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America's New War: The Growing Coalition

Aired September 19, 2001 - 05:27   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.
CAROL LIN, CNN ANCHOR: Well, this is what we do know about any plan for retaliation by the United States. The government is getting ready for what President Bush is calling a war against terrorism, and he is desperately trying to enlist other countries in this fight.

At a White House meeting, French President Jacques Chirac offered his nation's support, but stopped short of calling this a war, and said certain objectives and conditions must be set before he would deploy French troops.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has said he opposes any indiscriminate retaliation for last week's terrorist attacks, but Mr. Putin has been talking with Western leaders this week.

Joining us to talk about building a coalition is Time magazine London bureau chief Jeff McCallister.

Good morning, Jeff. Thanks for being with us this morning.

JEFF MCCALLISTER, TIME: Good morning.

LIN: Jeff, let me ask you -- I know you've been working your sources -- we just heard from CNN's Steve Harrigan, who is traveling with the rebels who are fighting the Taliban in northern Afghanistan, and his sense, from a senior official from the Northern Alliance rebels, is that an attack appears to be imminent, in the sense that there are frantic calls going on between U.S. officials and these rebels in terms of gathering up information.

What is your sense in terms of the timing of a U.S. strike?

MCCALLISTER: I'd be very surprised, actually, if it was imminent.

If you're thinking about a large ground-scale forces, this requires a tremendous amount of preparation; logistics; bases in Pakistan, perhaps, or other places. If you're looking at a kind of snatch-and-grab strike, these are usually planned with a tremendous amount of intelligence if they're going to be done successfully. You have to know where you're going, who you're going to get, you need to have good pictures, you need to have good on-the-ground intelligence. And this is just, I think, the start of that effort to collect intelligence. I think it's probably in the rebels' interests to overplay, to some degree, the extent to which Washington is now interested in them. I mean, I'm Washington is -- it makes perfect sense. But I personally would be surprised if there was an imminent attack.

LIN: All right.

And if -- you talked about a potential attack on two different forms of fronts -- you know, a snatch-and-grab, which sounds like a smaller operation, and then something perhaps on a more massive scale, which is obviously one of the reasons why President Bush is talking to so many world leaders, trying to get them on board.

But having these conversations is one thing. It's a -- it's a bigger challenge than it appears on the face of it to gather this kind of support necessary.

MCCALLISTER: Because the complexities of actually succeeding are so vast. If you're talking about land invasion of Afghanistan -- which 60,000 Soviet troops were not very good at -- then it's a whole set of problems that very few countries are interested in.

If you want to base troops of some sort in Pakistan and possibly destabilize the government of that country -- hasn't been discussed because of opposition to the government and sympathy for bin Laden then that's another set of problems.

If you're talking about a worldwide war on terrorism as the administration has talked about some officials especially in the Defense Department talking about talking this to Iraq and Syria and other countries - that also raises concerns among the allies. They want to know exactly what they're signing up for and how likely it is to succeed.

And so I think there's been a lot of rhetoric about instant war but I think in fact the administration is proceeding quite carefully both with its alliance building and with its military preparations in order to keep the alliance together.

LIN: Well, let's take a look at Pakistan's role. Obviously Pakistan a focal payer in all of this. Where do you think Pakistan would draw the line in terms of supporting any military action by the United States?

MCALLISTER: It's very difficult for me to know from here in London. They - it appears that General Musharoff has been as accommodating as he can be publicly. And I know that American officials have been generally pleased with the level of support. But does that mean - for instance, American officials asked for potentially getting court rights in Pakistan. The implication is you need court rights because you need to build up a lot of supplies and forces inside the country to be based there.

Would they allow basing of large amounts of American troops? I would think that would be difficult but conceivable. But if you build up bases then you know that there are going to be military strikes from your territory against Afghanistan.

Again, I think that's the far reach of what might be possible. I think it - we'll have to see how this - all these requests kind of filter through the Pakistani military and political establishment in the next few weeks to get a sense of how far they might be willing to go.

LIN: Jeff, we got an e-mail in from a viewer. Let me bring it up and read it to you if we can get it up on the screen. This is from Steven Wightman and he asks, "How likely is it that the Taliban will be able to put together their own "religious coalition" and effectively galvanize support for this bizarre concept of a Holy War against America following these attacks?

MCALLISTER: I assume the implication of the question is outside of Afghanistan rather than inside. Obviously they - they're the dictatorial force inside most of Afghanistan and I think they also do have some genuine support. I don't think it would be the Taliban itself that would put together a kind of coalition but there is, as we all know, a lot of generalized anti-American sentiment in the Muslim world for lots of reason.

The extreme version is the Osama bin Laden who's not really concerned about certainly political demands but really hates the influence of America, hates the whole Western presence in the Gulf - is generally disgusted with the existence of the United States and all that it stands for. And then there are people with more moderate complaints that the U.S. is too partial to Israel. You can see that President Bush - American diplomacy - has managed to put pressure on both sides in the Arab - in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to get this kind of cease fire withdrawal, which is very important in terms of coalition building.

It may help slate some of the anti-American sentiment in the Muslim world. Obviously most Muslims are not interested in blowing up people in America - it's a gross overstatement. But there is a hard core, as we see, of people who are willing to take extreme measures against Western targets. And I'm sure the Taliban would like to see more of that.

LIN: Jeff McAllister, London Bureau Chief for "Time Magazine" - thanks so much for joining us this morning and answering some questions here.

Obviously he's making the distinction between the Muslim faith and the extremists, which is difficult in a democracy as we try to figure out who - the government's trying to figure out who to investigate . . .

LEON HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: Yeah.

LIN: . . . and who not to.

HARRIS: And it shows just how complicated this whole picture is.

LIN: Right. 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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