• Chinese president meets Chinese, Nigerian businessmen

finance ministers expected to meet (to June 10).
BANGKOK - 60th anniversary of King Bhumibol Adulyadej's accession to the throne.
MUNICH - Opening game of the FIFA 2006 Soccer World Cup (Final July 9) LINK: http://fifaworldcup.yahoo.com/06/en/
SATURDAY, JUNE 10
ST PETERSBURG, Russia - G8 Finance Ministers Meeting (final day).
SUNDAY, JUNE 11
HONG KONG - Tuen Ng (Dragon Boat Festival).
MONDAY, JUNE 12
LUXEMBOURG - European Union Foreign Ministers meeting (to June 13).
VIENNA - IAEA Board of Governors meeting.
LONDON - Five people charged in connection with Britain's biggest cash heist from a Securitas warehouse due in court.
TUESDAY, JUNE 13
LUXEMBOURG - European Union Foreign Ministers meeting (final day).
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 14
LONDON - Winner of the BBC Four Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction 2006 to be announced. [20060426 145548 GMT]
THURSDAY, JUNE 15
BRUSSELS - EU heads of state and government meet (to June 16).
UNITED NATIONS - Mandate of a U.N. probe into the killing of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri, expires.
CASTRILLO DE MURCIA, Spain - The Baby-Jumping Colacho Festival (to June 19).
FRIDAY, JUNE 16
UNITED NATIONS - Geneva-based U.N. Human Rights Commission will be abolished. It will be replaced by a new U.N. Human Rights Council which will convene on June 19.
BRUSSELS - EU heads of state and government meet (final day).
ST KITTS-NEVIS - International Whaling Commission's 58th annual meeting (to June 20). Link: http://www.iwcoffice.org/meetings/meeting2006.htm -
SATURDAY, JUNE 17
LONDON - Queen Elizabeth celebrates her official 80th birthday.
SLOVAKIA - General Elections.
SUNDAY, JUNE 18
DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO - (DELAYED) Legislative and presidential elections. (Not expected before July 23).
MONDAY, JUNE 19
UNITED NATIONS - First meeting of the new U.N. Human Rights Council.
VANCOUVER, Canada - 3rd World Urban Forum (to June 23). World Urban Forum was established by the United Nations to examine one of the most pressing issues facing the world today: rapid urbanisation and its impact on communities, cities, economies and policies.
THURSDAY, JUNE 22
HOUSTON - (POSTPONED FROM MARCH 20) Retrial of Andrea Yates, who drowned her five children in the family bathtub in June 2001. Yates, who has had a history of mental illness, has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.
MONACO - The 17th Yearly Session of the Crans Montana Forum (to June 25). Link : http://www.cmf.ch/_sCrans/2006/index.php?l=uk
NEVEH SHALOM, Israel - Pink Floyd veteran Roger Waters to perform at a rock concert.
FRIDAY, JUNE 23
VANCOUVER - The World Peace Forum (to June 28) Link: http://www.worldpeaceforum.ca/
SATURDAY, JUNE 24
UNITED NATIONS/ABIDJAN - Mandate of the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Ivory Coast expires.
MAURITANIA - Referendum on a new constitution.
SUNDAY, JUNE 25
MILAN - Men's 2007 Spring/Summer fashion shows begin (to June 30).
MONDAY, JUNE 26
GLOBAL - U.N. International Day in Support of Victims of Torture.
TUESDAY, JUNE 27
NEW YORK - Supermodel Naomi Campbell, charged with second degree assault for throwing a cell phone at housekeeper Ana Scolavino, expected to appear in court.
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 28
LONDON - Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) Conference on Technology for Security & Resilience (to June 29). Link: http://www.rusi.org/events/ref:E43DE36EDCC42E/
FRIDAY, JUNE 30
SONKAJARVI, Finland - Wife Carrying Championships 2006 (to July 2).
CANBERRA - Former Supreme Court Judge Terence Cole who is leading an official inquiry into whether wheat exporter AWB Ltd. and two other companies broke any Australian laws in their dealings with Iraq during the Saddam Hussein regime, expected to report to the government by June 30.
JULY 2006 (UNDATED)
PERU - Expiry of term in office for Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo.
BRUSSELS - EU sugar reform expected to begin.
SPACE - Next scheduled spacewalk at the International Space Station (ISS).
LONDON - A copy of a 'first Folio' book by Shakespeare expected to go under the hammer at Sotheby's, and may fetch up to 4 million pounds in July.
SATURDAY, JULY 1
HELSINKI - Finland assumes presidency of the European Union until December 31.
NEW DELHI/DHAKA/COLOMBO/THIMPU/BANGKOK/YANGON - A free trade deal signed by BIMSTEC, or the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral and Economic Cooperation, which includes Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Myanmar, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Thailand due to take effect.
HELSINKI - Dalai Lama to visit Finland.
EUROPE - Electronic equipment imported to or sold in the European Union will have to be lead free soldered, to comply with the Restriction of Hazardous Substances Directive.
CAPE CANAVERAL - (TENTATIVE) NASA expected to launch its next shuttle mission to the International Space Station (ISS).
BEIJING - China to ban the sale of human organs and issue new guidelines for transplant operations.
STRASBOURG - SPORT - CYCLING - Tour De France (to July 23).
SUNDAY, JULY 2
MEXICO - Presidential elections.
LA PAZ - Bolivia to hold elections for an assembly that will be charged with rewriting the nation's constitution and a referendum on greater regional autonomy.
TUESDAY, JULY 4
MELBOURNE, Australia - Australian woman, Carol Matthey, to stand trial on charges of murdering her four children over a five-year period.
WEDNESDAY, JULY 5
MACEDONIA - General elections.
NEW YORK - New trial set for suspected Mafia boss John "Junior" Gotti. Gotti was accused of leading a Gambino crime family, extorting construction companies, loan-sharking and ordering a brutal attack on Curtis Sliwa, the founder of New York's Guardian Angels anti-crime patrol.
PARIS - Haute Couture fashion show (to July 8) Autumn-Winter 2006/2007 collections. LINK: http://www.modeaparis.com/va/dates/
THURSDAY, JULY 6
WASHINGTON - 60th birthday of U.S. President George W. Bush.
PAMPLONA, Spain - The running of the bulls (to July 14).
FRIDAY, JULY 7
LONDON - First anniversary of the series of explosions that hit London killing more than 50 and injuring 700.
SUNDAY, JULY 9
VALENCIA, Spain - Pope Benedict visits Spain to preside over a ceremony at the Catholic Church's World Meeting of Families.
BERLIN - Final of the FIFA 2006 Soccer World Cup.
BERLIN - Berlin Love Parade.
TUESDAY, JULY 11
WORLDWIDE - World Population Day.
THURSDAY, JULY 13
PARIS - Bastille Day (to July 14) commemorating the storming of the prison that marked the beginning of the French Revolution.
SATURDAY, JULY 15
ST. PETERSBURG, Russia - G8 Summit (to July 17). Link: http://en.g8russia.ru/
BERLIN - Berlin to host "Love Parade," a techno street party. Around 1 million techno fans expected to converge in the German capital.
WEDNESDAY, JULY 19
LIVERPOOL - SPORT-GOLF - British Open (to July 23).
THURSDAY, JULY 20
LONDON - British International Motor Show (to July 30). LINK: http://www.britishmotorshow.co.uk/
MONDAY, JULY 24 ** CHARLOTTE, North Carolina - International Conference On Energy, Environment And Disasters (Inceed 2005), Bridging the Gaps for Global Sustainable Development (to July 30). Link: www.iseg.giees.uncc.edu/inceed2005
WEDNESDAY, JULY 26 ** MELBOURNE - Melbourne International Film Festival (to August 13). Link: http://www.australia.com/whats_on/Festivals/Article_ALL.aust?I=M lbourne_international_film_festival.xml&L=en&C=AU
FRIDAY, JULY 28 ** LONDON - One year since the Irish Republican Army (IRA) formally ended its 30-year armed campaign against British rule in Northern Ireland.
MONDAY, JULY 31 ** JOHANNESBURG - Former South African deputy president Jacob Zuma faces a high court corruption trial. Zuma left the government in June 2005 after being linked to a high-profile graft case. ** BEIRUT/UNITED NATIONS - Mandate of 2,000-strong U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) expires. ** EUROPEAN UNION - EU ban on all imports of untreated bird feathers to minimise the spread of bird flu expires.
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Document LBA0000020060426e24q000hf
News; International

