SEPTEMBER 2002
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Wednesday, 25th September,2002
ARCHBISHOP JOSEF ZYCINSKI INTERVIEW
The Catholic Church is often discussed these days in terms of dissent within its own ranks. At least that is the view from many affluent Western nations. The perspective from
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countries like Poland, which emerged from behind the Iron Curtain over a decade ago, is somewhat different.
Archbishop Josef Zycinski enjoys a close association with the current Pope, John Paul II. He is a philosopher of science and a theologian. As the Archbishop of the city of Lublin, he is regarded as the leading intellectual force in the Polish Catholic Church. Jana Wendt spoke with him on a recent visit to Australia. -
Wednesday, 25th September,2002
KYRGYZ CRISIS
The US-led war on terror has allies around the world and one of the most crucial is the Central Asian Republic of Kyrgyzstan. An air base near its capital, Bishkek, provides vital logistical support to allied operations in Afghanistan. But the US stands accused of propping up Kyrgyzstan`s dictatorial leader and ignoring human and political rights
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violations. Nick Lazaredes reports. -
Wednesday, 25th September,2002
NEWT GINGRICH INTERVIEW
JANA WENDT: Newt Gingrich, do you think that there is any inherent danger in the United States claiming a right to strike suspected enemies pre-emptively?
NEWT GINGRICH, SENIOR US REPUBLICAN: Well, I think you always have to make the case and you have to prove to people that you are behaving reasonably, and that you have overwhelming evidence in a case where you`re doing something which, after all, does impose your will on another country. But I think, in the case of Iraq, there`s overwhelming evidence that, the longer Saddam Hussein can develop weapons of mass destruction, the more danger the entire world`s in. So I think the United States does have a right of self-protection under Article 51 of the United Nations and we are the country most likely to be attacked, because of our pre-eminence. And that means that we do have very real security concerns that are larger than most countries.JANA WENDT: Is this a right, though, that the United States claims exclusively? In other words, can any other state, let`s say democratic state, claim the same right?
NEWT GINGRICH: Well, I think you`re going to see that, with the rise of weapons of mass destruction, that countries, if they think they are genuinely threatened, are not going to wait passively to lose a city before they make significant demands. Remember, we`re not saying that we have the right to invade Iraq. We`re saying that we have the right to demand that the current government disarm all of its weapons of mass destruction and prove that it has disarmed all of its programs and closed them down. Now, Saddam Hussein wants to survive as a dictator. The right strategy for him would be to open the country up to inspectors on a serious basis, not as a joke, and to close down all of his various programs.
JANA WENDT: I want to talk a little more theoretically about this right that the US is asserting. Since that right seems to run counter to international law, it is likely, isn`t it, to be seen as illegitimate in some quarters? And does that then undermine the high moral ground that the United States seeks to occupy?
NEWT GINGRICH: Well, I think the primary debate is over whether there`s a new moral imperative to save the civilians in your society. For example, if you learned that a country was threatening to eliminate Sydney, would you in fact wait to receive the first attack, lose the city of Sydney and then decide to do something? Or would you, in fact, take pre-emptive action to save the city of Sydney and all of its civilian population? Now, the weapons of mass destruction are changing the rules of international engagement and countries that are potentially dangerous are going to carry a new burden of being very careful about what they threaten and what they develop because, when you`re dealing with dictatorships whose personalities are very unstable, I don`t think you can afford to rely on deterrents, which has been the policy of the last 50 years.
JANA WENDT: Well, let`s look back in time. If, for instance, this strategy had been in place in 1941, would you have been entitled to, say, sink the Japanese fleet if you had forewarning that it was planning an attack on Pearl Harbor?
NEWT GINGRICH: Well, let`s go back to 1936, when Adolf Hitler broke international agreements and remilitarised the Rhineland. Virtually every historian now agrees in retrospect that, if the democracies had been strong at that point that, in fact, the Second World War wouldn`t have happened. Let`s go back and look at the Italian invasion of Abyssinia, now called Ethiopia, where the League of Nations lost its nerve and ceased to be an important role, or the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931, where the League of Nations failed to act and lost its role. The question is, when Saddam Hussein has violated 12 United Nations security resolutions, when Saddam Hussein is clearly attempting to get weapons of mass destruction, and clearly has today delivery systems that are in violation of the United Nations resolutions, isn`t the burden of proof on the United Nations to prove that it`s relevant by taking action? And shouldn`t Kofi Annan, the Secretary-General, have given the speech that George W. Bush gave? And isn`t Tony Blair right to say what nobody said in 1935 and 1936 about Adolf Hitler? I mean, we need to have a debate about reality and how then within the context of international agreements do we respond to this new reality and, frankly, the United Nations looks very weak, very ineffective and incapable of protecting Sydney or any other city in the world, if you were going to rely on the current performance of the Secretary-General and his staff.
