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U.N. Issues Report on Jenin; Law Enforcement Officials Discuss Tobacco Smuggling

Aired August 3, 2002 - 04:00   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.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We understand that the report was absolutely categorical there was no massacre.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It identifies what happened in Jenin as a war crime.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There's no sign, there's no suspicion on our part of any cover-up.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And it may seem amazing that we're talking about some of the biggest companies in the world being involved hand in glove with organized crime, but I'm afraid that is very much how the business runs.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

RICHARD ROTH, HOST: Remember those days when a government or a company would decide in the aftermath of a controversial event or incident to say let's write a report, and then usually by the time the document is published, the media and public interest have moved on? Not so when it comes to reports written by your United Nations.

Welcome to DIPLOMATIC LICENSE. I'm Richard Roth.

Two reports this week, and you could probably write two additional reports on the fussing and feuding the findings have prompted. First report, what really happened when Israeli forces moved into the Palestinian refugee camp of Jenin after Palestinian suicide bombers in Israel? Israel did not permit United Nations investigators to visit the Palestinian camp denying charges that massacres or war crimes occurred.

But the General Assembly told Secretary-General Kofi Annan to write a report anyway. On the main question, the report says Palestinian claims of 500 dead cannot be substantiated by the evidence that has emerged.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KOFI ANNAN, U.N. SECRETARY-GENERAL: It is not on the spot investigation, but we'll build on the -- on -- of reports available in the public domain why some of the facts may be in dispute. I think it is clear that the Palestinian population have suffered and are suffering the humanitarian consequences, which is very severe.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROTH: Another senior U.N. official said the report doesn't say there was a massacre and it doesn't say there were war crimes. Words with a high emotional charge were avoided. Diplomatic reaction predictably split.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN NEGROPONTE, U.S. AMB. TO U.N.: It does confirm what we felt all along, which is that there was no massacre in Jenin and the report would appear to support that point of view.

AARON JACOB, DEPUTY ISRAELI AMB. TO U.N.: The report also acknowledges that repeated terrorist attacks perpetrated by Palestinian terrorists were the cause, at least the immediate cause, for the Israeli operation in the West Bank.

NABIL SHA'ATH, PALESTINIAN CABINET MIN.: I know it doesn't satisfy everybody, and it was not done in the way that it should have been done. Sending a real commission to go and see to inside and make all of the requirements. But still, it identifies what happened in Jenin as a war crime, a crime against humanity, and that I think is very important.

EDWARD MORTIMER, U.N. COMMUNICATIONS DIR.: But the report, it was a very violent set of events and I think there is a good deal of evidence that international humanitarian law was broken in various respects by both sides at different times.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROTH: There are other points made in the report. Here to reveal them and their own opinions, perhaps, James Bone from the "Times of London" at our U.N. office, and it takes two men to replace "Le Monde's" Afsane Bassir Pour with her departure to Geneva, two men for this week, both U.N. correspondents. From the "Daily Dawn of Pakistan", Masood Haider and from "Newsday" based in Long Island, New York, Mohamad Bazzi.

Welcome to all of you. James Bone at the U.N., for the viewing public, which remembers violence in Jenin, what does this report really conclude in your analysis?

JAMES BONE, TIMES OF LONDON: Well, the whole effort to have a report on Jenin began among all hysteria at the U.N. where U.N. humanitarian workers were being kept out. The Palestinians were saying hundreds, if not thousands of people have been killed. Now what's -- the result has been quite different from that. Results several months later is that there's a report, which makes a subtle, but important shift in the direction of the U.N. criticizing the Palestinians. For the first time, the U.N. says that the Palestinians' tactics in Jenin of massing militants in areas of heavy civilian population and using booby traps to booby trap buildings were actually violations of international law. Now, the U.N. has never said that before. The U.N. also repeats an earlier allegation against Israel saying that keeping out the humanitarian workers was a violation of international humanitarian law. But it's most notable in my view for the shift towards criticizing Israeli -- the Palestinians for breaking international law.

ROTH: Masood, what do you think of that?

MASOOD HAIDER, DAILY DAWN OF PAKISTAN: I personally think that what James is saying is absolutely right, but the report ...

