NEWSMAKER: RICHARD HOLBROOKE

	December 13, 1999
	Now a NewsMaker interview with Richard Holbrooke, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. It will be conducted by Ray Suarez.

RAY SUAREZ: Security Council member Russia is locked in fierce civil war in Chechnya. The UN is trying to come up with a formula for monitoring Iraqi weapons, and new reports on AIDS are bringing terrible news from Africa. Ambassador Holbrooke, welcome. Ambassador Holbrooke, welcome to the program. RICHARD HOLBROOKE: Thank you, Ray. RAY SUAREZ: Are you encouraged by the reports that the Russians are standing but not continuing to advance outside Grozny much after the deadline that they themselves had set for leveling the place? RICHARD HOLBROOKE: Well, that's pretty small comfort, Ray. I think what the Russians have done in Chechnya is inexcusable, and I think the administration has made very clear how much they object to it. If this is the first sign that international pressure is having an effect on Moscow, maybe it's encouraging, but it's awfully early to try to guess. RAY SUAREZ: Well, there had been reports that shelling was going on today just outside Grozny, but that the civilians inside the city have not been forced out, continue to be unmolested. Are there any signals that the Russians have given to anyone, either friends or adversaries, that they're holding back? RICHARD HOLBROOKE: You're way ahead of me on that. I just got back from Africa last night, and I have not seen those reports, so I really can't comment on them. But I do want to repeat that I don't think anyone in the administration has anything but very great concern over what has happened there. It's just not appropriate, what the Russians did. It wasn't necessary, and if they are finally beginning to stop, that's good. But let's see what really happens. RAY SUAREZ: The Russians had let it be known in the last several weeks that they were willing to modify some of their demands on formulating a new regime, an inspection regime for Iraq if they were given a free hand in Chechnya. The outside world hasn't been able to make its will known in Chechnya, but maybe the Russians have been better bargainers at the table at the UN? RICHARD HOLBROOKE: Well, Chechnya has not been en issue at the UN. And as I said a minute ago, Ray, I've been for the last 13 days in Africa. And since Chechnya has not been in the UN, I don't have much comment on the specifics that you're talking about except to reiterate what the President made clear in his many statements on this issue in the last few days. RAY SUAREZ: But I'm sure you have been monitoring the talks leading to a possible vote this week on the new inspection regime for Iraq. Russia's been pressing for easier terms. The United States has been trying to keep tougher terms in place. What kind of final formula will be presented to the Security Council when it comes to a vote? RICHARD HOLBROOKE: The work on Iraq has been going forward at a very intense pace in the last two weeks -- again, conducted primarily by Undersecretary of State Pickering and deputy... and my deputy, Peter Burly. We're looking forward now to a vote this week. It may come very early, but on the details of it, I'm not in a position to comment tonight. RAY SUAREZ: Well, in general terms, the United States has been wanting to keep a longer inspection regime in place -- the Russians, something only about one-third as long with mechanisms built in for shortening the overall time of sanctions if there is compliance. What has been the general American reaction to Russian suggestions? RICHARD HOLBROOKE: Ray, I'm really sorry. I'm not going to be able to comment in detail on these negotiations on Iraq. They're going on as we speak. They're being conducted by Ambassador Burly, and it would not serve our effort to go into this kind of detail as we come into the closing stretch of what has been an extraordinary long and difficult situation. I will simply say this: We're not going to accept a regime which we don't think works, and most people think that what we think works will prove in the end not even to be acceptable to the Baghdad regime at all. So what we're in now is the closing days, I hope, of a very difficult negotiation in the UN, but we're nowhere near the end of the process vis-à-vis the Iraqis. RAY SUAREZ: Well, what's being contemplated is something, if I'm pronouncing the acronym correctly, UNMOVIC, the UN Monitoring Verification and Inspection Commission. What has to happen in the next year or so, so that UNMOVIC doesn't run into some of the same problems that UNSCOM did? RICHARD HOLBROOKE: Well, first of all, let's see what the resolution is, then let's see what's set up. Let's see if the Iraqis agree to participate under the rules set up by the UN. If they don't, that's going to create a different sort of confrontation. Your question, while it's a very good one, involves so many hypotheticals that I really think it's useless to speculate on it tonight. RAY SUAREZ: And if we are looking at Iraqi compliance with 242, I know that recently a deal has been signed allowing some 900 million dollars a month of oil exports. Has that been working to the satisfaction of the United States and the other Security Council members so far? RICHARD HOLBROOKE: There's been a lot of disagreement over that implementation. The Russians have continually charged that the implementation of these sanctions regimes have unfairly disadvantaged them. The Chinese have been upset. We on the other hand want to make them as tight as possible. That kind of tension will continue. It's inherent in the situation. RAY SUAREZ: Well, a change is coming up in the makeup of the Security Council. Would you like to move things along quickly so that the vote can be taken with the current membership? RICHARD HOLBROOKE: No. I'm not concerned about that at all, although I think you see the vote before the end of this month, before the end of the year. But the new composition of the Security Council is a good one, and we'll work with whoever is on it. RAY SUAREZ: Well, let's turn to Africa. I know you do want the talk about Africa since you just came back. The numbers coming from AIDS reports sponsored by the UN have been nothing short of terrifying with some one out of three adults in some countries testing HIV-positive or believed to be HIV-positive. It's not only a human tragedy, but something that makes it very difficult for a poor country to move out of its poverty. What can you do to help these