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Your World Today
Top E.U. Officials Urge Sudan to Allow U.N. Forces; Mideast Cease-Fire; Congressman Accused of Sending Improper E-mails
Aired October 02, 2006 - 12:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
JIM CLANCY, CNN INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Overworked and overwhelmed. African Union forces make little difference in Darfur. Will Sudan relent to mounting pressure to let U.N. peacekeepers help?
ROSEMARY CHURCH, CNN INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Hitting home. Georgia sends home four Russian army officers accused of spying, but tensions between the two countries persist.
CLANCY: And online gambling stocks plummet as the U.S. Congress slaps new restrictions on Internet betting.
CHURCH: Hello, and welcome to our report broadcast around the globe.
I'm Rosemary Church.
CLANCY: I'm Jim Clancy.
From Washington to Moscow, Khartoum to wherever you are watching, this is YOUR WORLD TODAY.
All right. We're going to get to those stories in just a moment. But first, we want to tell you that we are waiting for the White House press briefing to begin in just a few minutes from now.
CHURCH: Yes. The White House press secretary will likely be peppered with questions about the growing scandal and a new book. Now, the scandal involves a former Republican congressman and sexually suggestive e-mails sent to teenagers working on Capitol Hill.
CLANCY: And the new book by a famed journalist says the White House is in denial about the state of affairs in Iraq.
CHURCH: All of this coming, of course, as the leadership of Congress hangs in the balance. U.S. voters go to the polls in just a few weeks now.
CLANCY: Now, of course we're going to be taking you to the White House for that briefing when it starts, bring it to you live.
For now, though, let's begin in Africa.
Sudan's government remaining under intense pressure right now to allow a United Nations peacekeeping force to help ease the crisis in Darfur. CHURCH: Top European Union officials are in Africa on a mission to try to break the impasse. European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso visited Sudan over the weekend to persuade it to accept a 20,000-strong U.N. force. Now, the 7,000-strong African Union peacekeepers in the country are underequipped to deal with the crisis there.
CLANCY: They also lack more than just a monitoring mandate, and the human suffering in Darfur is crushing. More than 200,000 people have been killed since ethnic African tribes revolted against the Arab-led government.
Martin Geissler has our report.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
MARTIN GEISSLER, REPORT, ITN (voice over): Darfur is a long way from anywhere. A two-hour flight across the desert from the Sudanese capital of Khartoum, it's out of site, and for too long, for too much of the world, out of mind. But just imagine a place where the people have no one left to trust and no real refuge from a war that's already torn their lives apart.
The camps for the homeless are still swelling, with thousands of new arrivals every week. These people not fleeing natural disaster, but their own government's brutal efforts to crush a rebellion here.
Most tell the same story. Their villages bombed by aircraft, then ransacked by the Janjaweed militia, an Arab group armed with government weapons and a reputation for dreadful savagery.
All these women have seen their husbands or children murdered. Saeeda (ph) told me how her life was shattered just two months ago.
"When the airplanes came, we were terrified. They bombed us. Then the Janjaweed came through our village. They killed my four sons. Then, they forced me onto the ground and they raped me."
These people have no friends in this conflict. They are being attacked by rebel soldiers, too. Hundreds of thousands of innocent lives have been lost. No one knows exactly how many. It's thought that 90 percent of Darfur's villages now lie empty.
(on camera): When you see a village like this, you just get the beginnings of an idea of the scale of this displacement. It's the only community for miles. Just a few hundred people would have lived here. And yet, this is a conflict that's forced 2.5 million Darfurians to flee their homes.
(voice over): Feeding them is a massive task. This is the World Food Program's biggest project on earth. They have mountains of supplies, but not all this will get to the people who need it. Three hundred thousand have gone without rations since June.
CHRIS CZERWINSKI, WORLD FOOD PROGRAM: The problem is this conflict situation, and what makes it particularly difficult and dangerous is that you do not know what's going to happen tomorrow.
GEISSLER: The world's efforts to protect these people have been feeble at best. Seven thousand African troops sent in to monitor the situation are just a sticking plaster on a gaping wound.
We went on patrol with a group of Rwandan soldiers. They are doing their best, but it's a thankless task. Some haven't been paid for months. Their helicopters have run out of fuel. And, as one senior officer told me, the Sudanese have declared vast areas out of bounds.