BONE: Well, I'm glad you think ...

HAIDER: ... actually does put the blame on -- shifts the blame a little bit on the Palestinian side. But basically what happened was that by Israeli refusal to allow the U.N. fact finders to go into Jenin and by Israeli refusal to accept that, by first saying yes, you can come in and then saying no you can't come in. It aggravated the situation and it got international condemnation, which we can say now that it did not deserve. But it did aggravate the situation and of course, there, at this point and time, there's a split that part of the blame is being put on the ...

ROTH: Yes, they want to have it -- they like -- this U.N. report is a tippy-toe report. It does not make big value judgments. Mohamad, you were in Nablus unable to get to the scene based upon -- you've seen the report. Does it coincide with what you could see in the West Bank towns?

MOHAMAD BAZZI, NEWSDAY: Yes, on its assessment of what happened to some of the other West Bank towns does coincide with the assessment of things we were seeing on the ground. I agree with Masood. I think if the Israelis had allowed journalists to go into Jenin at the time that this was happening or shortly afterwards, it would have saved them a lot of grief in dealing with this notion that there was a massacre when there wasn't by all the assessments that we've seen from the U.N. from Human Rights Watch.

ROTH: James ...

BONE: But you have to remember, Richard, how this whole saga started. This whole ...

ROTH: Oh, I remember, believe me.

BONE: ... this whole saga started because the Palestinians wanted to get a U.N. investigation going that the Israelis then feared would provide the basis for war crimes charges against Israeli officials and Israeli soldiers, and that's why the Israelis were placing so many stringent conditions on the U.N. inquiry going there, that they blocked it. Actually the U.N. -- the Israelis have come out with a better result. They had -- you know the whole idea of them having committed prosecutable ...

HAIDER: But the thing is ...

BONE: ... war crimes has been completely discarded by the report.

ROTH: Mohamad.

HAIDER: But the thing is Mr. Peres himself agreed that we have nothing to hide, and you can come in and do anything you want, and come and investigate, and then in another two-days time they shifted and they said no, you can't do it. And as I think James was going to refer to, there was another report, I think day before yesterday from Israel that there was a (UNINTELLIGIBLE) made by an Israeli observist (ph), which says more about what happened in Jenin ...

ROTH: Yes, but ...

(CROSSTALK)

ROTH: ... it comes down to it was what did -- I mean, Mohamad, what do you think? There was -- you know, the big thing was, was there a massacre of widespread? That's why everyone rushed in. No one -- I mean even if Israel had let people in, these results, would they have been different?

BAZZI: Probably not, not largely different. There probably would have been more description of what had happened. I think -- I think we should also focus on the drawbacks to this U.N. report, which is it's a second-hand report. It was a report that was basically done from other people's account. The U.N. couldn't get in and do the actual field work, and today, this week human rights organizations criticized the report for being, for not reaching any factual conclusions or conclusions about international law. Human Rights Watch called it a cop-out basically for not reaching these kinds of conclusions and saying who was to blame for what.

ROTH: James, does this change anything at the U.N. regarding the Middle East or is this report going to be added to the pile of documents? Has the dynamic changed at all in the Security Council or elsewhere?

BONE: Well, I think it does put the Palestinians a little bit more on the defensive because now for the first time they're facing charges of breaking international law. It's always been the Israelis who have been facing these charges at the U.N. One other thing that is an important and subtle shift is that the report quite clearly says that suicide bombing is illegal under international law. That might seem obvious, but the U.N. until now has always described it as morally repugnant, not illegal. And the ...

HAIDER: I believe that the report cannot still be called a tactic as long as the -- there was no on site reporting.

BAZZI: I think the Palestinians definitely thought they would get a better result and they would get something that they can grasp onto as evidenced by -- they haven't really -- they haven't had a -- orchestrated a response to this report yet, and I think -- I think they were surprised and caught off guard by the assessment.

BONE: Now, you see Kieran Prendergast, the U.N. under secretary- general who's overseeing this, went to see Nasser al-Kidwa, who's a Palestinian representative at the U.N. and that's why people have voiced his objection to the U.N. interpretation and saying that the Palestinians had the legitimate right to use such tactics in defending themselves against Israelis coming into Jenin. Now that's -- you know, the Palestinians didn't expect to be criticized for defending their own town.

