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Your World Today

Inside Chechnya; Bono Takes on RED Campaign; Zainab Salbi Discusses New Book

Aired October 13, 2006 - 12:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

MICHAEL HOLMES, CNN ANCHOR: He spoke his mind and now the head of the British army has some explaining to do after his negative assessment of the war in Iraq causes a stir from White Hall to the White House.
RALITSA VASSILEVA, CNN ANCHOR: Is this the price of peace in Chechnya? Alleged human rights abuses by the Russian-backed government are what murdered journalist Ana Politkovskaya was working to expose.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BONO: I'm not asking you to give money or write a check for charity. I'm asking you to buy red products.

(END OF VIDEO CLIP)

HOLMES: Taking on the fight against AIDS in Africa, how rocker Bono and his celebrity friends plan to put you in the red, for his latest cause.

VASSILEVA: Also today, Red Cross representatives allowed to talk to terror suspects at the secretive U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. We will talk to a Red Cross official about that visit.

Hello and welcome to our report broadcast around the globe. I'm Ralita Vassileva.

HOLMES: And I'm Michael Holmes. From London to Baghdad, wherever you're watching us, this is YOUR WORLD TODAY. From major news developments to inspirational talks with activists dedicated to improving the world, we have a lot of news to bring you this hour.

VASSILEVA: That's right. Britain's army chief sets off controversy that spreads across the Atlantic, with remarks on the Iraq war. And now he's trying to calm the waters.

HOLMES: Also, we're going to take a rare trip inside Chechnya to look at allegations of torture and the man said to run the republic with an iron fist.

VASSILEVA: Plus, we will talk to two social activists. One you probably know. The other you might not. Bono will tell us about his new AIDS initiative, while (INAUDIBLE) explains how she helps women recover from war.

HOLMES: All right, first to that British army chief who said, quote, "We don't do surrender and we don't pull down white flags."

VASSILEVA: General Richard Dannet is trying to clarify remarks he made, suggesting Britain's military presence in Iraq is making the situation there worse.

HOLMES: In an interview with the "Daily Mail" -- that's a newspaper in London -- the army chief said, British troops should get out of Iraq sometime soon because our presence "exacerbates the security problems."

VASSILEVA: He also said, quote, "I think history will show that the planning for what happened after the initial successful war fighting phase was poor, probably based more on optimism than sound planning."

HOLMES: Here's what Richard Dannatt says now about those remarks, as well as the British prime minister's reaction.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GENERAL RICHARD DANNATT, BRITISH ARMY COMMANDER: Well, I said we should pull out sometime soon. But that comment needs to be placed in the context of the campaign plan. We don't want to be there forever. We have been there for three and a half years. Three and a half years ago, we had some 20, 30,000 soldiers there. We're now down to seven and a half thousand. Indeed in southeast Iraq, which the British are responsible for, there are four provinces. We've already handed two of those provinces over to Iraqi control and the third province, we're well on the way to. So we're going in the right direction. But we need to keep energy. We need to keep pressure on because we can't afford to be there indefinitely. We've got a major commitment in Afghanistan. We've got commitments in the Balkans still. And I'm particularly concerned to make sure there isn't an army in being for five years time, for ten years time, for whatever problems in the world crop up next.

TONY BLAIR, BRITISH PRIME MINISTER: You've always got to distinguish, never more so than the world in which we live today, between the headlines that you get and what people are actually saying. Now I suspect -- I don't know because I wasn't there.

But I suspect this was an interview with the "Daily Mail" that went on for about one and a half hours in which he was mainly talking about Afghanistan and in which, I suspect, some of his remarks, as he was suggesting himself this morning, was somewhat taken out of context. Now in terms of what he was saying about Britain coming out of Iraq, he was saying exactly the same as we've all said. I know you guys like to portray it as if our policy is to remain in Iraq forever, it isn't. It is to withdraw. We already are withdrawing from two provinces. We'll withdraw completely from Iraq as the Iraqi forces are able to handle their own security. In two provinces they are. In Basra, they are not, which is why we will stay and get the job done.

(END OF VIDEO CLIP)

VASSILEVA: Britain has more than 7,000 troops in southern Iraq, most of them based in Basra.

British court says it was an unlawful death.

HOLMES: Yeah, that's right. U.S. troops are being singled out now for some harsh criticism.

