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Interview With William Cohen

Aired February 24, 2004 - 12:30   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.


ROSEMARY CHURCH, CNN INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Well, elections in Iraq and Iran are among key international issues being addressed throughout the globe. And to discuss them further, we are now joined by former U.S. Defense Secretary William Cohen for our regular weekly discussion of events right across the world. He now heads The Cohen Group, an international business consulting firm.
Secretary Cohen, thanks for being with us again for our weekly chat.

WILLIAM COHEN, FMR. DEFENSE SECRETARY: Great to be with you.

CHURCH: We're going to start first with plans for elections in Iraq. We heard from the United Nations yesterday in a detailed report that it would take some eight months before elections could be held there, which means, of course, that a caretaker government needs to be in place for eight months, if not 12 months. That seems to be the delicate issue here.

They went over the details in the report about that, giving an idea on how that interim government should be made up. Do you think that could be the stumbling block here, that they're now thinking about this first stage that really is the delicate area.

COHEN: Well, there was, as you point out, good news and bad news in that report. The good news being that the United Nations is coming down on the side of delaying direct elections which Ayatollah Al-Sistani was calling for in the near term. And so that was the good news side of it.

The bad news side was a failure to recommend something that would be viable in the short term. And so now we are forced to come up with a proposal that will have an interim governing council, so to speak, or some form of interim government. There has yet to be a consensus reached on that. And that's going to be the critical factor, what takes place after June 30 in terms of who will be "running the political side of the country" during that interim between June 30 and the following seven or eight months after that before a general election can be established.

So there are no definitive plans yet. I assume that the United Nations will discuss this some more in conjunction with the U.S. and coalition forces and hopefully come up with a recommendation fairly soon.

CHURCH: And since the report indicated itself that they really had to hit the ground running here if they want to have these elections in eight months, should that not happen as well with these sort of details on the form of this interim government?

COHEN: There has to be a consensus reached by May if this is going to work. Getting a consensus is going to be a very major undertaking. You've got so many different groups who are now vying for political power, positioning themselves. You have the governing council, which would like to continue its authority as such.

One recommendation would be to expand its membership from 25 to perhaps 200 or 300. Another would be to have some sort of a large council of wise men, so to speak, or women, perhaps, even included, if that were possible. But they have to reach a consensus fairly soon, otherwise that target of early next year will continue to recede into the future.

CHURCH: Well, if then plans for elections in Iraq -- I want to go to newly-elected president in Georgia -- we just had Mikhail Saakashvili on. I'm sure you had an opportunity to hear that interview. He's got a lot of hurdles ahead of him, and corruption is one of those.

He painted a very glowing report of the first few weeks in government. Is it as glowing as that? And this problem of corruption is not going to be an easy one to tackle.

COHEN: Well, he has a number of major challenges to face. He obviously is a very young man and highly energetic, and I think idealistic in embracing the values that many Western democracies and many democracies of the world cherish.

He has the issue of corruption, the allegations about the prior administration. He also has the issue of terrorism in his own country. There were reports that some nuclear materials were running through Georgia, possibly on their way to Turkey. And now, of course, we're all concerned about this intersection of technology and terrorism.

And so it's important that stability be achieved. And to that extent, the United States is helping to train somewhere between 5,000 and 10,000 of the Georgian military in order to help have a viable security force that can begin this process of making sure that there is a rule of law, and that there's a crackdown in cooperation against terrorism. So he has the corruption issue, but also establishing a stability against terrorists who might be operating inside of his country.

CHURCH: Very quickly -- we're nearly out of time -- but Iran, of course, is in the news today, with the Atomic Energy Agency concerned about Iran possibly not disclosing all it should regarding its nuclear program. How concerned should we be?

COHEN: I think we should all be concerned. In Iran, we've seen a theocracy masquerading as a democracy, with a governing council, a supreme council actually throwing out sitting parliamentarians, not allowing them to even vote and be voted upon. And so we have this -- also this pattern of deception, not declaring nuclear sites, coming forth very reluctantly, only when caught, as a matter of fact. And so the notion that the would be experimenting with plutonium as a triggering device for these highly enriched uranium centrifuges should be of concern to the international community, all of us.

CHURCH: All right. Thank you, Secretary Cohen. And we'll see you again next week.

COHEN: My pleasure.