ROTH: All right, coming up, a different U.N. report in another country and one that will not be made public.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANNAN: I don't think it's a U.N. embarrassment. I think there should be no embarrassment in the group of U.N. officials of who happen to be at the site of an accident attempting to ascertain the facts.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Our people weren't qualified to do an investigation. They were fact finders.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROTH: U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard (ph). The U.N. never likes to say they are carrying out investigations. They're fact finding. In this case the spokesman is referring to the so-called wedding party incident in an Afghan village where U.S. jets attacked, thinking they were under fire from the ground. Local Afghans dispute this. The U.N. dispatched humanitarian workers to the scene. They were asked to write a report on what they saw. This report leaked to James' newspaper, the "Times of London" there, imply that the United States military tried to cover up evidence by moving debris and cleansing the scene of blood. The U.N. spokesman says the team was sent there to find out how many blankets were needed.

So, James, what happened? A new report was done. What did that say?

BONE: Well, the new -- we made never know what the new report says because the new report is a cleansed version of the original report. What happened is on July -- (UNINTELLIGIBLE) on July 1 and July 3 and 4 this humanitarian team arrived from Kandahar at Uruzghan and they filed off a report about what they saw and what people there told them, gave a high casualty figure of 80 dead and some 200 injured and made some other observations, saying that the American plane didn't seem to have come under fire from the ground. And there's other points, I think, about whether or not there was any al Qaeda presence there. And Lakhtar Brahimi (ph), the top U.N. representative in Afghanistan, then said almost immediately, well, rewrite it to substantiate these things. These aren't substantiated, these claims that you're making and so there was a second report written.

Second report -- although the U.N. originally said the second report would be published, second report now won't be published. Second report is just being giving off ...

ROTH: So they ...

BONE: ... to the Americans and the Afghan authorities ...

ROTH: They issued ...

BONE: ... toward conducting their own investigation.

ROTH: ... they issued a statement saying this -- they went there purely on humanitarian grounds and there's a separate investigation by the U.S. in Afghanistan. Masood, you -- perhaps you're skeptical of ...

HAIDER: I absolutely -- because I believe that there's definitely a cover-up, as far as I'm concerned. The United Nations did buckle under pressure of the United States and the report was revised or changed or whatever, not presented because the United States pressured it. Now it's -- we were to read the reports of "The New York Times" and "Washington Post" even. They even said that United States was getting these conflicting signals. There was several of one factions who were giving it ...

ROTH: A lot of people ...

HAIDER: ... the wrong information.

ROTH: ... would say who could be giving out information on this. The United Nations ...

(CROSSTALK)

ROTH: ... denies the cover-up, just for the record, to put that in there. Mohamad, you were along Pakistan-Afghan borders. You were in Afghanistan for a while. What do you think of this report of a report?

BAZZI: I think the important thing to keep in mind there's been a pattern of these incidents where U.S. troops have hit targets that ended up being civilian targets and this is one in a line of those. I think it's important that the U.N. actually dispatched fact finders or investigators, whatever spin they want to put on it. They dispatched them to the scene for the first time. They hadn't ...

ROTH: But then ...

BAZZI: ... really investigated ...

ROTH: ... the U.N. now says they weren't qualified to do any of the work that this report ...

(CROSSTALK)

HAIDER: But he made a very valid point.

(CROSSTALK)

BAZZI: Part of that goes ...

(CROSSTALK)

ROTH: He wouldn't be here if he wasn't making a valid point.

(CROSSTALK)

HAIDER: No, the valid point is that the United States has done this not once, several times in Afghanistan, that they have had wrong targets and they have killed innocent people and they have -- many times they have apologized. In this particular case, they have also gone ahead and expressed regrets, but the thing is that this has been happening so often and United States that it's been there for such a long time, it should be able to discern between a wedding party and ...

ROTH: But that ...

(CROSSTALK)

ROTH: ... where is the mandate ...

(CROSSTALK)

ROTH: ... to do that to investigate -- I mean ...

BAZZI: There hasn't been a mandate until the U.N. took this investigation or/fact finding on. Now it's turned into a humanitarian mission. But there hadn't been this mandate until this pattern ...