VASSILEVA: That story tops our check of other stories making news around the world this hour. For Terry Lloyd's family, the verdict was a long time coming. It was March 2003 when the ITN journalist was killed in Iraq. A British coroner's ruling today, unlawful death. Lloyd was traveling in a clearly marked ITN vehicle when American forces opened fire on Iraqi forces. Lloyd and his interpreter were caught in the cross fire. One of Lloyd's cameramen is officially missing to this very day. Belgian camera Daniel (INAUDIBLE) was the only survivor. It was he who finally this month testified that U.S. forces fired on their vehicle.

HOLMES: A visionary economist, Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank he founded have been awarded this year's Nobel Peace Prize. Yunus pioneered the use of tiny loans, also called micro credit, to help lift millions of people out of poverty, many of them women, in Bangladesh.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MUHAMMAD YUNUS, NOBEL PEACE PRIZE WINNER: Being in poverty means that you're not contributing your talent, your energy, your (INAUDIBLE) into the marketplace to benefit everybody else. We should be removing poverty not from the person himself or herself, it's for us too. Because denying ourselves the brilliant ideas and the activity and ingenuity of all those 1.5 billion people is a terrible loss.

(END OF VIDEO CLIP)

VASSILEVA: More doubt about the apparent North Korean nuclear test. U.S. officials saying that they have found no evidence of nuclear radiation in the air around the test area. But they do point out that these are just preliminary tests. Meanwhile, the leaders of China and South Korea have reached what China's official news agency is calling an important consensus on the North Korean nuclear issue. South Korean President No Moo-Hyun met Friday with Chinese President Hu Jintao in Beijing. They agreed the UN Security Council should take both necessary and appropriate measures.

HOLMES: This week, we've been bringing you stories about the murder of a crusading Russian journalist.

VASSILEVA: Her name Ana Politkovskaya. Her final finished article was published on Thursday. In it, she describes torture in Chechnya. And many believe she may have signed her death warrant with her reports on abuses by the Kremlin backed Chechen forces.

HOLMES: In recent years, Politkovskaya has repeatedly accused the Chechen Prime Minister Security Forces of abducting, torturing and killing innocent people. Ramzan Kadyrov has denied those accusations. VASSILEVA: Chechnya has a largely Muslim region in southern Russia, wrecked by two separatist wars in the past 12 years.

HOLMES: Now we're going to take you inside Chechnya and an unusual in-depth story. Nick Paton Walsh reports on the politics, the power players and the stories of abuse.

VASSILEVA: And we have to warn our viewers, that you might find these images very disturbing.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

NICK PATON WALSH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: To rule in Chechnya today is to be lord over the improbable. For 12 years, they fought for independence from Moscow. But now this man, Ramzan Kadyrov, is the Chechen prime minister running the republic with an iron fist on the Kremlin's orders. Six years ago, warplanes rattled through these hopeless skies. But now in a bid to show life's returning to normal, they're opening a civilian airport.

They claim there's peace. But cash and optimism have replaced fear and violence as the currency of daily life. But scratch the surface and the horror endures. This pregnant woman's torture is just one of several camera phone videos obtained by Channel 4 news in Grozny. Her ordeal allegedly at the hands of Chechen police, was the sort of crime being investigated by Russian journalist Ana Politkovskaya prior to her murder last Saturday. And it's the side of a new Chechnya the Kremlin would rather you did not see.

Ramzan Kadyrov is prime minister, but his real power stems from up to 5,000 armed men under his command. Their brutal grip on Chechnya means the Kremlin can start to withdraw their troops. The situation firmly under Kadyrov's control.

RAMZAN KADYROV, CHECHEN PRIME MINISTER: I'm proud to be a Chechen, and of course I like the airport. If I didn't, I'd have it changed.

WALSH: Kadyrov has dealt with the separatist threat by putting its militants on his payroll. This man told me he was fighting against Moscow's rule just two years ago, but is now one of Kadyrov's personal bodyguards. (INAUDIBLE) King Ramzan spared little expense for his birthday party that night. Today, the Grozny elite know who to pander to. Despite the solemn faced man to Kadyrov's left, actually being his superior. This is Ali (INAUDIBLE). He may be president of Chechnya, but knows that tonight he's also celebrating a coming of age. Now he's 30, Kadyrov is eligible to become president. A court is here, knowing his final promotion is just a formality. His interior minister told me Kadyrov would become president only if the Chechen people asked him to. The aura of power lured guests from afar.

FYODOR BONDARCHUK, RUSSIAN ACTOR AND DIRECTOR: I met him in Moscow during the premiere of the ninth company feature film I was director of. I'm here as a friend of Kadyrov and today is his birthday so that's all. WALSH: As somebody who knows him, you can describe what kind of a guy he is?

BONDARCHUK: He's very interesting, very interesting person. I don't know him actually, really.