A Discussion About State of Security in Middle East; The Crisis in Darfur

Brian Ross, Nicholas Kristof

9,330 words

25 April 2006

PBS: The Charlie Rose Show

PBSCR

English

© Voxant Inc. All rights reserved.
BRIAN ROSS, GUEST HOST: Welcome to the broadcast. I`m Brian Ross of ABC News sitting in for Charlie Rose.
Tonight, a discussion about the state of security in the Middle East with the former director of Israel`s Mossad, Efraim Halevy.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
EFRAIM HALEVY, DIRECTOR, CENTER FOR STRATEGIC & POLICY STUDIES HEBREW UNIVERSITY: The only way the United States could deal with this was to go and to go in. And that`s what it did in Afghanistan, that`s what it did in Iraq. And because of the fact that the main threats to international stability today, all three threats, the threat of Islamic international terror, the threat of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, the threat of the rise of oil and the problem of energy, all have their roots in the Middle East. Unfortunately, or ultimately, the battle will be settled inside the Middle East. And the battle for the future of stability in the world, for the values of the free world will, unfortunately, for better or for worse, will be settled the in the Middle East.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BRIAN ROSS: Also this evening, Nicholas Kristof of the "New York Times" talks to Senator Barack Obama, Jan Egeland, and Ken Bacon about the crisis in Darfur.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KEN BACON, REFUGEES INTERNATIONAL: If we want to sit by and let them do this and let them humiliate us, we should follow the strategy we`re following now. If we want to stop it, we need to get tougher all across the board, with sanctions, with threatened military action, and actual military action if necessary. I hope it won`t go that far, and I don`t think it would have to go that far, but we have to be tougher in our approach than we have been in the last couple of years.
JAN EGELAND, UNITED NATIONS: It is important to do all of these things and get, for example a U.N. force on the ground. And I - I`ve said that, and I`m so glad that so many now, in the U.S. and elsewhere, work for that. But it could take nine months, at best, it seems, at the moment. We`re not even able to go there to plan for this force.
The whole thing could unravel in nine days at the moment, and if we don`t get more money from the rich world, not only in North America -- Europe, the Gulf states, et cetera -- we will have no food to give to the people in, like, two months.
SEN. BARACK OBAMA (D), ILLINOIS: What has been missing from Washington -- and I would say that the administration and Congress are complicit here -- is a sustained diplomatic effort to put pressure on - on Sudan to make certain that it knows we`re serious, to engage diplomatically with an international community, to set up a contact group made up of interested parties like China and Nigeria, in putting pressure on Sudan to let an additional and stronger U.N. peacekeeping force to come in. That all requires enormous diplomatic work.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BRIAN ROSS: Security in the Middle East and the crisis in Darfur, next on CHARLIE ROSE.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BRIAN ROSS: We begin tonight with the Middle East. Today the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, released a rare video on the Internet, in which he accused the West of waging a crusader war on Islam. Iran also announced that it will hide its nuclear program if the West takes harsh measures against it. And yesterday, three separate bombings in the Egyptian resort town of Dahab have killed 24 and injured 80.
Joining me now is Efraim Halevy. He led Israel`s elite intelligence service, the Mossad, from 1998 to 2002. He oversaw the siege of Yasser Arafat`s compound in 2002. He is currently the head of the Center for Strategic and Policy Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His new book is called "Man in the Shadows." It is a pleasure to have him at the table this evening and welcome.
EFRAIM HALEVY: Thank you very much.
BRIAN ROSS: Let`s start first with today`s news. Zarqawi makes a re- appearance in Iraq and he says he`s still in power, he`s still ready to go, showing his face for the first time. What do you make of it?
EFRAIM HALEVY: I think it`s a move of desperation. A man who is engaged in this kind of activity would do well not to do this. If he feels that he has to do it, it means to say that he is very hard pressed, and therefore, he has to show his face in order to preserve some kind of credibility with his troops.
BRIAN ROSS: He essentially is claiming victory for the insurgency in Iraq. Is that not the case? Has it not -- so far been a victory for the insurgents?
EFRAIM HALEVY: I believe not. I think obviously, when there are terrorist acts, they are very dramatic and they cover the screen and obviously are very, very televisionable, if you can call it that. But practically speaking, the way things are going in Iraq today, I think it`s not going in the terrorists` way at all.
BRIAN ROSS: Why not?
EFRAIM HALEVY: I think just recently, a new prime minister has been appointed. I believe there are steps afoot to put the Iraqi army on a very firm footing. I think they have had several operational successes.
I think that it`s an uphill battle, but I think that things are going in the right direction.
BRIAN ROSS: As you`ve watched the U.S. invasion -- and you were a supporter of that invasion, were you not?
EFRAIM HALEVY: I was.
BRIAN ROSS: You had intelligence at the time as the head of Mossad that the U.S. was doing the right thing?
EFRAIM HALEVY: We didn`t have intelligence that the United States was doing the right thing. I think we didn`t cover the United States as a target. We don`t do that. But what I think was that we had sufficient relations and a relationship with the United States to be more or less informed about the broad brushstrokes of what was intended. And I think we, by and large, we thought that this was a necessary act.
BRIAN ROSS: And beyond whether it was necessary or not, was the U.S. battle plan a good one? Were there enough troops? We`re seeing the criticisms now of Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, that there weren`t enough soldiers.
EFRAIM HALEVY: Well, as you well know, at the time there were great difficulties for the United States to launch this campaign. There was a great problem with access through Turkey, and ultimately, the United States did not have access through Turkey at the initial stages of the campaign. So, therefore, the United States was laboring under some inhibitions, some difficulties. But by and large, I think the United States scored a very quick victory there, and the fact of the matter is that the forces of Saddam Hussein crumbled under the might and under the pressure of the United States combined armed forces.
BRIAN ROSS: But is it not the case the U.S. seemed unprepared for the insurgency that soon arose?
EFRAIM HALEVY: Maybe there was a problem of assessment here. Maybe the assessment was that this was not going to happen.
BRIAN ROSS: That`s an intelligence failure, isn`t it?