END

TO ORDER VIDEOTAPES AND TRANSCRIPTS OF CNN INTERNATIONAL PROGRAMMING, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE THE SECURE ONLINE ORDER FROM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com



Aired February 24, 2004 - 12:30:00   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
ROSEMARY CHURCH, CNN INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Well, elections in Iraq and Iran are among key international issues being addressed throughout the globe. And to discuss them further, we are now joined by former U.S. Defense Secretary William Cohen for our regular weekly discussion of events right across the world. He now heads The Cohen Group, an international business consulting firm.
Secretary Cohen, thanks for being with us again for our weekly chat.

WILLIAM COHEN, FMR. DEFENSE SECRETARY: Great to be with you.

CHURCH: We're going to start first with plans for elections in Iraq. We heard from the United Nations yesterday in a detailed report that it would take some eight months before elections could be held there, which means, of course, that a caretaker government needs to be in place for eight months, if not 12 months. That seems to be the delicate issue here.

They went over the details in the report about that, giving an idea on how that interim government should be made up. Do you think that could be the stumbling block here, that they're now thinking about this first stage that really is the delicate area.

COHEN: Well, there was, as you point out, good news and bad news in that report. The good news being that the United Nations is coming down on the side of delaying direct elections which Ayatollah Al-Sistani was calling for in the near term. And so that was the good news side of it.

The bad news side was a failure to recommend something that would be viable in the short term. And so now we are forced to come up with a proposal that will have an interim governing council, so to speak, or some form of interim government. There has yet to be a consensus reached on that. And that's going to be the critical factor, what takes place after June 30 in terms of who will be "running the political side of the country" during that interim between June 30 and the following seven or eight months after that before a general election can be established.

So there are no definitive plans yet. I assume that the United Nations will discuss this some more in conjunction with the U.S. and coalition forces and hopefully come up with a recommendation fairly soon.

CHURCH: And since the report indicated itself that they really had to hit the ground running here if they want to have these elections in eight months, should that not happen as well with these sort of details on the form of this interim government?

COHEN: There has to be a consensus reached by May if this is going to work. Getting a consensus is going to be a very major undertaking. You've got so many different groups who are now vying for political power, positioning themselves. You have the governing council, which would like to continue its authority as such.

One recommendation would be to expand its membership from 25 to perhaps 200 or 300. Another would be to have some sort of a large council of wise men, so to speak, or women, perhaps, even included, if that were possible. But they have to reach a consensus fairly soon, otherwise that target of early next year will continue to recede into the future.

CHURCH: Well, if then plans for elections in Iraq -- I want to go to newly-elected president in Georgia -- we just had Mikhail Saakashvili on. I'm sure you had an opportunity to hear that interview. He's got a lot of hurdles ahead of him, and corruption is one of those.

He painted a very glowing report of the first few weeks in government. Is it as glowing as that? And this problem of corruption is not going to be an easy one to tackle.

COHEN: Well, he has a number of major challenges to face. He obviously is a very young man and highly energetic, and I think idealistic in embracing the values that many Western democracies and many democracies of the world cherish.

He has the issue of corruption, the allegations about the prior administration. He also has the issue of terrorism in his own country. There were reports that some nuclear materials were running through Georgia, possibly on their way to Turkey. And now, of course, we're all concerned about this intersection of technology and terrorism.

And so it's important that stability be achieved. And to that extent, the United States is helping to train somewhere between 5,000 and 10,000 of the Georgian military in order to help have a viable security force that can begin this process of making sure that there is a rule of law, and that there's a crackdown in cooperation against terrorism. So he has the corruption issue, but also establishing a stability against terrorists who might be operating inside of his country.

CHURCH: Very quickly -- we're nearly out of time -- but Iran, of course, is in the news today, with the Atomic Energy Agency concerned about Iran possibly not disclosing all it should regarding its nuclear program. How concerned should we be?

COHEN: I think we should all be concerned. In Iran, we've seen a theocracy masquerading as a democracy, with a governing council, a supreme council actually throwing out sitting parliamentarians, not allowing them to even vote and be voted upon. And so we have this -- also this pattern of deception, not declaring nuclear sites, coming forth very reluctantly, only when caught, as a matter of fact. And so the notion that the would be experimenting with plutonium as a triggering device for these highly enriched uranium centrifuges should be of concern to the international community, all of us.

CHURCH: All right. Thank you, Secretary Cohen. And we'll see you again next week.

COHEN: My pleasure.

END

TO ORDER VIDEOTAPES AND TRANSCRIPTS OF CNN INTERNATIONAL PROGRAMMING, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE THE SECURE ONLINE ORDER FROM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com