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CNN SHOWDOWN: IRAQ
Iraq Information Minister Read Saddam's Statement
Aired April 1, 2003 - 12:47 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
LEON HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: We've been asking a lot of questions in the last 45 minutes or so after that tape was played there on Iraqi Television. And we want to get some more perspective and see what the Arab world may be thinking about this, and perhaps see if we're reading correctly what we thought we were reading into this presentation today.
Octavia Nasser of CNN International is with us now.
Going into this now, I want you to clear something up. When we were first getting word that there was going to be an announcement coming from Saddam Hussein that was going to be made on Iraqi Television, we were somehow -- it was, I guess, portrayed at least to us, that it was going to be an announcement directly from Saddam Hussein. What we saw was not that. What we saw was a statement written by Saddam Hussein, read by the information minister. What do we make of that, and was there any misinterpretation here, or what?
OCTAVIA NASSER, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Right, first of all, we have to backtrack. We did hear that there is a speech by Saddam Hussein to his people. No one told us the speech is going to be on Iraqi TV, or one of the other independent channels or carried by one of the agencies. We did not know. All we know is that there is a message.
So now, there's this interpretation game. You know, people say, it's him, he's going to deliver a taped speech, it's going to be live, it's going to go on Iraqi TV, no, it's going to go on the other networks.
So all these are interpretations. I wouldn't want to fall into that trap of saying we thought it was going to be him and it wasn't him. Interpretation, it could be that the word was out that it is a speech.
Now we were scrambling to figure out where it was. Was it going to air on the terrestrial channel of Iraqi TV or the satellite channel of Iraqi TV? I mean, who knows. So that's why I am very skeptical and I'm very, very cautious whenever we say we were expecting him, knowing I wasn't expecting him to be the one delivering that message.
HARRIS: Are you saying perhaps we should not have expected him to deliver that message? Is it expecting too much for him to -- as we were talking about this off camera, the thinking here is that here is a nation at war. And if the message going out saying I want my people to die for me is big and that important a message at this time, it should be delivered by the leader. You're saying that that may not necessarily be the case here?
NASSER: No, because this is not unheard of. I mean, this is the minister of information reading a message from the president of Iraq to his people. If you monitor Iraqi TV like we do on a daily basis 24/7, you will see that a lot. Sometimes an anchor on Iraqi TV will read a message from the minister of information or the foreign minister. A couple days ago, they read a very important letter that supposedly the foreign minister, Naji Sabri, had sent to the U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan. It was an anchor reading the message. So this is not unheard of.
HARRIS: So his absence in this reading this evening does not necessarily indicate anything one way or the other about him being dead or alive?
NASSER: No, not to people who know the culture, people who know Iraqi TV, people who know how things work over there. Now, to go back to your original question, this is an important message that you would think the president himself would want to deliver to his own people.
So, yes, there is a reason why we should question that, how come he didn't deliver it himself? But is it enough reason to think that he is dead, or he's injured, or what's going on? I don't think so. It's not unheard of.
HARRIS: All right, let's get back to the message itself. The language that was used in this message, quite striking. It really struck our Nic Robertson, who has been very familiar with anything covering out of this government, out of Saddam Hussein. And it seemed as though he was calling for a jihad. And we've all been studying the differences between the cultures there. And Saddam Hussein has been a secularist, and here he is using these religious terms here. What do you make of that?
NASSER: Right, this is striking to everybody who's monitoring the situation very closely. This is very new to Saddam Hussein. Now if this message, let's assume for a message that message is from him, then he is definitely having a huge change in policy.
Now he's addressing the Iraqi people on a very emotional way. Any time you bring in the religious aspect to any conversation in the Middle East, then things turn emotional. Yes, he is a secularist. Yes, in his old speeches, religion doesn't have a place.
But here's a president appealing to the emotions of his people. Then again, you have to watch in the last few days, since this war began, he's been addressing Iraqi tribesmen, he's been addressing the clan leaders, he's been addressing the ordinary Iraqi.
So his messages are not just going to the military, but they're going to the ordinary Iraqis.
And one of the interesting analyses that I heard today is that this is a change, and this could be indicative of more to come. In other words, maybe this is -- and this is why maybe he's not reading the message himself. But someone said something very interesting. They said, the Iraqis know Saddam Hussein very well. That was an analyst an Abu Dhabi TV today. He said his people know him very well. They know how to read between the lines whenever he speaks or whenever he delivers a speech. And I think that is very interesting, that the people who observe Saddam Hussein, and Iraq and the Middle East, is saying there's a huge change here, we should be watching for more changes and try to understand what they mean. Why is he now addressing the Iraqi people, and in such an emotional way? Speeches that are charged with religious symbols and religious meanings.
HARRIS: Interesting. I want to talk about this some more down the road. Octavia Nasr, thank you very much. Very interesting.
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