EFRAIM HALEVY: That is an intelligence failure of sorts, yes. Maybe the assessment was that once the battle was over, things would sort of take a course which would be a course dictated by the fact that the Iraqi people would feel liberated, that they would feel that they were no longer under the yoke of Saddam Hussein, and that this would cause kind of a bandwagon situation, whereby ultimately the people would rise and would welcome the so-called liberating forces. And this did not happen.
BRIAN ROSS: Let me go back to something you said. You felt the invasion was necessary.
EFRAIM HALEVY: Yes.
BRIAN ROSS: What did you know that you felt made it necessary?
EFRAIM HALEVY: Well, let me talk a little about this whole issue of weapons of mass destruction. Let`s look at it in perspective. A lot has been said in the last year or so about the fact that weapons of mass destruction were not found. And subsequent to that, there were findings saying that this was not a program which was being followed or was being developed by Saddam Hussein. And it could well be that the amount of intelligence available at the time was insufficient, let`s put it that way. Maybe some of the intelligence was faulty.
BRIAN ROSS: Did you have your own intelligence?
EFRAIM HALEVY: We had a bit of our own as well.
BRIAN ROSS: And did you believe there were weapons of mass destruction?
EFRAIM HALEVY: I - I will come to this in a moment, with your permission. What I have to say is this, that when you have to assess what it is that Saddam Hussein was about, you don`t assess just what happened on the eve of the war - you look at this track record, and you observe what Saddam Hussein was trying to do over a period of over 20 years. Initially, he tried to help -- to get help from the French. The French helped him to create and to construct his atomic reactor. Israel, as you know, destroyed the reactor. At the time, by the way, there was much American criticism of what Israel did at the time.
BRIAN ROSS: Public criticism? Behind the scenes, was it different? Both?
EFRAIM HALEVY: No, no, both public and behind-the-scenes criticism. I think now in hindsight, many of those who criticized Israel at the time have come around to think that Israel did the right thing.
Then there was the second attempt towards the first Gulf War, towards Desert Storm, when it was apparent that the Iraqis were developing nuclear programs -- not one program -- several programs designed to create, to produce fissionable material and then to have weapons-grade material. This was the second time around.
And then after that, as you remember, the United Nations had a monitoring system in place, and in 1998, Saddam kicked them out. And as of the time of 1998, there was no real monitoring there.
And then there was information coming in that he was making a third attempt, and there was evidence he was trying to get his hands on all kinds of means around the world. And we saw it, and other saw it.
Did we have the smoking gun? No. But we had a track record, and I believe that in this situation where you have a track record and you have insufficient information about the final stages, you assumed the track record is a viable track record, and what he tried to do in 1980 and what he tried to do in 1990 he was trying to do in 2003, unless proven the opposite.
BRIAN ROSS: That`s enough to go to war, to commit soldiers?
EFRAIM HALEVY: I think it`s enough to assume on the basis of a lot of other sketchy information that was coming in, that Saddam was bent on continuing this policy of his.
BRIAN ROSS: As you saw the assault, essentially, on the CIA and the U.S. intelligence community for what were called intelligence failures in the Iraq war and prior to that the 2001 attacks -- what was your own thought about your American colleagues under the gun for massive intelligence failures?
EFRAIM HALEVY: I felt that this was a very unjust and unfair way of going about dealing with my friends, colleagues, if you`d like to call them that.
BRIAN ROSS: Were they your friends and colleagues?
EFRAIM HALEVY: I think so, to some extent, yes. I believe that, on the one hand, you must understand that for an intelligence officer to make judgments, he has to be immune from the danger of being held accountable, I`d say physically, for mistakes which are made in good faith. If it was proven there was negligence here, if it was proven here that there was shoddy professional conduct, yes, then maybe certain steps should be taken.
But if you make a mistake, and for a mistake you make, you have to pay price, this means to say that any man in the future who will have to make a judgment, he would have to take into account what was done up to now, how his predecessors were treated, and he will always have to err on the side of caution. He will have to cushion his - his recommendations. He will have to put in caveats. He would have to blur the results so that whatever happens, he can always say, "Yes, he also mentioned this, he also said that." And when he whispers into the ear of the president, "I think that this is the situation, I believe this is so," he will no longer whisper into the president`s ear what he really feels, what his gut feeling is. He`ll whisper into the president`s ear what he believes will protect himself in the future from the fate of the people who were there in 2003.
And this, I believe, is a very, very sorry outcome of the way the leaders of the intelligence community in the United States were treated.
BRIAN ROSS: Sorry outcome.
EFRAIM HALEVY: I believe so.
BRIAN ROSS: As head of the Mossad, were you prepared to shade the truth, bend the facts to fit the needs of a particular prime minister?
EFRAIM HALEVY: Never.
BRIAN ROSS: You would stand up to the prime minister?
EFRAIM HALEVY: I would stand up to the prime minister, and the prime minister by the way -- and I served three prime ministers as head of Mossad -- never asked me to bend the facts and never asked me to tailor whatever I had to their political ends.
BRIAN ROSS: If that happened in the U.S., with the CIA and the Bush administration, would you consider that to be misconduct?
EFRAIM HALEVY: Yes. But I don`t think this happened.
BRIAN ROSS: Let me ask you about al Qaeda. We talked about al Qaeda in Iraq, al Qaeda in general. Going back to September 11th, 2001. You`re the head of Mossad. Did you have any idea the attacks on New York and Washington were about to happen?
EFRAIM HALEVY: No. I don`t .
BRIAN ROSS: There was no advance word .
EFRAIM HALEVY: No.
BRIAN ROSS: . you`ve seen the reports, the Israelis news, there were four Israelis arrested in New Jersey, supposedly have seen it in advance.
EFRAIM HALEVY: Not an iota of truth in this. I remember, just as I sit across you today, when I got the information, we were at a session together with Prime Minister Sharon, discussing some problem connected with the Palestinian territories, and somebody - somebody brought in a piece of paper, and we were told that this is what happened. And nobody in the room -- and all of the intelligence chiefs were there at the time, and all the principal cabinet members were there at the time -- not one person in the room had any shred of evidence or shred of - of a - of even a small guess that this is -- could have happened.