WALSH: But his public persona is as exuberant as the entertainment. He proclaims his friendship with (INAUDIBLE) boxing fan Mike Tyson. Has come out in favor of polygamy and in keeping with his Muslim credentials, the imported cognac on the table here stayed firmly corked. It may not be the ideal CV in the Kremlin's eyes, but then again Ramzan didn't so much rise to power, but fell into it.

His father was Ahmad Kadyrov, the first Russian president of Chechnya. He was assassinated at a victory parade in Grozny, apparently by separatists. As Ramzan ran his father's private army, he inherited much of the family's influence. But the young pretender made enemies on his way up. One of them (INAUDIBLE) came bearing gifts. It may all be smiles at the party, but the rival warlord's vying for power in Chechnya, often clash.

(on camera): This is the presidential administration in Grozny. It was here that about six months ago the simmering tension between President Ali Lahonov and the younger ambitious Prime Minister Ramzan Kadyrov finally came to a head. Now President Lahonov was having a meeting inside this building with a senior official from Moscow but Prime Minister Kadyrov wanted to attend. And what ensued was an altercation between their two sets of bodyguards. And the worst reports of this suggests that it resulted in a shootout which in this government complex left three people dead.

(voice-over): But Kadyrov has the upper hand in the power struggle. He's behind the costly reconstruction of central Grozny. A city carpet bombed twice in a decade has been transformed from the skeleton it was just six years ago. There's running water, electricity, and a mobile phone network. This is supposed to be Europe's largest mosque when it's finished. And that today is Putin's birthday, Grozny's young pay a highly orchestrated tribute to the Kremlin head.

(on camera): It may seem strange to see a massive pro Putin demonstration here in the heart of Grozny and organizers are talking about 50,000 people. It is a city that he had bombed about six years ago. But this is a very obvious attempt by Prime Minister Kadyrov to appeal to the Russian president, who is basically his sole guarantor of power in the region.

(voice-over): But this is just the velvet glove around an iron fist. Some of these armed units under Kadyrov's control, a gaggle of former Islamic militants and mercenaries who have began imposing their own warped ideology.

This mobile phone footage, shot in March and shown for the first time on television here, shows (INAUDIBLE), a 23-year-old pregnant Chechen. She's having her head shaved, apparently by Chechen police, who think she's committed adultery with a Russian, known as Sergey. This offends their pride as ethnic Chechens. Her head is painted green, a color associated with Islam, to shame her. She's then seen in a basement, where she's beaten. They call her a bitch and a prostitute and discuss killing her.

She told human rights workers that she recognized her tormentors as local policemen, from a unit that has since been disbanded. Here in another clip, she's told to dance outside her husband's home. Films like this are passed by Bluetooth between mobile phones in Grozny, partly as a warning, partly as entertainment. This couple's embrace in the back of a car is interrupted by unidentified gunmen who also threaten to shave a girl's head. There's no evidence linking Prime Minister Kadyrov personally to these incidents. He's recently pledged to investigate (INAUDIBLE) ordeal, but his officials decline to comment further.

We pursued Kadyrov for an interview at his residence to discuss his plans for Chechnya but didn't get further than the gate. He said yesterday that he had nothing to do with the contract killing of veteran reporter Ana Politkovskaya, who was investigating similar evidence of torture in Chechnya prior to her assassination on Saturday. Under Kadyrov, the violence that blighted Chechnya and fueled its Islamic insurgency endures and so does the poverty.

(on camera): It's dusk here in the village of Tvasny in the Vadino(ph) region, very much the separatist heart of Chechnya. Now this village has its own sense of (INAUDIBLE) because of the MacGyver sisters, one of them blew herself up on a plane going from Moscow in August 2004 and then 10 days later her sister was one of 40 gunmen who took 1,200 people hostage in a school in Beslan. Their brother was abducted by federal troops some years earlier from this very village.

(voice-over): You have to come to places like this to really get a feeling of exactly where the Islamic insurgency comes from in Chechnya. Here, in her first interview with the western media, their mother Taus denied her daughters were suicide bombers and said their passports had been stolen.

TAUS NAGAYEVA, CHILDREN ACCUSED OF TERRORISM: Where they are, what happened to them, I don't know. I think about it a lot. I know nothing about my son or where the Russian troops took him. Of course it affected the girls badly. But they wouldn't do that because of it.