places in the meantime? RICHARD HOLBROOKE: Well, I cannot even begin to stress how important this issue is. There are... most of the wars of the world are now raging in Africa, and one of the main focuses of our trip was to draw attention the them and figure out what we should be doing to deal with them. But despite these terrible wars in the Congo, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Angola and elsewhere, the fact is that ten times as many people are dying of AIDS as are dying in these wars. Now, this is a health problem all over the world, but in Africa it's much more than that. It threatens the economies of the countries. It's a security problem. We visited AIDS centers in every one of the ten countries we visited in Africa. Only one of the countries that we were in, Uganda, is really doing anything significant to reverse the trend. And the key problem here is one that Americans will understand if their memories stretch back to the early 80's, and that is the stigma attached to the disease. In Namibia, we met with six women who have AIDS, but in order to meet with them, they had to be driven in a covered van to the meeting place, and they couldn't allow themselves to be identified in public because they would lose their jobs. The result is that while they were brave enough to talk to us, they're still potential carriers of the disease. Worst of all, the police and the military in these countries are the primary... among the primary carriers. This is an epidemic of enormous historic proportion, and its cannot be ignored and it threatens a lot more than Africa because people travel. If it isn't dealt with. The administration has sought funds. It got less than it wanted, but it got some last year. On my trip, which I was accompanied by Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, who's the ranking Democrat in the Senate on African affairs, we focused very heavily on this problem. And we're going to look for more ways to take action on it. Mrs. Clinton has been over to Africa and has inaugurated an AIDS center in Uganda, and she was in New York last week on UN AIDS Day working on the issue. But I'm just... I just want to stress to you that no problem that your program deals with, and you deal with all the large problems of the world, is any more alarming or more serious than this one. I have not seen anything that matches this for severity and importance. RAY SUAREZ: Well, as you march along from country to country in the continent there is varied histories, very different in the 20th century, but some of the main tone setters in the culture have been socialists or central government command economies or the church through missions and the schools that they've run historically in Africa. These have been bodies that have often been unwilling to talk in a public way about human sexuality, about how AIDS is transmitted. Is there any sign that some of these individual countries are reversing that trend and where they may have been reluctant in the past now willing to talk about it in a public education way? RICHARD HOLBROOKE: You know, in every country we were in, they now admit they have a huge problem and they wear the red ribbon. President Mbeki of South Africa was wearing the AIDS awareness ribbon when we saw him. They all have problems programs, but there are two problems: One is the one you elude to. Because the disease is sexually transmitted, it carries cultural overtones, which are extremely difficult for many countries to deal with. Let's face it, we had that problem here for a while, too. And it's only when people like Magic Johnson step forward and began to be destigmatized -- that has only happened in one of the countries we visited on this trip, Uganda, where President Museveni has very courageously led an open destigmatization campaign. The rates have dropped from 30 percent to 9 percent in Uganda. But everywhere else in Africa, they're still rising. Thailand is one of the other countries that has reversed the trend, and again it was through openness and education and prevention. Also treating it in Africa is difficult because the drugs are expensive, and basically in Africa when a person is identified with the disease, the rest of the population kind of writes that person off. So the person again doesn't want to admit that he or she has it. They can lose their job, they don't have legal protection. It is... and by the way, this does not simply hit the lower classes, as is often said by people. This disease is hitting the middle class, the entrepreneurial class, and the military and the police. It is very frightening, but it is not something that we kicking nor, and again, Ray, I stress this, Uganda's extraordinarily effective program proves that one cannot simply say it's hopeless. We must address the problem. We must encourage other countries to follow the example of countries like Uganda and Thailand. RAY SUAREZ: Very briefly before we close, you mentioned that these are some of the same countries that are immersed in war. Are things looking better in the Congo and the states immediately surrounding it? RICHARD HOLBROOKE: I would be hard put to give you a significantly optimistic report on either Angola or Congo. Both countries are engaged in brutal wars. Congo is the largest interstate war in the history of Africa. We visited all the countries in the region involved in the war. They wrote an agreement earlier this year themselves, an African solution to an African problem called the Lusacca Agreement because it was signed in Lusacca. If they implement this agreement, the United States and other countries will participate in a peacekeeping effort. But if they don't implement it, it would be an impossible task for outside forces to impose and force or pacify the situation in a country as vast as the Congo, which is larger than the United States East of the Mississippi. So what we now have is an intensification of American diplomatic efforts. Ambassador Howard Wolfe, our special envoy for the region whom I spoke to earlier this afternoon, is on his way back into the region to accelerate the negotiations. We're going to intensify our efforts. And -- but we are not going to send peacekeepers in until we are certain that they're part of a coherent process. The next few weeks are going to be - RAY SUAREZ: Ambassador, I'm - RICHARD HOLBROOKE: -- quite critical. RAY SUAREZ: -- going to have to cut you off right there. It's good to talk to you again. Thanks. RICHARD HOLBROOKE: Thank you, Ray.