BRIAN ROSS: So, the reports, which you`ve seen about .
EFRAIM HALEVY: I saw it.
BRIAN ROSS: . advance knowledge by Mossad, simply not true.
EFRAIM HALEVY: You know, Mossad is a victim of its reputation. And anything that happens in the world, everybody thinks that Mossad knows everything about everything. Well, Mossad knows quite a lot of things about quite a lot of things, but it doesn`t know everything about everything.
We knew nothing about this. I saw the reports that we had information. I saw reports that the Jews of New York were warned not to go to work that day. I also saw a lot of reports, which were fanned in the Arab world, which is always prone to accept the theories of conspiracy that everything that happens, anything that goes wrong, the Mossad is behind it, and there`s not a shred of truth in all this. Some of it is innocent, and some of it is not innocent .
BRIAN ROSS: Right.
EFRAIM HALEVY: . propaganda, but something much worse than that.
BRIAN ROSS: So, since those attacks, the U.S. policy in dealing with Iraq, going into Afghanistan, looking for bin Laden, failing to find him, disrupting the training camps, has it been a success or a failure in your view?
EFRAIM HALEVY: It has been a partial success. I think -- let`s say, first of all, what was the principal strategy that the United States took? And I think it was the only strategy the United States could have taken. Once the United States was attacked from forces inside the Middle East, once the United States was attacked from the region where I live, the only way that the United States could hope to win this war was to go in and to settle the war, to finalize the war on the territory of the enemy.
You don`t win a war on your own territory. The only way the United States could deal with this was to go, and to go in, and that`s what it did in Afghanistan, that`s what it did in Iraq. And because of the fact that the main threats to international stability today, all three threats -- the threat of an Islamic international terror, the threat of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, the threat of the rise of oil and the problem of energy -- all have their roots in the Middle East. Unfortunately, or ultimately, the battle will be settled inside the Middle East, and the battle for the future of stability in the world for the values of the free world will unfortunately, for better or for worse, will be settled in the Middle East.
BRIAN ROSS: It does always come back there, doesn`t it?
EFRAIM HALEVY: It does, yes.
BRIAN ROSS: Why can`t the U.S. find Osama bin Laden? And is it important that they find him?
EFRAIM HALEVY: It`s important that they find him. I think .
BRIAN ROSS: Could Mossad find him?
EFRAIM HALEVY: Well, I don`t know. I`m not there today. And I`m not -- I don`t know if the Mossad is looking for him. But I think it`s important that he`d be found, and that he`d be brought to justice, if you call it that, or if he is killed in battle he`d be removed from the scene. He`s not only a person who is conducting a war, and a world war; he`s also a symbol of this war. I think it`s important.
BRIAN ROSS: The Israeli defense minister said today -- turning to another subject now -- that the greatest threat to the world since Hitler is Iran. Would you agree with that?
EFRAIM HALEVY: I think .
BRIAN ROSS: Iran today.
EFRAIM HALEVY: I think the Iran today is a very big threat. I don`t sure - I don`t want to say it was the greatest threat.
BRIAN ROSS: Since Hitler is what he said.
EFRAIM HALEVY: Well, I don`t want to dispute him.
BRIAN ROSS: In your view?
EFRAIM HALEVY: I think Iran is a very, very serious and deadly threat, yes. Whether he`s a Hitler or not a Hitler, honestly speaking, what does this comparison contribute? I mean, it`s -- today, as you may know, is Holocaust Day in Israel, and we are commemorating the Holocaust, the death of 6 million Jews who went to their deaths in the camps and in the concentration camps of World War II. And maybe this is an occasion on which we remember Hitler and we remember what happened then, and we remember the lessons of that period. And in that respect, since the president of Iran is denying the Holocaust, and he denies it time and time and time again, and making statements which I think are really horrendous from every point of view, I can understand that defense minister saying what he said today.
I believe, though, Iran is a very deadly threat, and I believe that that threat will be taken care of.
BRIAN ROSS: And when you say that, what do you mean, speaking as the former head of Mossad? Do you mean that Israel will take care of it if nobody else will?
EFRAIM HALEVY: I believe that we will not reach the point of the last resort. I think that once the threat has been identified, once the Iranian threat was identified, and it`s identified and accepted as such by the world as a whole, by the free world as a whole, the free world as a whole will find the solution. And I don`t think it`s necessary for Israel to be alone in finding the solution. I don`t think it`s necessary for the United States to be alone in finding the solution. I believe that the joint effort will produce the result.
BRIAN ROSS: Which would be?
EFRAIM HALEVY: Which would be in my opinion a change in Iran which will make the threat a benign threat. I believe that this -- the .
BRIAN ROSS: Take out the nuclear facilities?
EFRAIM HALEVY: No, I`m not talking about taking out the nuclear facilities. That is only part of the problem.
BRIAN ROSS: And Israel knows how to do that, right?
EFRAIM HALEVY: It did it once before. It doesn`t mean to say that you have to repeat your performance again. I don`t think that this is necessarily the - the line which will be taken. But I do believe that the direction the United States is taking is the right direction.
BRIAN ROSS: But can Israel permit Iran to achieve a nuclear weapon, with its ability to target and hit Israel?
EFRAIM HALEVY: I think Israel -- and this has been said -- cannot countenance Iran having a nuclear capability. Having said that, whether it`s Israel alone which has to go this way, I don`t think this is the case. I think it so happens that the agenda of Israel and the free world is the same agenda, and when you have a common agenda and you have a partnership, many partners can play roles and all bring about the desired end.
BRIAN ROSS: Do you miss running the spy service, Mossad?
EFRAIM HALEVY: Not at all.
BRIAN ROSS: Not at all.
EFRAIM HALEVY: Not at all.
BRIAN ROSS: Did you love doing it when you were doing it?
EFRAIM HALEVY: I loved doing it. I did it for four and a half years. I enjoyed most of the time, not all of the time. I had my.
BRIAN ROSS: Did you lose agents in the field?
EFRAIM HALEVY: I did not lose agents in the field during my tenure.
BRIAN ROSS: You did not?
EFRAIM HALEVY: No. Agents in the field were in very hazardous and very dangerous and difficult situations. Many times, their lives were on the line. Their future was on the line. Their liberty was on the line. And happily, I can say that during my watch, we did not lose agents. And I enjoyed most of the time I was there. I worked for three prime ministers. I was deputy head of the Mossad for five years. I enjoyed it very much. And I served in the Mossad for 40 years. When I left the Mossad, I closed the door, I gave back the key, and I went on to do other things, and I felt very happy about it.