WALSH: Despite the pomp and splendor of Ramzan Kadyrov's Chechnya, some of Moscow's elite are becoming very uncomfortable with the new order. Russia fought two bloody wars to stem the fundamentalism, end the Chechen conflict, and autonomy now taking hold in the republic. The question for Mr. Putin again remains, how long a peace built on fear and the way of a gun can last.

Nick Paton Walsh, Channel 4 News, Grozny.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HOLMES: And a disturbing report, indeed. Now, I want to tell you about some news we just got from the State Department, and that is that the U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is going to head to Asia next week. She's going to China, South Korea and Japan, to discuss, of course what else, North Korea, and how to respond to its reported nuclear tests.

VASSILEVA: Well a new program wants to harness people's spending power and put it to work fighting HIV and AIDS in Africa.

HOLMES: Coming up, we're going to take a look at the bottom line of some very ambitious pro-bono work if we can say that, and talk with those who are working to make it happen. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HOLMES: ... CNN's viewers right around the globe up to speed on the most important international stories of the day. Over to you.

VASSILEVA: Absolutely. HIV/AIDS wreaks havoc on the social and financial resources of even the most advanced nations.

HOLMES: Look into sub-Saharan Africa, for example, and the situation is just about as bad as your imagination can conceive. Rock star and philanthropist Bono met with U.S. President George W. Bush aboard Air Force One at Chicago's O'Hare Airport for a brief impromptu discussion on AIDS Thursday.

VASSILEVA: The meeting came as Bono launched his RED campaign in the United States. This program involves sponsors paying a percentage of sales on certain items to the so-called RED campaign. The money is then donated to the global fund for its fight against AIDS in Africa.

HOLMES: Well, the RED campaign has been under way in Europe since early this year. This is just the latest project that the U2 front man has undertaken to help the world's poorest people. He's been at the forefront of movements to increase awareness of fair trade issues, as well as the campaign to achieve debt forgiveness for poor nations.

Bono joins us now, we're delighted to say, along with his partner in the RED campaign, Bobby Shriver. Gentlemen, for our American viewers in particular, just give us a sense of what the RED campaign is first.

BONO, THE RED CAMPAIGN: Well, you know, it is, as you said -- it's inconceivable what's happening in Africa. You've got -- I think it's 5,000 people are dying every day of a preventable, treatable disease. That's like two Twin Towers, like a tsunami a month in Africa. And they're dying because they don't have the drugs that you can get in any corner chemist here in the United States or in Europe.

The drugs, thanks to the likes of Bill Clinton and others -- Bill Gates -- have come down in their costs. They're about 40 cents, is all it takes to keep somebody alive. Product RED is about making it easier to get drugs to people who don't have them in Africa. When you go in to a store, you buy a Gap t-shirt or you buy a Motorola phone or an Apple iPod that's RED, and not necessarily the color red, but just branded RED, you are literally saving lives.

The companies, these companies are paying the bill. You're not.

HOLMES: Bobby Shriver, how difficult was it to get companies to play ball here? I mean, they basically -- some of them are giving up quite a slice of the profit.

BOBBY SHRIVER, THE RED PROJECT: They are giving up quite a slice, and I think that's a terrific thing. They took their time thinking about it. But it was a big thing to move these kinds of companies. Gap is such an enormous business -- for them to figure out they were going to make these shirts in Africa. In the beginning, they wanted to give us all the money. And we thought they should keep the money because that would make it sustainable. One of the big problems here --

BONO: Keep 50 percent of it, yeah.

SHRIVER: Keep 50 percent of the money for these shirts and the other products. But they came on really enthusiastically. Motorola are making these great RED phone -- it's going to be available in a couple weeks -- came out really enthusiastically. There's a great story about Converse. They sent guys on bikes to Mali in West Africa to get this cloth that's on these shoes which is dyed by women with mud there. They went off on their own initiative and found that out. That's the kind of exciting creativity that these companies have.

BONO: I think that's really the trick here: as well as getting the drugs to people who don't have them and keep them alive, we're also getting some of the creative -- most creative minds in corporate America and in Europe to work for the world's poor -- the creative minds behind the marketing and advertising. The poor don't normally have access to those kinds of people.

HOLMES: And it's amazingly effective to do it at this grassroots level, working with members of the public and working with the corporate world like that. But it's very hard to get real sea change without having the politicians involved. I know you popped on board Air Force One yesterday to have a chat with the president. I just -- interesting story how that came about, interesting meeting place. You didn't fly anywhere, I understand. What was the conversation about?

BONO: We had just launched RED on Oprah. We were in Chicago. And they wouldn't let us leave on the runway. They closed down the airspace. We were very upset. I wanted to make a complaint. They said, you'll have to complain to the president the United States. I said, there's a few things I'd like to complain to the president of the United States. So we stormed the plane, as it were.