BONE: Well, that's ...

BAZZI: ... resulted in ...

(CROSSTALK)

BONE: ... true. I mean, you know, the U.N. spokesman pointed out there is a mandate that conducts human rights investigations. And in fact, there is a U.N. human rights staff in Kabul to conduct ...

BAZZI: Yes.

BONE: ... precisely these kinds of investigations. The question is ...

BAZZI: But they hadn't done it before.

BONE: ... what are they doing sitting in Kabul when something like this happens and they're not out there conducting the investigation. That's the question we need to ask.

HAIDER: No, but the thing is that when an investigation is conducted and you have some finding, why is there a cover-up and why -- what is some people to hide? I mean I just don't understand what does the United States got to hide? But your papers have written about it. "The New York Times" has written about it and "The Washington Post" has said that there were basically what is happening ...

ROTH: Isn't the U.N. going to be put in an impossible situation once again? In Bosnia it was there. Humanitarian soldiers, people literally on the ground being held hostage. Now it's these people writing things, then there's pressure. It's just going to happen more and more. What -- I ...

BAZZI: If it continues, if it continues along these lines it will happen more and more every time there is an incident like this, there will be fact finders, investigators, humanitarian workers, whatever, dispatched to the scene and the results will be some sort of political tug ...

BONE: I mean ...

(CROSSTALK)

BONE: ... the question is who do you trust more? Do you trust an American investigation ...

ROTH: All right ...

BONE: ... an Afghani investigation, or a U.N. investigation?

ROTH: So, let's thank the guests here in the studio first. Mohamad Bazzi of "Newsday," thank you for your debut appearance here, Masood Haider of the "Daily Dawn of Pakistan." Thanks for rising ...

HAIDER: Yes.

ROTH: ... with us. James Bone of the "Times of London," thank you.

Well here's a question for all of our panelists and audience. What do British Prime Minister Tony Blair, television actor Kelsey Grammer, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld have in common? Their signatures were on petitions in Washington, D.C. to nominate the current mayor of Washington for another term. The problem, they were fake signatures along with thousands of others, and now the mayor, Anthony Williams needs a write-in campaign just to get on the ballot.

The United Nations secretary-general who doesn't really know this mayor could commute to D.C. in a second home, but his signature wouldn't be valid anyway. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANNAN: It's quite amazing, because in fact this came up yesterday when I met a group of journalists and I was able to clarify for the record that I'm neither a Democrat nor a Republican, and plus more as a foreigner, I don't have a vote here.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We all have to learn that smuggling, that crime, organized crime in the area of smuggling is very international, is very much the ethnic.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROTH: The U.N.'s top man in Kosovo, Michael Steiner. He is talking about tobacco smuggling in the Balkans, a problem he says that has grown like a weed. This week hundreds of law enforcement and customs officials from around the world gathered at the United Nations in New York to talk about that very problem, illegal trade in tobacco. New York City's top cop talked about the magnitude of the global crime.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RAYMOND KELLY, NY POLICE COMM.: The smuggling of cigarettes across state lines within the United States has attracted traditional organized crime groups and more recently individuals with suspected links to terrorist organizations. There is a great deal of money to be made in cigarette smuggling.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROTH: Roughly $16 million U.S. a year is the estimate of the smuggle profits. Before I introduce my next guest, I should tell you tobacco manufacturer Phillip Morris declined our request to appear on this program. The other major U.S. tobacco manufacturer, R.J. Reynolds, Brown and Williamson and Lorillard Tobacco did not respond to our requests.

Now onto our guest. Joining me now to talk about the issue of tobacco smuggling and other things, Dr. Derek Yach. He is executive director for non-communicable diseases and mental health at the World Health Organization. He deals in particular with prevention of risk factors for chronic diseases like heart disease and cancer. So that would be alcohol, all that fast food, no exercise and today's topic tobacco.

Dr. Yach, thank you for joining us. What's the impact for the average citizen on all of these millions and billions of tobacco- smuggled money that doesn't get taken in? DR. DEREK YACH, WORLD HEALTH ORG.: Well, I think it has direct impact on the way they consume their products. It makes them cheaper, which means it's more likely that they're going to -- the young people especially are going to start smoking. It also means that they don't have the benefit of health warnings as government provide. It also, obviously, aids and abets criminal activity and sometimes also it's involved in encouraging complicity of tobacco companies to evade taxes for national revenue.