(on camera): Can you observe the fighting?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No possibility. You can't tell what's going on. We can't, because it's a no-fly zone.
GEISSLER: Yes. So anything can be happening?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We are blind.
GEISSLER (voice over): And that's the real horror of the crisis here. It leaves you with the awful feeling that what we don't know about Darfur may just be worse than what we do.
Martin Geissler, ITV News, Darfur.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CLANCY: Change on the ground in the Middle East. For the first time in nearly 40 years, the Lebanese army controls southern Lebanon, or most of it. Sunday, Israel withdrew its forces from the area, with one exception of a border village.
Brent Sadler reports now on the efforts to secure one of the Middle East's most dangerous borders.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BRENT SADLER, CNN BEIRUT BUREAU CHIEF (voice over): In the hours of darkness, Israeli troops make a quick low-profile exit from the tip of south Lebanon, ending months of tense occupation. The vacuum is filled by advancing Lebanese army soldiers guarding the volatile border for the first time in some 40 years.
The end of a 34-day war in July-August between Hezbollah and Israel creates the chance for yet another international attempt to secure one of the world's most unstable borders. Hezbollah fighters were positioned there for six years, breathing down Israel's neck, able to strike at will until the conflict broke out.
MOHAMAD CHATAH, SR. LEBANESE GOVERNMENT ADVISER: We want to stop any possibility of it happening again. That's why we said from the beginning we wanted this war to be the last war, and we will do everything in our power to do it.
SADLER: But the newly emerging security plan will be fraught with difficulty. The Lebanese army is untested. Commanders unfamiliar with the terrain in what remains Hezbollah's back yard. The militants' arsenal of weapons may have been badly damaged during the war, but it was not destroyed. Those weapons are still hidden in the south, it's suspected, along with hundreds of Hezbollah fighters who melted away.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm certain that some of their best cadres were lost in the fighting. But I'm also fairly certain that their very best, that the bulk of their experienced fighters, are still intact.
SADLER: Lebanese government forces have no orders to search and seize Hezbollah's firepower. United Nations peacekeepers are restricted, too. So, even as security is supposed to improve, many observers claim a virtual blind eye is being turned towards a still armed Hezbollah that has two ministers in the Lebanese government.
CHATAH: Any appearance of a government that looks at Hezbollah as an enemy, and as an adversary that needs to be ostracized or disarmed or forcefully dealt with, that would be a very hazardous way of dealing with it.
SADLER (on camera): Many Lebanese and Israelis now ponder what they understand to be an inconclusive and costly war, a war that could erupt again.
(voice over): Some 1,200 Lebanese killed, mostly civilians. Around 150 Israelis dead, mostly in the military. Israel's kidnapped soldiers are still missing. And Lebanon is struggling to find billions of dollars to repair damage.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Peoples of both countries can feel safer in the very short term. I think the bigger problem is further afield. I think it's in Iran.
SADLER: Meaning that if the U.S. and Iran end up in a military conflict over Tehran's nuclear ambitions, then Hezbollah could try to help its closest ally by lashing out at Israel.
Brent Sadler, CNN, Beirut.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CHURCH: Well, the sporadic sound of gunfire is still ringing in the air in Gaza, in the West Bank, a day after intense fighting between rival Hamas and Fatah groups. Sunday saw the worst day of internal Palestinian violence since Hamas came to power seven months ago.
On Monday, Hamas militiamen withdrew from the streets and returned to their posts, but things do remain tense. A gun battle erupted at Gaza City's main hospital when family members arrived to claim the body of a man killed in Sunday's fighting.
At least nine people were killed and 90 wounded in the midst of ongoing protests over unpaid salaries. Police and other government workers have not been paid since Hamas came to power.
CLANCY: Washington dealing with two explosive political developments that could affect the outcome of upcoming congressional elections.
CHURCH: First, a book by famed journalist Bob Woodward implies that President George W. Bush misled the American people about the war in Iraq.
CLANCY: And then the resignation of a Republican congressman over inappropriate e-mails sent to teenagers who worked on Capitol Hill.
CHURCH: Bob Franken has more on that story.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BOB FRANKEN, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice over): Congressman Mark Foley is gone from Congress, but his Republican leadership is struggling to avoid being buried in his fallout in this very competitive election battle for Control of Congress, while Democrats would love to bury them.