But actually, I have to say, on AIDS, the United States are way out in front in your leadership on AIDS. And President Bush, working with Congress, has a million Africans on anti-retroviral drugs. Two years ago, there was about 50,000. So I was bringing him some good news, but also telling him we need to increase funding for the Global Fund, which is where all the RED money's going. And he's one of the major contributors to the Global Fund. But we need more. It's always we need more, you know? HOLMES: And I want to keep you guys around if I can. It's terrific to have you. We're going to take a short break, but more with Bono and Bobby Shriver when we come back. Do stay tuned.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HOLMES: (INAUDIBLE) info there, join red.com.

I want to go back if I can, Bono -- joining us there with Bobby Shriver about this RED program. I wanted to ask you one more thing about -- before we move on -- about your visit on Air Force One. One the things that I find troubling myself, as I observe what's going on in Africa, is the trade situation. Did you raise that with the president? There's many who feel that they talk the talk, but they don't walk the walk, when it comes to actual fair trade.

BONO: Yes, no, we did. We spoke about AGOA, and particularly, the third-country fabric provision, which, if AGOA collapses -- and it has been collapsing now for quite some time, will mean that 17 cents of this t-shirt, for instance, this Gap t-shirt is wasted. So trade is -- trade dignifies Africa. That's the thing, you know, these are very noble people, they're entrepreneurial people. They want to do business with us.

I have to tell you, the United States is better at this than in Europe. In Europe, we've been horrible on trade. And we need to do better. And it is -- you know, if Africa could get back to its global trade position that it had in the mid-'70s it would triple all the aid, all the richest countries in the world give to this poor continent. So it's a critical piece, and thank you for asking about it.

HOLMES: No, it's absolutely crucial.

Bobby Shriver, I wanted to ask you, too -- I love the RED iPod by the way -- how are you getting the word out on all of this?

SHRIVER: Thank you for asking about that. That's one of our real goals in RED is to have communication done by people smarter than us, so this is just today's New York Times -- it makes me look a little silly, but I'll hold it up here.

BONO: You know, it's amazing. See, the Times is incredible today.

SHRIVER: These are all the -- they have bought -- Gap have bought all these pages, including the great Steven Spielberg in his first add --

HOLMES: Steven Spielberg. He doesn't do ads, does he?

SHRIVER: But he's doing them here because these AIDS are about -- it's about AIDS in Africa. And to be able to go to every shopping mall in the United States today and every Gap store, these ads with the message about AIDS In Africa will be up in these stores as a way to communicating to the heart of America. Really, I mean, when I see this, it makes me -- I don't know what, stunned. It's unbelievable to see this kind of communication.

HOLMES: That's great support. Now, how sustainable is the whole thing, Bobby? I mean, you're going to be looking at this going on for years or is it a...

SHRIVER: Well, we hope so. And that part of the RED idea is that companies themselves will make profits on these things. I said a little earlier at the beginning, some of the companies felt, well, gosh, we can't make profit on AIDS in Africa. And we said to them, actually, you have to make profit on AIDS in Africa because if you don't, we'll do a t-shirt, it will be great for an minute, but it won't be sustainable.

So all the companies are making their share of the profits and the global fund, which is getting our share of the profits, to buy the medicine. We believe that model -- it won't depend constantly on Bono or other people showing up and agitating for things.

HOLMES: Bono, one final thing for you. We've only got a couple minutes. One being, I travel mainly in the Middle East, but also have been to Africa a lot. Is it difficult to get across to people that these are people we're talking about? People just sometimes just sit back and think, well, they're Africans, they're Iraqi, they're whatever. To get that sense across that these are human beings?

BONO: Yes, it challenges the very idea of equality. Do we really believe in equality? And can an accident of longitude and latitude, i.e. where you live, decide whether you live or die? Because if you get this disease in Dublin, Ireland, or New York, or Atlanta, Georgia, you can get the medication.

And especially at this moment in time, these are dangerous times in the world. The wider world isn't sure of us in the West who we are, be European or American. They're not sure what we stand for, if we stand for anything. And, you know, when you see a disease like this not reported as an emergency, you wonder -- you know, I myself wonder.

People come up, they say, we love your cause. Well, you know, 5,000 Africans dying every day of a preventable, treatable disease is not a cause. It's an emergency. And if we're not describing it as such, maybe we don't really believe that these people are of the same value as us. And God and history will not let us off lightly on this one.

HOLMES: Beautifully put. Bono, I want to thank you very much. It's a great cause. People can check out the Web site.