ROTH: What does the conference now want to happen? Three days of talking and presumably some smoking outside. What's been agreed?

YACH: Well, I think it was very productive. We saw the world of law enforcement joining hands with public health and realizing that they have additional work to do both on the law enforcement side and public health. They really were able to identify a number of very specific strategies that they could take home to their countries around the world to improve tracking, tracing, and monitoring very practical measures to start looking at how they can reduce the illegal traffic in tobacco, how they can monitor it better and very importantly I think it generated a sense that this is a global problem that requires a global response.

ROTH: Tobacco companies were present at the conference. What is their role in the tobacco smuggling issue? Are they helpful at all? Non-government organizations say they're not.

YACH: Well, I think we heard from a number of member states. Very clearly they were concerned that tobacco companies have undermined efforts of law enforcement officers to stop illicit trade, and there were a number of others who provided evidence that they've been directly complicit in actually aiding and abetting illicit traffic in tobacco in a number of ways.

But their presence at the meeting, we believe is important because they were able to hear how important it is to start addressing this issue and they know down the line that they're going to have to change their ways and they're going to be under the greater spotlight of both law enforcement, of public health officials to do so.

ROTH: Who's doing the smuggling?

YACH: Well, I think the smuggling is a complex set. We know -- we saw that there's criminal elements that people involved in terrorism and there are certain tobacco companies, which are probably also involved. Many have been cited in court cases already brought before the U.S. Supreme Court and are on appeal at the moment. Executives of a number of tobacco companies have been found guilty in jurisdictions around the world. So I think it is a complex mix of criminality, some legal companies working together with weak law enforcement in a number of countries.

ROTH: On a larger issue, members of the United Nations have been working towards a global framework agreement on tobacco. Can you tell us, there's still work to be done, what's the major goal and what's standing in the way of it? YACH: We don't feel that there's anything negative standing in the way of achieving the framework convention on tobacco control being ready for adoption by the member states in just under a year. There's still some work to finalize the text. They have two big meetings coming up in October this year and March next year. The impetus is very high to address many concerns, whether it's advertising, whether it's smuggling, exchange of information and so on. And I think this meeting just added an additional dimension, and it added an impetus for strong global action.

ROTH: Aren't groups charging that this is going to be a watered- down document due to the pressure of cigarette companies, that it will not be tough enough regarding banning of advertising for smoking around the world, things like that?

YACH: I think we remain pretty confident that we've still got two negotiating rounds, and in those two rounds, we'll see a treaty emerge that will be effective in controlling the real problem, which is four million deaths a year now, rising over the next few years to 10 million deaths a year in the 2020s.

ROTH: What is the biggest region with the biggest problem regarding cigarette smoking?

YACH: Well, by far the biggest is China, where we have about a million tobacco deaths a year out of 320 million smokers in the country. That's colossal compared to the U.S., which constitutes about 4 percent of world smokers. In India, you have the second largest number of deaths, about 700,000 tobacco deaths. And of course, a large amount of those are not just due to cigarettes, as we know them, but a wide range of other tobacco products that are chewed or sniffed and are available across the market.

ROTH: Very briefly, isn't it very hypocritical for these delegates to be gathered in the U.N. headquarters where everyone is smoking in the hallways despite WHO, World Health Organization, your organization's demand that U.N. buildings be smoke-free and everywhere else.

YACH: I don't think it's hypocritical. I think it's a question of leadership, and we would hope that the leadership of the U.N. in New York would apply the same effective measures that Dr. Brundtland has applied in Geneva and that way I can assure you that you would have no smoking in this building.

ROTH: Gro Harlem Brundtland, your director. Of course, there's a lot of smoking in some of the leadership offices. Derek Yach of WHO, thank you very much.

YACH: Thank you.

ROTH: That is DIPLOMATIC LICENSE for this week. I'm Richard Roth in New York. We appreciate your viewership. The latest CNN News, in addition to our friend the crawl down there is next.

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



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