REP. JANE HARMAN (D), CALIFORNIA: I do think voters in an election season have a right to know what the leaders of Congress did, what they knew, and when they knew, and what they did. And I think these matters will have to come out.
FRANKEN: The Republican leaders, in particular House Speaker Dennis Hastert, were trying to not get hopelessly entangled in questions about how they handled the Foley matter. Hastert's aides were notified in the fall of 2005 by Louisiana Republican congressman Rodney Alexander that a page he had sponsored complained about what the page called "sick" e-mails he had received from Foley. The information was shared over the next few months with the top echelon of the GOP in the House, including Hastert's office.
They reached a consensus that Mark Foley's e-mails were merely "over friendly," and Foley was warned to end all communications with the page and to be careful about his contacts. The chairman of thee House Republican Campaign Committee, Thomas Reynolds, and House Majority Leader John Boehner say they were told early this year and brought it to the attention of Hastert himself. There the matter stood until the explosive revelations of more provocative communications in the form of instant messages to former pages in earlier years, and an explosive chain of reactions.
From House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, Republican leaders should be questioned under oath about what she called the "cover-up." Speaker Hastert himself has sent a letter to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and another to Florida Governor Jeb Bush asking for federal and state investigations. In fact, sources tell CNN, the FBI has begun a preliminary investigation.
All of this is being watched very closely at a White House that is battling to make sure the president's fellow Republicans keep control of Congress.
DAN BARTLETT, WHITE HOUSE COUNSELOR: And I know more than anybody else Speaker Hastert wants to make sure that if any crime was committed that it be held -- they be held accountable.
FRANKEN (on camera): What Republicans in and out of Congress are worried about is that they, too, will be held accountable by the voters.
Bob Franken, CNN, Washington.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CLANCY: As we mentioned, the Foley scandal not the only big problem Republicans are facing this day. The White House also dealing with charges Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice brushed off a CIA warning ahead of the September 11th attacks. The details are in a new book by "Washington Post" journalist Bob Woodward.
As Kathleen Koch reports, it's not the only claim that casts the Bush administration in a negative light.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
KATHLEEN KOCH, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): The Woodward book has the White House playing offense.
TONY SNOW, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: The book's sort of like cotton candy. It kind of melts on contact.
KOCH: Biting dismissals, followed Saturday by a detailed rebuttal of claims the president concealed deteriorating conditions in Iraq and ignored early requests for more troops. But the White House has less to say about the revelation that CIA director George Tenet and his counterterrorism chief, Cofer Black, two months before 9/11 requested an emergency meeting with Condoleezza Rice to sound the alarm that intelligence showed al Qaeda would soon attack the United States.
The book claims Rice was "polite, but they felt the brush-off."
DAN BARTLETT, WHITE HOUSE COUNSELOR: We're puzzled by this. No one has seen these type of quotes before. Each of these participants went before the commission and testified. So Condoleezza is scratching her head because we don't believe that's an accurate account.
KOCH: Democrats want answers about whether the meeting occurred, and, if so, why the 9/11 Commission and the rest of the country ware never told about it.
SEN. JOSEPH BIDEN (D), DELAWARE: They were obliged to tell the 9/11 Commission when they were investigating of all relevant meetings that took place, relevant to the attack on 9/11. This sure sounds relevant to me. Why did they not do that?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I find that stunning. And I think that is as close to a smoking gun that you get.
KOCH: There has already been debate over what impact the book's Iraq revelations would have on voters in the coming midterm elections.
SEN. MIKE DEWINE (R), OHIO: Voters understand mistakes have been made. And so I don't know that this book is going to influence their attitude at all.
KOCH: But the possible concealment of an early warning about the 9/11 attacks could be more damaging.
DAVID GERGEN, FMR. PRESIDENTIAL ADVISER: There is a credibility gap in this administration that has now become a canyon.
KOCH (on camera): President Bush himself has yet to directly address any of the claims raised in the Woodward book. He will have ample opportunity this week as he heads out on a three-day campaign swing through the West.
Kathleen Koch, CNN, the White House.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CLANCY: Now, you can hear from the author of "State of Denial" later right here on CNN. Bob Woodward will appear on "LARRY KING LIVE". That will be at 01:00 hours Greenwich Mean Time on Tuesday.
We're going to be bringing you a live White House briefing, much more discussion, we think, of the Foley case, as well as the revelations contained in Woodward's book.
Stay with CNN.
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