BRIAN ROSS: For many Americans, what is known about Mossad is the movie "Munich." The Mossad team goes out to track down the killers from Munich. What did you think -- you saw the movie?
EFRAIM HALEVY: Yes. I think it`s a very poor movie professionally. I don`t think that that is the way the Mossad ever operates.
BRIAN ROSS: There was the attack, though, wasn`t there? There was such an operation?
EFRAIM HALEVY: That is a different story. But the way it is portrayed there has no reality and no relation to what really went on. I must say I was either flattered or upset by the fact that the person who was handling the team was named after me, or at least used my name. I`m not sure this was purely coincidental, or whether -- whatever it is. Some people thought it was a compliment to me. I didn`t take it that way by any means.
BRIAN ROSS: Was it truthful?
EFRAIM HALEVY: No, it was not truthful in any way, no.
BRIAN ROSS: Not in any way.
EFRAIM HALEVY: No, not in any way. And I think Spielberg is a great producer. I think he has produce wonderful movies I`ve seen. And you know, every great movie, like every great person, makes a mistake from time to time. And the movie is a mistake, and I think the public recognized it as such.
BRIAN ROSS: Finally, what was your biggest mistake as the head of the Mossad?
EFRAIM HALEVY: My biggest mistake as the head of the Mossad was, I would say, that I tried to find a middle road between handling a clandestine agency on the one hand, and bring it into the public eye on the other. And I don`t think that I succeeded entirely in finding the right balance between what you do in order to preserve your public image and what you do in order to preserve the assets and the capabilities that you have. And I would have liked, on this particular matter, to have done a better job.
BRIAN ROSS: Well, you did a great job when you were there. Anyone reading your book understands that. Certainly you were "The Man in the Shadows," now out of the shadows. Mr. Halevy, thank you very much for being with us.
EFRAIM HALEVY: Thank you, Brian.
NICHOLAS KRISTOF, GUEST HOST: I`m Nicholas Kristof from "The New York Times," sitting in for Charlie Rose.
Tonight, a conversation about the crisis in Darfur in Sudan. President Bush has called it a genocide. It`s estimated that several hundred thousand people have died since March 2003, and that number continues to mount.
Joining me now from Chicago is Senator Barack Obama. From Washington, D.C. is Ken Bacon. He is the head of Refugees International. And here in New York is Jan Egeland. He`s undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs at the United Nations. Welcome to you all.
BARACK OBAMA: Thank you.
NICHOLAS KRISTOF: Jan, let me start with you. You were just back, and in fact you`re so disreputable in the Sudan that you were denied access to Darfur. Tell us a little bit about the situation right now on the ground. In what direction is it going?
JAN EGELAND: It`s terrible, and it`s worsening. Just imagine this desert with 200 camps, with 1.8 million people, mostly women and children, and around them, enormous gangs of men with guns, who attack them at any point, at any time. Many of them have been displaced for the third or the fourth time. And in the middle of this crossfire between militias and government soldiers, guerrillas and others, are 14,000 humanitarian workers from the United Nations, the Red Cross and Red Crescent system, and many good NGOs. But we, the humanitarians, are at the moment retreating, because in the front lines it`s getting worse and worse as security is getting so bad we cannot even do our work.
NICHOLAS KRISTOF: So as humanitarian workers retreat and they get less access, then what are the stakes? And in particular, I think you were quoted a few years ago as saying that up to 100,000 people a month could end up dying if there were a complete collapse. Is that a realistic figure for the stakes?
JAN EGELAND: Three million people are actually in the balance here. If we withdraw -- and we would withdraw if we lose the lives of our people, we cannot go on as managers from New York or Geneva. Hundreds of thousands of lives would perish, as was predicted in 2004 when I was on this show. This was the prediction. The courageous action of all of these NGOs, well- resourced, from America and elsewhere, did at the end of 2004 and through 2005 save hundreds of thousands of lives. At the moment, we`re slipping again, and it is a tremendous drama. I am very fearful of what will come.
NICHOLAS KRISTOF: Senator Obama, let me go to you. And this is in a sense an unfair question, because it`s unfair to, you know, make you a representative of the Congress as a whole, but we all say never again, and then something does happen again. Why isn`t Congress and the Senate, perhaps, doing more on this issue?
BARACK OBAMA: Well, you know, obviously, what`s happened over the last several years is that there has been almost a single-minded focus on Iraq with respect to our foreign policy.
Now, I give this administration credit. They have actually taken the situation in Darfur more seriously than some of our European allies, who I think have really fallen down on the job when it comes to dealing with the seriousness of the crisis in Darfur.
But the fact is, is what we have done has not been enough. In the Senate, we`ve passed resolutions. We have funded peacekeeping operations. In fact, the emergency supplemental -- President Bush has requested $123 million just for peacekeeping, and we`ve added another $50 million.
But what has been missing from Washington -- and I would say that the administration and Congress are complicit here -- is a sustained diplomatic effort to put pressure on Sudan to make certain that it knows we`re serious, to engage diplomatically with an international community, to set up a contact group made up of interested parties like China and Nigeria, in putting pressure on Sudan to let an additional and stronger U.N. peacekeeping force come in.
That all requires enormous diplomatic work, and we saw in mid-March a hopeful sign when it looked like the African Union forces that were on the ground would be supplemented or replaced with a larger U.N. force. But Sudan, which had a much bigger stake in this, worked it diplomatically in such a way where African countries stopped supporting these initiatives. And right now, we`re stalemated.
So we need a huge push in Washington to say this is a priority for us, for humanitarian reasons as well as national security reasons, because if we start having failed states not only in Sudan but now we`re seeing spillovers into Chad, we could have the entire region engulfed in both a political, military and humanitarian crisis that could have extraordinarily dire consequences.
NICHOLAS KRISTOF: Well, Senator Obama, you have been very active on the issue of Darfur, but an awful lot of your colleagues haven`t, and others in the administration haven`t been as active as they, it seems to me, should have been. But doesn`t that in turn reflect a deeper problem, just a lack of interest perhaps in America as a whole? In other words, does that reflect kind of a lack of interest in what is happening in Darfur?