BONO: Emergency!

SHRIVER: Joinred.com.

HOLMES: Joinred.com. There's a final plug. And there's the Web site right there. Bono and Bobby Shriver joining us. Pleasure to talk to you, gentlemen. Thanks very much.

BONO: Thanks again. Bye-bye.

SHRIVER: Bye.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HOLMES: All right.

VASSILEVA: What a great cause.

HOLMES: Great guys, great cause.

VASSILEVA: Absolutely.

HOLMES: Working hard.

VASSILEVA: Absolutely.

HOLMES: Well, the RED campaign, by the way -- I think we said this earlier -- has been under way in Europe since earlier in year. And it is just the latest project that the U2 frontman has undertaken to help the world's poorest people. He has been at the forefront of movements to increase awareness, as we discussed with them, fair trade, as well as campaigned to achieve debt forgiveness. So...

VASSILEVA: And for more information, let's put another plug in there on the RED campaign, including the products that you can buy to contribute. Please log on to the Web site. The address, www.joinred.com.

HOLMES: Yes, check it out. We're going to have a roundup of our main stories in a moment.

VASSILEVA: Also, the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize has been announced. We will tell you who won the prestigious $1.4 million award this year.

HOLMES: And the other side of war. Zainab Salbi picks up where humanitarian aid and the media leave off, proving that one person can count.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HOLMES: Welcome back to YOUR WORLD TODAY. I'm Michael Holmes.

VASSILEVA: I'm Ralitsa Vassileva. Let's take a closer look at another major story we are following for you this hour, and that is the Nobel Peace Prize.

HOLMES: Yes, and Bono was one of those who was suggested might win this, but this is a worthy winner. A man credited with breaking the cycle of poverty among the world's most neediest people. He's Bangladeshi banker Muhammad Yunus and his Grameen Bank that he founded, they've been awarded this year's Nobel Peace Prize. Now, Yunus pioneered the use of what's widely known now as microcredit. That's the lending of small loans without collateral, and it has given millions of people the chance to turn their lives around. Many of them women in Bangladesh.

VASSILEVA: Well, earlier this year, CNN visited Yunus to get a firsthand look of of what he does in the villages of Bangladesh.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MUHAMMAD YUNUS, NOBEL PEACE PRIZE WINNER: The basic principle of Grameen Bank is people should not go to the bank, banks should go to people. We have about 20,000 staff who go out to some 68,000 villages all over Bangladesh. Our policy is to reach out to every single poor family, so nobody's left out.

Conventional banks are based on the principle the more you have, the more you can get. Not even 1 percent of their borrowers are women. Credit should be painted as a human right, accepted as a human right.

Microcredit is a tiny little loan given to extremely poor people, particularly poor women, for income generating activities without collateral. You take initiative to change your own life, to earn yourself a living. Raising a cow, processing rice, grazing chickens, basketmaking. Things that are very familiar, nothing fancy.

We are hoping 100 percent of all the families within Grameen Bank will be out of poverty by 2015. We'll put poverty is the basement (INAUDIBLE). And our children, the grandchildren, the great- grandchildren, in their school trip, they will go to poverty museums and then blame us for tolerating for generations, for centuries, the condition of people, through no fault of their own.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

VASSILEVA: And Yunus says his share of the $1.4 million reward will go towards developing a high nutrition food for the poor, among other programs.

HOLMES: A very, very worthy winner.

A glimpse now into the life at U.S. detention facility in Guantanamo Bay. For the first time, the International Red Cross has met with the several of the newest so-called high value detainees.

VASSILEVA: The Pentagon describes them as some of the world's most dangerous and vicious individuals. They include the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, and other top al Qaeda leaders.

HOLMES: Fourteen such detainees were transferred in recent weeks to the U.S. naval base from secret CIA prisons around the world.

VASSILEVA: There are now some 440 prisoners at that facility.

HOLMES: Well, the Red Cross has just completed a two-week visit to Guantanamo Bay. It is the first time those 14 detainees have met with anyone other than their captors. For more on the visit, which comes amid continuing criticism of that detention center, we go now to Simon Schorno. He's a spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross.

And thanks so much for your time.

What -- I know you're limited in what specifics you can give. But what impression did the ICRC get on this visit of the conditions for the detainees?

SHIMON SCHORNO, ICRC SPOKESMAN: Well, in fact, our impressions, the reading of the ICRC, of the visit, is exactly what I cannot share publicly because this is confidential information, information that we shared directly with the U.S. government.