JANA WENDT: Mr Gingrich, let me switch gears here for a moment. You sit on President Bush`s defence policy board, which was recently given a briefing which called Saudi Arabia, a close ally of the United States, "the kernel of evil." Do you share that assessment?
NEWT GINGRICH: Well, I don`t comment on the discussions inside the defence policy board, which are confidential and advisory to the secretary of defence but I will say that, overall, the Saudi Government has been helpful, often reluctantly helpful, but helpful. I do not blame the Saudi Government. But there is no question that 15 of the 19 people who were involved in the attacks on American citizens on September 11 were Saudis. There`s no question that the leader of al-Qa`ida, bin Laden, is a Saudi. There`s no question that most of the money which finances the reactionary mosques, which are the centre of terrorism, are Saudi money. So, in that sense, it`s fair to say that the Saudis have a great complicity in what happened, but the Saudi Government has tried very hard to be an ally of the United States and I don`t blame the Saudi Government directly for some of the things that have happened in Saudi society.
JANA WENDT: The briefing reportedly argued that removing Saddam Hussein in Iraq would spur change in Saudi Arabia and that, in fact, Saudi Arabia was a greater problem for the US than Iraq. Do you agree?
NEWT GINGRICH: No, I think the most immediate threat to the United States in the world today is Saddam Hussein and his efforts to get chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.
JANA WENDT: Your own country forged I guess what could be called an opportunistic link with Saddam Hussein back in the days of the Iran-Iraq war. Is that something that the United States now regrets?
NEWT GINGRICH: Well, I think, first of all, it`s very hard in any one decade. You know, we forged an alliance with Josef Stalin and communism against Adolf Hitler. I think it`s very hard to go back and say, if it was 1981 and you knew what you knew in 2002, what would you do? We were trying to contain what was at that time a very aggressive Iranian dictatorship that was exporting terrorism, that financed the killing of American marines in Beirut and that seemed very dangerous. Saddam, by contrast, in the early `80s, seemed less dangerous than he does today. We learned, I think, in 1990, when he seized Kuwait and in 1991 when everyone was shocked to discover how much further down the road towards nuclear weapons he was than we thought he would be, how much more biological warfare capability he had than we thought he had and how much more dangerous his chemical warfare capability was. Clearly, with hindsight, you wouldn`t have done that but, but then you have to ask how were you going to contain Iran during its most militant phase when it was sending terrorists out all around the world, bombing an embassy, for example, in Argentina, actively engaged in terrorism throughout the Middle East and I think it was a difficult, complex period.
JANA WENDT: But, to put it in a nutshell, you`re saying that US was right then and it is right now?
NEWT GINGRICH: No, to put it in a nutshell, I`m saying we had a mess then and we picked what we thought was the least bad of a series of options. No-one ever praised or thought that Saddam`s regime was a good one just as, in 1941, the Prime Minister of Great Britain, Winston Churchill said he would say a kind word about the Devil himself if Hell would declare war on Germany. You know, the fact is that we were allies with the Soviet Union against Germany during the Nazi phase, because we thought that it was the lesser of two evils to be allied with Stalin and defeat Hitler. That was probably the right decision in 1941-1942.
JANA WENDT: A recent `New York Times` article quoted former senior US military officers who claimed that US interests dictated at the time of the Iran-Iraq war that it privately acquiesced to Iraqis` use of chemical weapons. Now, do you know anything about that?
NEWT GINGRICH: I don`t know that and I don`t believe that we ever acquiesced. I think that we have always been clearly opposed to use of chemical weapons and that we were, frankly, horrified by their use.
JANA WENDT: The military officers were reportedly suggesting that the United States and those involved in assisting Iraq with intelligence during that war simply acquiesced, knowing that there would be a use of chemical weapons but turning a blind eye to it. Does that make any sense to you?
NEWT GINGRICH: Well, they may know more than I do but, at the time, I don`t believe that. I mean, I don`t know of any American political figure who ever acquiesced in or approved of the use of chemical weapons by anybody.
JANA WENDT: Mr Gingrich, just very quickly, the German Chancellor appears to have won an election on the basis of speaking out strongly against US policy on Iraq. Does this signal a real rift between your two countries?
