bureau fills us in on a very special program.
Welcome to CNN STUDENT NEWS. I'm Susan Freidman.
U.S. President Bush enters the last leg of his European tour. He arrived in Italy yesterday after a special Memorial Day salute at one of the most honored battlegrounds of American history. Mr. Bush walked among the crosses of Normandy, France yesterday, remembering the troops who gave their lives in the D-Day invasion of Europe. He and French President Jacques Chirac laid a wreath at a memorial in the American cemetery.
The highlight of Mr. Bush's trip so far came Friday when he and Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a landmark nuclear arms reduction treaty. Mr. Bush says he's reaffirming ties with European nations and observing a beginning of a new era of U.S. relations with Russia.
But some Europeans are still skeptical, as CNN's John King reports.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JOHN KING, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): A formal handshake outside D'Elysees Palace -- diplomatic routine, but also meant to send a message.
GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I appreciate this good man's advice. I listen carefully to it when he gives it, and I'm proud to call him friend.
KING: Image repair is as much on the agenda as the war on terrorism and Russia's new partnership with the NATO Alliance. In Paris, just as earlier in Berlin, many see President Bush as out of step with Europe, and many believe he doesn't care, doesn't consult enough.
FRANCOIS BUJON DE L'ESTANG, FRENCH AMBASSADOR TO U.S.: This is a feeling that you have heard expressed many times in various places, not only in Paris.
KING: Mr. Bush hopes this trip erases that impression, and both the German chancellor and the French president defended their guest.
JACQUES CHIRAC, FRENCH PRESIDENT (through translator): These demonstrations are really marginal demonstrations that you shouldn't give too much credit to -- these demonstrations.
KING: But public image and public opinion matter at a time Mr. Bush's urging European allies to increase military spending and to retool the NATO Alliance to combat global terrorism.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: At war requires coming together of civilized people, sharing intelligence, going after terrorists together, and that's the opposite of going along rhetoric or actions.
KING: Iraq is a case study, as Mr. Bush and key allies discuss fronts beyond Afghanistan.
DE L'ESTANG: We do have concerns on where we go next, and what do we do, and that's why the allies insist regularly on the need for close consultations.
KING: Mr. Bush says he is consulting and listening, but it is also clear when it comes to Iraq he hasn't changed his bottom line.
BUSH: We do view Saddam Hussein as a significant, serious threat to stability and peace.
KING: This is his third European trip as president, and Mr. Bush thinks his peers are now more familiar and comfortable with his straightforward style.
BUSH: Look, the only thing I know to do is to speak my mind, to talk about my values.
KING (on camera): President Bush says the protests are signs of healthy democracies, not of any fundamental problems in transatlantic relations, and President Chirac was quick to agree, insisting, in his words, there is deep solidarity between both sides of the pond.
John King, CNN, Paris.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
FREIDMAN: Transatlantic relations and solidarity are two themes running through President Bush's European trip. Today, he's attending a summit marking the formation of the NATO-Russia Council. Now, that body will give Russia a voice in some NATO decision making.
We go now to CNN's Robin Oakley for a look at the changing face of NATO. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ROBIN OAKLEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Russian foreign ministers and U.S. secretaries of state greet each other these days which handshakes and hugs, not with glowers and grimaces. But what sort of a NATO is it that decided in Iceland last week to embrace Russia and share discussions on a range of key issues? Has the United States OK'd that new deal simply because it doesn't much rate NATO anymore? And does the same go for NATO's plan to take in another seven or eight new members from the ex-communist world?
The applicant countries recognize their limitations.
KRISTINA OJULAND, ESTONIAN FOREIGN MINISTER: We are very small, and we don't really create big realistic pictures before us. But rather we are prepared to be a member country of NATO which is specialized on very clear fields.
OAKLEY: So if their contributions are small and aims narrow, do they help or hurt?
RICHARD COBBOLD, ROYAL UNITED SERVICES: I don't think necessarily it will weaken NATO. It might weaken what you might call the capability density of NATO just by a bit because there are some countries coming in who will not be able to contribute a great deal, particularly to any form of expeditionary missions that NATO may undertake. But they do have very considerable ability to defend their own -- their own country.