BARACK OBAMA: Well, look, one of the challenges that we`ve always had, because we`re such a large prosperous nation, is looking outward. And much of our history, we have been self-absorbed until we`ve been dragged into international situations, mostly ones that had either a direct threat on us or our more immediate allies in Europe.
But increasingly, I think, we`ve got to recognize that we are interdependent, that threats of collapsed states or disease or terrorist activity anywhere in the world can now have an impact on us. And I think that the American people are starting to realize that.
One of the things that I`ve been encouraged by is the degree to which young people have really focused on the situation in Darfur. You`re seeing activists on college campuses all across the country who have been mobilizing. On April 30th, there`s going to be a large rally in Washington around the issue of Darfur.
The other thing that I think is encouraging is you`ve seen bipartisan concern on this issue. One of my partners in the Senate has been Sam Brownback, Republican from Kansas, considered very conservative on the political spectrum, but has a sincere desire to do something like this.
And so what you`re seeing, I think, is both conservatives and liberals taking a close look at what is happening and trying to ask ourselves, how can we prevent some of the atrocities that have taken place in the past?
But we need more of that. We need greater pressure from the American public to tell their senators this is something that we are paying attention to, and we want you to prioritize. And if that message comes from constituents, I assure you that politicians will respond.
NICHOLAS KRISTOF: Ken Bacon, tell us a little bit about Chad. I mean, the situation in Darfur has been desperate enough over the last few years, but now it`s been spilling over across the border into Chad. Is there a risk that all of Chad is going to end up looking like Darfur?
KEN BACON: Well, I think that`s a possibility. So far, however, the attempt to overthrow the president seems to have been deflected. It`s not to say there won`t be other attempts, but there are now international mediation efforts under way to deal with some of the political and diplomatic problems that led to this coup attempt in the first place.
I think we have to remember two things -- three things. First, there are indigenous instabilities within Chad. It`s an extremely poor country that has oil revenues that aren`t being distributed perhaps as broadly as they should be. Has a president who stayed office for a long time. That`s the first thing.
Second, it clearly has been destabilized by a large influx of refugees from Darfur; 220,000 or more have come in and are living in camps, but there`s a lot of ebb and flow across the border on a regular basis.
And third, there have been rebel forces targeting the president of Chad, training in Darfur, probably with the help of the Sudanese government. So the instability in Chad, the militaristic approach to solving all problems that we see in -- that we see in Sudan is now spreading into Chad.
NICHOLAS KRISTOF: Jan, you noted that the situation in Sudan may be deteriorating now. Does that reflect the fact that pressure has perhaps eased up to some degree on the Sudanese government and it feels it can get away with a little bit more? I mean, is that -- is the deterioration on the ground linked to our lack of attention in the West, to some degree?
JAN EGELAND: In part, I think you`re right. It seems the world is very good in doing sprints, but not in doing marathons, and this is a marathon. The world has been good in responding in terms of humanitarian assistance. This is not Rwanda in that respect. In Rwanda, everybody left with tail between their legs and said, we don`t want to be here.
In Darfur, we have been flocking in. It is the largest humanitarian operation on Earth. Three million people get our assistance. We got $1 billion that we spent on humanitarian assistance as a humanitarian community last year.
But I think this plaster on the open wound that we are putting as humanitarians has to be healed by massive political pressure, not only on Khartoum and the government there and all the bad things they`re doing, but also on the guerrilla. I mean, the last 10,000 people that were displaced were displaced because the guerrilla had split in two and were fighting each other in northern Darfur.
It has to be this U.N. force that Senator Obama was mentioning. There has to be massive pressure from Arab states, from Asia, from the Middle East, from Africa, from Europe and North America, not only on the government, but on the guerrilla, on everybody.
And the world is failing politically. The world is failing in terms of providing security, and we have become an alibi, in a way, for lack of action in these areas as humanitarian workers, and I don`t think we want to be that alibi for lack of political or security action.
NICHOLAS KRISTOF: Well, Senator Obama, is there in fact more that we can do in concert with other countries, with allies or with, for example, the Arab world, with China? You mentioned that the Bush administration has in fact been taking some real steps, but should we be thinking more of multilateral actions?
BARACK OBAMA: Absolutely. Look, the -- there are a couple of steps that have to happen, but they have to happen in parallel. The first is that we have to get a U.N. protection force on the ground.
For your viewers who aren`t familiar with what`s been happening, we`ve had an African Union force, made up of contributors from African countries on the ground, about 7,000 people, just not sufficient to cover the largest land mass in Africa. And so what`s been happening is that where those 7,000 are deployed, we`ve seen some safety, some improvement in condition of the refugees, but increasingly they can`t provide protection against the Janjaweed. They certainly are not in a position where they can facilitate the return from these camps.
So what we`ve been arguing is that we have to have at least 20,000 troops on the ground. It`s going to take a while to build up to that level, but we need a couple of things. Number one, all the Western powers, and middle powers need to deploy everything from boots to Black Hawks to the African Union troops. They`re undersupplied, undermanned. Second, we have got to start lining up contributors to a peacekeeping force, because typically that takes as long as six months, and what we don`t want to do is wait until we finally get authorization, and then take another six months to actually deploy those troops.
The third thing is the diplomacy required to get the African Union, China, some of our other key members of the United Nations to agree that in fact that U.N. force has to be deployed.
So getting that protection force on the ground is critical.
The second parallel step is to resuscitate a political process, and this is what Jan was referring to. A lot of the initial displacement occurred because of Khartoum`s fear of rebels in the Darfur region. And we have not been able to successfully create the kind of peace talks that we were able to initiate when there were conflicts between northern Sudan and southern Sudan.