But what we did is toured the prison, speak to the 14, meet with the 14 in private to assess their current condition, treatment, past conditions of detention, past treatments, and that's what we do with every detainee at Guantanamo and around the world. So a pretty standard visit.

But a first with those detainees who have been transferred from CIA detention places.

HOLMES: Is the ICRC happy with the access it's getting?

SCHORNO: We are able to work according to our standard modalities, and so yes, we have a working relationship at Guantanamo. We're able to work according to our usual practice, including being able to speak in private with detainees, registering detainees, giving them the possibility to exchange what's called Red Cross messages with their family, very simple messages that are, of course, censored by the authorities, get-well type of message, and this is done for every detainee, including the 14, so yes we're able to carry out our mission in Guantanamo.

HOLMES: I know that ICRC rules prohibit you giving specifics on this. Are you able to get a sense of what the detainees main complaints are?

SCHORNO: No, because, again, this touches upon the confidential dialogue that we had with the United States, so we cannot disclose the nature of this dialogue, and nature of the detentions. This is something that we discuss confidentially. And certainly during the visit, we gather information, and we share this information, report on this information to the authorities, but only the authorities.

HOLMES: Tell us about these latest -- what the U.S. called high- value detainees, and the amount of time you are able to spend with them.

SCHORNO: Well, again this is pretty standard practice, so we first offer our services to the detainee, not an interrogation. If the detainee does not want to see the International Red Cross, we just don't see the person. In this case, the 14 agreed to see us. And we took the time to listen to them, primarily. This is not, again, an interrogation. We listen to what the detainee has to say. We, of course, explain who we are, what we do, what the limits of our actions are, and what our purpose in Guantanamo is. We make that very clear.

For example, we're not interested in talking about political issues or the reason that led to the arrest of a person, what we're interested in are the conditions of detention, the treatment. And so we make that clear.

And after that, it's really up to the detainee to raise any issue that he wants to raise, and usually those private talks take between 30 minutes to an hour, more if needed. Presence in the talks are only ICRC, International Red Cross personnel, an ICRC doctor and an ICRC translator, and usually again those talks take about an hour.

HOLMES: And they're private, no U.S. officials listening in. Tell me this, though, after a visit like this, what happens? You pull together a report, one assumes. What's the next step now that it's over?

SCHORNO: Well, at the end of the visit, we share a preliminary findings with the authorities on the ground. And following the visit, we draw a report that we then share in Washington with various officials. And the idea is to really follow up, if there are concerns, to follow up on our recommendations, on the -- during the next visit. So it's a not a one-off. Those visits are carried out over time. And the idea is to really have a positive impact on the detention.

Regarding past problems, certainly, we want to know what happened since the arrest of those 14, and you know, we will use that information in various interventions we make on the subject of undisclosed detentions.

HOLMES: Simon Schorno of the ICRC, we want to thank you very much.

SCHORNO: Thank you.

VASSILEVA: Well, it's either mothers trying to feed their children in the midst of poverty or women widowed by war. Every day, we hear of the burdens of injustice that women face in the world.

HOLMES: Coming up, how one group creates ways for other women to help out by offering their resources and expertise. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

VASSILEVA: And welcome back to CNN International. I'm Ralitsa Vassileva.

HOLMES: I'm Michael Holmes. We're seen live in more than 200 countries across the globe. And this is YOUR WORLD TODAY. Well she is a tireless campaigner, an activist, a social entrepreneur, as well as a survivor of war.

VASSILEVA: We're talking about Zainab Salbi, dedicated to rebuilding communities after conflict, one woman at a time.

HOLMES: Yes, Salbi is founder and CEO of Women for Women International. But before we tell you about her work, we want to share some of her background with you.

CNN's Andrea Koppel talked with Salbi, who grew up in the shadow of a dictator.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ANDREA KOPPEL, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): As a child, Zainab Salbi, like so many Iraqis, says she lived in fear of Saddam Hussein. But unlike most Iraqis, Zainab's father, his face obscured here for his protection, was Saddam's personal pilot, and the Iraqi dictator kept Zainab and her family at his beck and call.

ZAINAB SALBI, FOUNDER & CEO, WOMEN INTERNATIONAL: I grew up in Iraq being referred to as the daughter, the pilot's daughter, you know, everything about me was in reference to my father and thus in reference to his passenger.

KOPPEL: And the passenger being Saddam Hussein.

SALBI: Being one of the worst dictators in our world, yes.

KOPPEL: Not only that, from the time she was 11 years old, Zainab says, Saddam began acting as if he were part of her family.