OAKLEY: Ten more European countries want to join NATO. They fraternize keenly when they can, but they can't be sure exactly what they'd be joining. NATO's secretary-general says the organization must modernize or be marginalized, but modernization costs money. And to the anger of the United States, other NATO leaders aren't putting their hands in their pockets, which raises a big question.
COBBOLD: You go back to the first secretary-general of NATO Lord Ismay's dictum that the purpose of NATO is to keep the Soviets out, the Americans in, and the Germans down. I think it's very clear that NATO has changed enormously. The Germans, quite rightly, are up, and the Russians, now they are taking part in the council and have a special relationship with NATO, are very much in. I think the great challenge to Europe is to make sure that the United States does not go out and stays in and involved and totally engaged.
OAKLEY (on camera): The United States fights its wars these days with coalitions of the willing. For the moment, it's still content with NATO's pool of training and experience to help put those coalitions together. But if European governments don't come up soon with hard cash to boost military spending, then some defense experts wonder how long it will be before the United States loses patience with the alliance altogether.
Robin Oakley, CNN, London.
(END VIDEOTAPE) FREIDMAN: The man promising to bring law and order to Colombia has won that country's presidential election. Alvaro Uribe picked up a decisive 53 percent of the vote.
Harris Whitbeck has more on the challenge ahead for Colombia's president-elect, now at the helm of the most insecure and violent nation in Latin America.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
HARRIS WHITBECK, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The decision by Colombian voters was clear cut: Alvaro Uribe, the candidate who proposed to increase military spending by $1 billion to intensify the military campaign against the leftist FARC guerrilla organization and to create a network of 1 million private citizens willing to collaborate with the government in its effort against the insurgence, was elected to be the country's next president. And he was elected with enough of a majority to avoid a runoff election.
ALVARO URIBE, COLOMBIAN PRESIDENT-ELECT: I have received a wide mandate from my fellow country citizens. Now I have to convert this mandate into realities.
WHITBECK: Election Day was calmer than most people expected. Heavy police and military presence at voting centers prevented the terrorist attacks threatened by the FARC, although, according to the ministry of the interior, the FARC prevented voting in at least seven municipalities. Voters said it was the generalized lack of security that led them to elect a man who promises a firm hand against insurgence.
Louis Salamanka (ph) said the country's violence was most on his mind as he cast his vote. Adding he had to wait and see what the new leader would do about it.
The task Uribe faces is not easy. The FARC has been fighting the government for the last 40 years. And in the last few years it has, according to the government, strengthened itself thanks in part to the $400 million a year it makes from drug trafficking. Uribe says without more military aid from the United States, it will be difficult to fight the guerrillas.
URIBE: More or less 20 airplanes take off -- this country every day with coca, plus there are planes coming to the country with guns; therefore, we need alien interdiction.
WHITBECK: A departure from Uribe's predecessor's policy of negotiation instead of all-out war, Uribe says only a strong government can negotiate effectively with the guerrillas, which means that there will be more war before there will be peace.
Harris Whitbeck, CNN, Bogota.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
FREIDMAN: In "Focus" this week, starting over. That's what the citizens of war-torn Afghanistan are doing. This week they're electing representatives to the Grand Assembly, a body similar to that of a congress or parliament.
Jane Arraf has more on the election and what it means to the Afghan people.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JANE ARRAF, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): They came from some of the most remotest parts of Afghanistan. High in the mountains of Hindu Kush, representatives from town and villages around Bamyan (ph) gathered for the country's first election in more than two decades. It took many of the 600 delegates more than a day to get here. It will take two days to elect representatives to Afghanistan's Grand Assembly, the Loya Jirga. The elections take place in the shadows of the giant 1,700-year-old statues of Buddha dynamited by the Taliban.
But before the vote, festivities, all of them banned under the Taliban's interpretation of Islam -- games for a people hungry for laughter, and another kind of race, many of the horses and riders down from the mountains where a few months ago they were fighting al Qaeda and the Taliban.
A UN official speaks in the local language (UNINTELLIGIBLE) about overcoming the legacy of violence and repression.
MICHAEL SEMPLE, UN: These are people who are coming out of 23 years of civil war where they've never had a choice and where the people who have run the country have essentially done so from the barrel of a gun. The transition is never easy anywhere, but the speed of the transition of Afghanistan is quite stunning.
ARRAF: The guns aren't entirely gone.
(INTERRUPTED BY LIVE EVENT)
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