That was an extraordinarily lengthy and difficult war. But what happened was is that the president of the United States deployed a special envoy, former Senator Danforth, who devoted day-to-day attention in painstaking fashion to craft a peacekeeping agreement that can now hold. And one of the concerns that I have is that we can`t wait for that peacekeeping to take place before we put the protection force, but it is also true that a protection force without that peacekeeping process or those peace talks taking place ultimately won`t be good enough.
So these are things that we have to do in concert with a lot of other countries. We`ve got to devote the diplomatic pressure to do it, and when we do devote that pressure, we`ve seen success. You know, when you look at what happened in East Timor, when Indonesia was rampaging through that country, you ended up seeing contact groups that were set up in a very sustained way, and they essentially forced the Indonesian government -- the international community forced the Indonesian government to accept a protection force in East Timor that ultimately stabilized the situation.
This can be done, but it requires some very sustained effort.
NICHOLAS KRISTOF: But when you`re talking about a larger force, and a U.N. force, are you essentially volunteering other countries to send troops, or do you actually think that the U.S. itself should send troops, and is there any appetite at all for that to happen?
BARACK OBAMA: Well, unfortunately, all our troops are deployed at this point in Afghanistan or Iraq. So we do not have the troops to put in. We could, potentially, embed some NATO advisers into the African Union force that could help them logistically and in planning so that they`re maximizing the use of the resources that they do have.
But you`ve got a range of middle powers -- France, Canada, others -- that have some experience with peacekeeping, that have essentially washed their hands of peacekeeping in Africa.
I think that`s unfortunate. I think that one of the things the United States has to do is to start convening these powers to sit down and figure out how are we going to respond on an ongoing basis, not just in this situation, but in the future to the problem of failed states, ethnic cleansing, genocide, because these things are going to repeat themselves over and over again.
And one of the things that we can`t do is to keep on trying to respond after the crisis has been initiated. Jan and others at the U.N. can do outstanding humanitarian work, but the fact of the matter is, is that if we don`t attend to how do we prevent the kind of breakdown of social order that leads to refugees, then ultimately we`re going to be overwhelmed. And this is something that we have an enormous stake in, in this country, as I said, not just for humanitarian reasons, but because over the long term these kinds of chaotic situations can be an enormous breeding ground for terrorist activity.
You`ll recall that Osama bin Laden spent quite a bit of time in this region, partly because it was out of control.
NICHOLAS KRISTOF: Ken, you were a senior official in the Pentagon in the Clinton administration. Do you see any role for U.S. troops on the ground? I mean, would that be counterproductive? And even if we don`t send troops on the ground, then are there, you know, roles we can assist with, like airlift, for example?
KEN BACON: I think we should go beyond airlift, and I think we should begin to plan to put a no-fly zone into effect. This would be difficult, but it`s been mentioned in U.S. congressional resolutions. It`s been hinted at in U.S. Security Council resolutions. And the reason a no-fly zone would be important, and I think have a huge impact, is that there is a real pattern to the genocide taking place in Darfur today.
Typically, villages are attacked by Sudanese air force planes and helicopters. After the initial attack, then the so-called Janjaweed, people on camels, horses, in pickup trucks, come in and begin the hand-to- hand, face-to-face killings with machine guns and Kalashnikovs, AK-47s. This is when the men and boys are killed, the women are raped, the animals are killed or stolen, and dead animals and people are stuffed into wells to poison the water supply, so the villages can`t be rein habited quickly.
This is this type of horrendous activity that has caused President Bush to call this genocide.
A no-fly zone. What would it be? It would mean that if the Sudanese air force put its planes up, our planes -- and, yes, our troops are committed in Afghanistan and in Iraq, but those are ground troops. The Air Force is not as committed, at least the fighter wings are not as committed as they used to be before we invaded Iraq. So there are assets of ours, of France -- France has air assets today right in Chad, along the border, that could be motivated and activated to deal with this.
I believe that if we had a no-fly zone, if we took -- if we shot down some of the Sudanese aircraft, they would stop doing this. This would be a sign that we were ready to act, not just talk about genocide. It would have a huge impact, and I believe it would stop this, and that thousands of people, maybe hundreds of thousands of lives, would be saved.
BARACK OBAMA: Can I just interject there for a second?
NICHOLAS KRISTOF: Sure.
BARACK OBAMA: You know, I think Ken is exactly right, that a no-fly zone could have a significant impact, and I was one of those who have been pushing for us to consider the logistics of a no-fly zone.
I think it`s very important to understand that shooting down Sudanese planes over Sudanese airspace is something that cannot be done unilaterally. It is something that we are going to need to have strong international support for. And so, as I am strongly supportive of us doing what it takes to stop the slaughter that`s taking place, and I think that no-fly zones have to be part of that formula, but that will arise as a consequence of strong diplomatic work that we do, particularly with African nations, particularly with Middle Eastern nations, particularly with Muslim nations that obviously is a consequence of the broader conflicts that are taking place in the Middle East are already feeling very suspicious of U.S. military activity.. --
KEN BACON: I agree with what Senator Obama said 100 percent, but I think what -- the point he`s making is we need a tougher, more coherent policy across the board, diplomatically and militarily.
We are letting this regime off the hook. They`re mocking us today. They`re mocking us by not allowing Jan Egeland to travel to Darfur, by throwing the Norwegian refugee council, which has been managing the biggest camp in Darfur, out so it can no longer manage the camp. They`re mocking us by saying that they`re interested in peace, while the war gets worse and the killing gets worse and the instability gets worse.
If we want to sit by and let them do this, and let them humiliate us, we should follow the strategy we`re following now. If we want to stop it, we need to get tougher all across board, with sanctions, with threatened military action and actual military action, if necessary. I hope it won`t go that far, and I don`t think it would have to go that far, but we have to be tougher in our approach than we`ve been in the last couple of years.