NEWT GINGRICH: Well, first of all, it`s interesting that the German Chancellor having, I think, gone a little overboard on his anti-Americanism, ended up winning by a very, very narrow margin - a substantial decline in his party support in the German public. And the conservatives, who were much more balanced and much more reasonable, gained a substantial number of seats. And I think, frankly, Chancellor Schroeder has a very tough survival period ahead of him, because his margin is so very, very narrow and he`s now totally dependent on the Green Party to survive and I think the Green Party`s going to raise some issues he`s going to find very hard to deal with. But I think that to see an opportunistic politician grasp at straws to get re-elected is hardly a shocking experience, and the burden is on those of us who believe in the dangers of Saddam to communicate more effectively the facts to the German people and then presumably Chancellor Schroeder will follow his public, as he did during the election campaign. pgb d JANA WENDT: Newt Gingrich, I`m afraid we have to leave it there. Thank you very much for your time.
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Wednesday, 18th September,2002
DER WALTZING MATILDA
The image of the swagman is quintessentially Australian. The
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itinerant bushman carrying his swag from town to town, looking for work. In fact, the swaggie enjoys a unique place in Australian culture. So what are the origins of this iconic image?
And why did the swaggies go waltzing matilda? Mark Davis found the answer to those questions in Germany. -
Wednesday, 18th September,2002
DR MUSTAFA BARGHOUTHI INTERVIEW
Last week the Palestinian Legislative Council defied Chairman Yasser Arafat and forced his hand-picked Cabinet to resign. It’s the first time that legislators have openly rebelled against what most Palestinians see as widespread corruption within the governing Palestinian Authority. It also comes at a time when Palestinians are reportedly reassessing their conduct of the conflict with Israel.
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And if diplomatic efforts at the UN fail, Yasser Arafat may also have to decide whether Palestinians will again support Saddam Hussein, in a new war with Iraq. Visiting Australia is Dr Mustafa Barghouthi, a leading figure in Palestinian society. He was a delegate to the 1991 Madrid peace talks and now heads a Palestinian medical relief agency. I spoke with him earlier from Canberra. -
Wednesday, 18th September,2002
MALAWI - TIME BOMB TICKING
This week the UN General Assembly was
warned that almost 15 million people
face starvation in southern Africa.
But, according to Secretary-General
Kofi Annan, famine is not the greatest
threat to African development -
HIV/AIDS is. The south central state
of Malawi is a sad amalgam of both
problems, as well as corruption. This
tiny country is Africa in microcosm,
leaving its children to cope with
today`s tragic legacy. This report was
filmed by David Brill, and produced by
Mike Carey.And if you would like
to make a donation to the Southern
African Crisis Appeal, the telephone
numbers are:Southern Africa
Crisis Appeal - 1800 034 034.
Caritas -
1800 024 413.
Oxfam Community Aid Abroad - 1800 034
034.World Vision - 133
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240. -
Wednesday, 11th September,2002
TERROR DEBATE
The planes that carried out al-
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Qa`ida`s terrorist attack 12 months
ago triggered not only a chain of
suffering and grief but also a furious
international debate. Was there a
legitimate grievance driving the
terrorists? What kind of response was
justified? Two thinkers who enter the
debate from opposite ends, join us
tonight. From London, writer Tariq
Ali, a stringent critic of the US and
its foreign policy, and from
Philadelphia, American policy
specialist, Daniel Pipes who believes
that Islamism, like Fascism and
Communism before it, must be defeated. -
Wednesday, 11th September,2002
AFGHANISTAN - NO PLACE LIKE HOME
Later, we speak with two influential
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thinkers - writer, Tariq Ali and US
policy specialist, Daniel Pipes about
the war on terror. To date, that war
has been largely fought in
Afghanistan. A year has seen the end
of the Taliban and the flight of al-
Qa`ida. Though, as last week`s attempt
on the life of President Karzai shows,
the survival of his pro-Western
government is far from certain. The
President`s country is in ruins and
his authority outside the capital,
Kabul, non-existent. Now, millions of
refugees are flooding back. As we have
just heard from Richard Armitage, the
United States sees the returning
refugees as a positive sign. But, as
Ginny Stein reports, they are putting
huge pressure on humanitarian
organisations and the Afghan
government. -
Wednesday, 11th September,2002
RICHARD ARMITAGE INTERVIEW
At this time last year, the US was a nation confident of its ability to defend itself against any and all attacks. Within hours, it became tragically aware that it too, was vulnerable. The deadly and dramatic assault on the very symbols of
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American power stunned not only the US, but the world. In response, the United States declared war on terrorism, waged a military campaign to defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan,
and is currently debating how to take on Iraq. In the lead up to the anniversary of al-Qa`ida`s attacks on US territory, I spoke with Deputy Secretary of State, Richard Armitage
in Washington. -
Wednesday, 11th September,2002
THIS WEEK ON DATELINE: AFGHANISTAN’S NEW CRISIS
On Wednesday September 11 2002, Dateline looks at the crisis facing Afghanistan as it struggles to cope with an unexpected flood of returning refugees, including those from Australia.
