Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Live Sunday

President Bush to Taliban: `No Negotiation, Period'

Aired October 14, 2001 - 16:00   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.
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: And let's get the latest from President Bush and the White House.

That is where we find our senior White House correspondent John King standing by.

John, anything you could add to what the president had to say about the Taliban's latest offer?

JOHN KING, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well Daryn, certainly the administration has made clear for some type it has no interest in negotiating with the Taliban. It was way back in the president's speech to Congress where he issued that ultimatum: Turn over Osama bin Laden and his associates, give the United States government and the military access to all those terrorist base camps or else, the president said in that speech, share the terrorist's fate.

It has been, now, eight days since the U.S. launched strikes. We are now in the second week of U.S. strikes on Afghanistan. Those strikes continue.

So as the president returned back to the White House today from Camp David, where he had been monitoring developments over the weekend, the president was asked about the Taliban offer. That offer being the United States shows the evidence, perhaps then the Taliban would turn over Osama bin Laden to a third country.

Using quite strong language, the president said the time for negotiation had long since past.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: There's nothing to negotiate about. They're harboring a terrorist and they need to turn him over. And not often turn him over, turn the al Qaeda organization over, destroy all the terrorist camps -- actually, we're doing a pretty good job of that right now -- and release the hostages they hold. That's all they've got to do. But there is no negotiation, period.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: "No negotiation, period," the president says. As he monitors the developments here at home, his Secretary of State Colin Powell on a critical overseas diplomatic trip. Secretary Powell will stop in Islamabad Pakistan and in New Delhi, India. You should remember, these two countries' tensions dating back many decades. Tensions in recent years because of the 1998 nuclear testing in both countries, India first, then Pakistan. The United States sending Secretary Powell on this mission.

Pakistan obviously a key ally in the U.S. coalition right now. It neighbors Afghanistan; it has allowed the United States to use its airspace, some military facilities on the ground. Secretary Powell checking in in both capitals, trying to make sure that tensions between India and Pakistan do not complicate the international coalition the president is building against terrorism.

A situation really not terribly unlike the administration's efforts to try to bring some calm in the dispute between the Israelis and the Palestinians. The president wants the focus of the world first on phase one in Afghanistan, then on the much broader campaign against terrorism he promises in the weeks and months ahead.

So Secretary Powell going to take the temperature, if you will, of leaders in Islamabad and New Delhi; trying to test the strength of the international coalition -- Daryn.

KAGAN: John, we've seen president's foreign policy evolve since the campaign, when he talked about nation building as if they were two dirty words when you put them together. But now, within the administration a focus that something has to happen within Afghanistan after all the military strikes.

KING: That is right. And here at the White House administration officials try to draw this distinction: When candidate Bush criticized President Clinton he said repeatedly he did not believe the United States military should be involved in nation building. And that is how the president described the operations, the peacekeeping operations, in both Bosnia and Kosovo.

President Bush now supports and sustains both of those operations in Bosnia and in Kosovo. But the administration makes this key distinction: They now believe it is inevitable that the Taliban will fall as part of these military strikes, although they don't say that so explicitly publicly. And if that happens, what the president is saying is that the United Nations should step in and form the future government of Afghanistan, not the United States military.

KAGAN: John King at the White House; John, thank you.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com