NICHOLAS KRISTOF: Jan, let me ask you about that, about that tougher approach. In Darfur, I`ve interviewed these doctors who are doing just heroic work, pulling bullets out of kids, but they`re incredibly frustrated because every day there are more kids with more bullets in them. I mean, is indeed the solution not, at this point, not so much just the humanitarian relief, which is heroic, but some combination of a substantial, mobile, tough U.N. force and a no-fly zone, and other, you know, efforts to really provide security?
JAN EGELAND: And the possibility of sanctions, of course, against those who did all of this and who enjoy impunity at the moment.
It is important to do all of these things and -- and get, for example, a U.N. force on the ground. And I -- I`ve said that, and I`m so glad that so many now in the U.S. and elsewhere work for that. But it could take nine months, at best, it seems at the moment. We`re not even able to go there to plan for this force.
It -- the whole thing could unravel in nine days at the moment. And if we don`t get more money from the rich world, not only North America -- Europe, the Gulf states, et cetera -- we will have no food to give to the people in, like, two months from now on. We have far less money this year than we had last year, with more mouths to feed.
So I very much agree, it is a plaster on the wound, our humanitarian work, but if there is no plaster even on it, people will die in massive numbers. And I don`t think we will let another kind of mass killing happen like it happened in Rwanda 10 years ago.
NICHOLAS KRISTOF: And will the -- I mean, how would this work? If Sudan continues to oppose a larger U.N. -- a more robust U.N. force, then I mean, it seems to me hard to imagine the Security Council agreeing to force in a robust force over Sudan`s wishes, and that begins to look more like an invasion than like a peacekeeping force.
JAN EGELAND: There are many dilemmas here now, and it is hard for the United Nations to deploy a peacekeeping force. It`s impossible to deploy a peacekeeping force if you do not have consent. Then it would be an intervention.
If people are dying, on horrendous scales, I think there should be intervention. I mean, the humanitarian intervention, whatever you call it. Then again, yes, you would have to have forces coming from outside of Africa as well. But today, it`s the 7,000 African Union forces is the only thing we have. And in the next days and weeks, at least make them mobile, make them move around. I`ve been to Darfur. I was barred from going there in 2004, when it was really, really bad, in -- at the of the year, I was able to go again. I was able to go again in 2005. I have been with these African Union forces. There were 70 people there, 80 people there. They could have two pickup trucks. You know, they don`t have logistics; they need it today.
NICHOLAS KRISTOF: Senator Obama, after the Rwandan genocide, the late Senator Paul Simon famously said that if just 100 people in every congressional district had written to their member of Congress and said this can`t go on, that that indeed would have mustered the political will to stop that genocide. What is the equivalent calculus today for how many e-mails or whatever it would take to get Congress and the president to take a much more robust response to Darfur?
BARACK OBAMA: You know, it doesn`t take that much. I mean, one of the things that I think people generally don`t realize is how sensitive elected representatives are to what their constituents are demanding. And if you`ve got large numbers of constituents across the country, not just in a few localized areas but across the country, telling their representatives this is something that matters to me and I`m going to take a look at how I vote based on your performance on this issue, I promise you, it will get the attention of people.
And just to go back to something that Jan said, I think it is absolutely imperative for us to understand that even in the best-case scenario where we get the Security Council to sign off on the deployment of a successor U.N. peacekeeping force, it`s going to take some months to build up. A lot of groundwork has to be done during that period.
We should start right now lining up commitments from some of the potential contributor countries that would be willing to put troops to supplement that peacekeeping force. We`ve got to negotiate with all the African Union countries to make them understand that they have an enormous investment in success in Darfur.
The African Union force is a wonderful experiment in Africa policing its own conflicts. They need more logistics. We have an investment in them being successful. They should also want the successor force to supplement what they`re doing so that the overall mission is successful.
NICHOLAS KRISTOF: Well, Senator, what about those people who buy that message and who want to react? In other words, for the viewer out there who wants to do something to help, what is that something? Who should they call? What should they do?
BARACK OBAMA: I mean, the first thing is, write a personal letter to your congressman and your two senators, I -- or a personal e-mail. Because I think that that gets people`s attention. And you can organize in your church, in your synagogue, in your mosque, in your union hall, in your book club so that you can make sure that more and more people are participating. I think that`s important.
There is going to be on April 30th a large rally in Washington. For those that are interested, I think the Web site is SaveDarfur.com.
NICHOLAS KRISTOF: SaveDarfur.org.
BARACK OBAMA: Dot-org. And if people get on that Web site, if they`re interested in participating, I think that that will send a strong signal to the country that this is something that we`re paying a great deal of attention to.
And, obviously, we still need humanitarian resources. And I think investigating those organizations that both Jan and Ken mentioned that are doing good work on the ground, they still need a lot of support, and we have to make sure that they have the resources available to do it.
NICHOLAS KRISTOF: Well, thank you very much. I`m afraid that`s all the time we have for today. But I`d like it thank our guests. Here in New York, Jan Egeland, from the U.N. From Chicago, Senator Barack Obama. And from Washington, Ken Bacon of Refugees International. Thanks very much for joining us.
END
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Document PBSCR00020060426e24p00001

WSJA(4/25) What's News, Business And Finance
326 words

24 April 2006

08:48 PM

Dow Jones Chinese Financial Wire

DJCFWE

English

Copyright (c) 2006, Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
WSJA(4/25) What's News, Business And Finance
(From THE WALL STREET JOURNAL ASIA)
The dollar fell sharply against its rivals, particularly in Asia, spurring a selloff in the region's stocks. Tokyo's Nikkei average dropped 2.8%. The dollar's weakness followed a G-7 finance ministers' call for greater flexibility of currencies.
U.S. stocks declined midday amid mixed corporate-earnings reports, the dollar's fall and a drop in oil prices.
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