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In an extraordinary admission the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees’ (UNHCR) most senior official
in Afghanistan, Filippo Grandi, says the UN is now so concerned about the rate of return, lack of funds and the
approaching winter that it may cut assistance to refugees in an attempt to discourage them from returning until winter is over.
Grandi also claims that the Australian authorities failed to accurately inform Afghan refugees about the state of their homeland when they were making a decision about whether to return. Grandi states, “Evidently it was not sufficiently done because when they arrived here and they went back
to their areas, some of them, not all of them, complained that they did not know how bad the conditions were in those areas.”
Over five million Afghans have been displaced over the past five years but that trend has now been drastically reversed with the hope of a lasting peace encouraging people to return. Almost two million will have returned to Afghanistan by the end of the year, one of the largest movements of refugees in decades.
Dateline accompanies the first Afghan refugees to return to Afghanistan from Nauru, where they spent a year after being offloaded from the Tampa. These refugees express disgust over their treatment: “We had a very hard time in Australia. Because they kept us in a camp there for one year. The Prime Minister sacrificed us for his own political purposes.”
Foreign Minister Dr Abdullah Abdullah reinforces this criticism
saying, “While we are grateful for the hospitality shown in other cases, in these specific cases I think there is room for improvement.”
Dateline will also host a debate on American foreign policy.
That’s Dateline, this Wednesday September 11 2002 at 8.30 pm on SBS TV. -
Wednesday, 4th September,2002
HEBE DE BONAFINI
Over 20 years ago now, a number of
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Argentine mothers joined together to
form one of the most enduring protest
groups in the world. Their children
had disappeared, apparently murdered
by the government of the day. They
called themselves the `Mothers of the
Plaza de Mayo`. In recent years, their
protest has widened to include many
contemporary issues. Their president,
73-year-old Hebe de Bonafini was
recently in Australia. And Irene Ulman
spoke with her for this report. -
Wednesday, 4th September,2002
EARTH INTERVIEW
Environmentalists have walked out of
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the UN Earth Summit claiming its plan
for the future of the planet has been
gutted by multinational corporations.
The 10-day gathering has argued about
a vast range of subjects from climate
change to GMOs, or genetically
modified organisms in food. The
environmental lobby Friends of the
Earth is one of the groups staging the
protest. Earlier, we spoke to its
international chairman, Ricardo
Navarro, in Johannesburg. Joining him
from Copenhagen, Dr Bjorn Lomborg. Dr
Lomborg, a former member of
Greenpeace, sent environmentalists
wild last year, when he published a
book questioning their most basic
assumptions. -
Wednesday, 4th September,2002
EAST TIMOR’S STOLEN CHILDREN
It`s three years since the violence
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that accompanied East Timor’s vote for
independence. Then, thousands of men,
women and children fled at gunpoint to
the relative safety of West Timor and
beyond. Now, most have returned to
play their part in rebuilding East
Timor. But some can`t come home. They
are mostly children, held by fanatical
Indonesian nationalists still angry
over the loss of the former province.
David O`Shea reports on East Timor`s
stolen children. -
Wednesday, 4th September,2002
THIS WEEK ON DATELINE: ORPHANS WITH PARENTS – EAST TIMOR’S CHILDREN HELD HOSTAGE.
On DATELINE this Wednesday,
September 4 at 8.30pm, a report on
thousands of East Timorese “orphans”
being held in Indonesia – orphans who
in fact have families and homes to go
to but are being held as bargaining
chips in the ongoing political war
between Indonesia and East Timor.
Dateline visits an
unofficial “orphanage for refugees” in
the hills of West Java. It is run by
Hasan Basri, an East Timorese Muslim
who has been based in West Java for a
decade. He was a key figure in the
forced evacuations of East Timorese
people during the bloody lead up to
independence. During that
frightening, violent period, many East
Timorese parents also surrendered
their children to people who offered
to care for them in Indonesia,
promising to return them when the
situation had normalised.
Many of the children are now being
prevented from returning to their
families and forced to convert to
Islam.
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That’s Dateline, Wednesday
September 4 at 8.30pm on SBS TV.