SALBI: Couldn't call him "uncle Saddam," it was just "uncle," And that was how we referred to him.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

VASSILEVA: Well, Zainab Salbi has written two books, one chronicling her own experiences in Iraq, the other relates to similar stories of women from around the world. It's called "The Other Side of War: Women's Stories of Survival & Hope." The author and activist joins us now from New York.

Very happy to have you. Especially on this day, on which the Nobel Peace Prize went to a Bangladeshi man who pioneered the use of micro credits. I wanted to get your thoughts on that and the significance of this. I know you've used micro credits yourself.

SALBI: Absolutely. I couldn't be more happy for Muhammad Yunus. He is truly a pioneer that brought the idea of the power of women and the power of investing in women for economic development. He has been a personal teacher for me as a group that replicates Grameen Bank's model in Afghanistan and Bosnia. But he has been a teacher for many of us actually about the power of the socially excluded and how we should not ignore them as we talk about economic development, and how strong women do lead to strong nations. I couldn't be happier than I call be Muhammad.

VASSILEVA: And you yourself are using this pioneering idea of microloans, but also, you pioneered an idea of your own, you have an organization called Women for Women, which actually helps women help themselves. Tell us about how it works. How do you go into a former war zone and select the women who can carry your idea forward and help others.

SALBI: Absolutely. Women for Women International focuses on women survivors of war. And we focus on helping them move from victims to survivors to active citizens. And we do that in a very simple way. We ask each woman from around the world to sponsor one woman survivor by sending her $27 a month, along with a letter to start a communication link between the two women.

You know, war is like a flashlight on humanity. It shows you the worst of it, and it shows you the best of it. And sometimes that letter and that money that comes from a stranger in the midst of darkness can make all the difference in restoring one's hope in humanity, but also showing our connectivity and building the bridges of peace between women in different parts of the world.

VASSILEVA: Give us an idea about the kind of brutality and violence the women you're helping have suffered and how does one move beyond that?

SALBI: Well, women are often targeted in a very organized way in wars. You know, there are lots of times in which women are raped in wars, from the rape of more than 20,000 women in Bosnia, to the rape of more than 500,000 women in Rwanda to, as we speak now, tens of thousands of Congolese women have been raped and continue to be raped in the Congo war.

But that's not the whole story. The story also continues and talks about how these women are incredibly courageous, are incredibly resilient, in picking up the pieces and keep on going to keep their society's glued together, to keep their families glued together.

You know, there is one woman I met in Rwanda, Beatrice. Seven of her children died on top of her in one of the church's massacre. And Beatrice went on, and the only reason she survived, because her children's bodies covered hers. But she went on and adopted five children and had a child that she had as a result of rape and built a home for them and is sending them to school and giving them a life. And she is part of a national solution for Rwanda.

VASSILEVA: And while you were talking, we were showing video of another survivor. This woman is from Congo. You were telling me earlier that Congo is one of your most favorite countries, and also one of the countries where women have suffered unimaginable brutality.

I remember watching this interview with this woman in which she talked about the stigma for being raped. For years, she was like a sex slave to rebels, and then she moved on to society.

She thought she was dead after that because of the stigma, not just because the horror of what she'd gone through but the stigma in society. How did you help her and women like her in Congo move beyond that? SALBI: Absolutely. This is an amazing woman who actually was a school principal before she was captured as a sexual slave. She speaks three languages, and when she was finally able to escape, she was homeless. Her family has abandoned her. She had nothing when we first met her.

And she went through our program not only by getting a sponsor, who sent her $27 a month and a letter, but she also got women's rights training, training in a women's role in economy, society, politics and health, and she got vocational skills training and business skills training. And after a year of this intensive training in women opportunity centers, she started a business. She now has a home. She reunited with her family.

And most impressive, on International Women's Day, she faced the governor of her city and talked to him about the rape that happened to her and to other women, and talked to him about the importance of stopping rape against women. The carriage she has is absolutely amazing and I'm continuously in awe of women like Cona Rekta (ph) and other women that I've worked with, in the book.

VASSILEVA: Absolutely. An amazing inspiration, your work, those women, wish you lots of success. Thank you very much, Zainab Salbi ...

SALBI: Thank you.

VASSILEVA: ...the author of "The Other Side of War: Women's Stories of Survival & Hope," if you want to read more about those stories we were talking about. Check out that book. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

VASSILEVA: Hope you've enjoyed this hour of international news with us. I'm Ralitsa Vassileva.

HOLMES: Yes, and I'm Michael Holmes once around today. You're watching CNN. Don't go away. The news continues.

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