The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight: A summary of today's news; a look at the deal to set Yasser Arafat free; different perspectives on President Bush's handling of foreign affairs; a report on Cardinal George's return to Chicago after the Vatican meeting; a conversation about a neighborhood in Los Angeles; and essayist Anne Taylor Fleming's story about kids with cameras. NEWS SUMMARY JIM LEHRER: Israeli troops took over the West Bank town of Hebron today. At least nine Palestinians were killed. It followed an attack by Islamic militants on a nearby Jewish settlement. In Ramallah, Israeli tanks remained outside Yasser Arafat's headquarters. He may be allowed to travel freely later this week under a new agreement. And in Bethlehem today, Israeli troops killed a Palestinian gunman outside the Church of the Nativity. More than 200 armed Palestinians remain holed up there. We'll have more on this in a few minutes. The United States today regained its seat on the UN Human Rights Commission. It had been voted off a year ago, for the first time in the commission's 47-year history. This year, Italy and Spain pulled out of the running, opening the way for the U.S. to seek an uncontested seat. Turkey today officially agreed to take command of peacekeeping in Afghanistan, for six months. Britain has led the UN mission since it was established in December. Turkey is the only Muslim nation to participate. British officials said the transfer of command probably would not happen before June.The peacekeeping force of 4,500 troops has limited its operations to the Kabul area. More than 30 tornadoes swept across the eastern United States last night, from Missouri to Maryland, and from Tennessee to New York. At least six people were killed, and more than 130 injured. Kwame Holman narrates our report. KWAME HOLMAN: La Plata, Maryland, 25 miles south of Washington, DC, took a pounding around dusk yesterday. A twister tore up a 12-mile stretch through the town of 6,500. A sign was all that was left where a drugstore stood, a fast-food restaurant had its roof and a wall ripped away, a school was heavily damaged, and homes were demolished. Two people were killed, one when his house collapsed on him, a third died in a neighboring county; 12 were critically hurt, and another 83 had serious to major injuries. JACK BLAND, La Plata, Maryland: And I seen it coming, and I backed up and come down here to get away from it, and I couldn't get away, it caught me. It just picked the car up and spun it around like a top. Just banged the car with bricks and board. BRANDI CHRIST, La Plata, Maryland: My car is totaled, it's got a telephone pole on top of it. They said if it wasn't for the telephone pole, the tornado would've picked us up and thrown us. KWAME HOLMAN: In Missouri, winds of up to 180 miles an hour blew through the town of Marble Hill, in the southeastern part of the state. There, a 12-year-old boy was flung 50 yards to his death. There were also fatalities in Kentucky and Illinois. Dozens were injured there as well as in Indiana, Ohio, and Tennessee. And at the northern edge of the storm, 20 inches of snow fell in parts of Wisconsin and Minnesota where four were killed in auto accidents. JIM LEHRER: The U.S. Supreme Court ruled today disabled workers do not always have the right to plum assignments over more senior employees. The 5-4 decision effectively narrowed the scope of the Americans with Disabilities Act where it conflicts with seniority systems. The case involved a U.S. Airways employee with a back injury. Health plans should give mental illnesses the same level of coverage they give physical ailments. President Bush said today he supports that idea, and he pressed Congress to act. House Republicans and business groups oppose such a bill. They argue it would drive up the cost of benefits. The President said too many victims of mental illness go untreated. Today marked the tenth anniversary of the worst riots in Los Angeles history. They erupted in April 1992, after a jury acquitted four white policemen of beating Rodney King, a black motorist. In four days of violence, 55 people were killed, more than 2,000 hurt. Property damage reached $1 billion. Today, President Bush marked the anniversary with a visit to a local church, and a discussion with community leaders. Americans earned more, and spent more in March. The Commerce Department reported today both consumer spending and personal incomes rose 0.4% last month. Consumer spending accounts for about two-thirds of all U.S. economic activity. That's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to: Freedom for Arafat; the Bush approach to foreign affairs; a Cardinal back home; a Los Angeles neighborhood; and an Anne Taylor Fleming essay. FOCUS - STALEMATE BROKEN? JIM LEHRER: The deal to allow Arafat to leave his Israeli surrounded compound. It was agreed to hours before the Israelis occupied the West Bank town of Hebron. We begin with a report on that action by John Irvine of Independent Television News. JOHN IRVINE: By late this afternoon, the invasion was complete. It had taken the army just a few hours to seize control here. We found an empty town center. Tens of thousands of people had been forced to abandon the streets. A strict curfew gave the Israeli army free reign and soldiers have been carrying out house-to- house searches. Many Palestinian men have been arrested and taken away for questioning. The operation is retaliation for the weekend killing by Hamas of four Israeli civilians, including a child. So far in Hebron, at least nine Palestinians have died. The incursion follows another appeal by President Bush for the army to withdraw from all Palestinian territory. Palestinians say the incursion is an act of bad faith because it follows the reaching of a compromise that will end the Israeli siege of Yasser Arafat. Under the deal, six men wanted by Israel will be held in a Palestinian prison guarded by British and American wardens. JIM LEHRER: At the State Department this afternoon, Secretary of State Powell described the negotiations aimed at allowing chairman Arafat to leave his Ramallah headquarters. COLIN POWELL: The details are being worked out. A British advance team has arrived in the region. They will be in discussions with both the Israelis and the Palestinians. We are dispatching an American representative from the State Department to join in those discussions, and I would expect that within the next 24 to 48 hours all of the various details will be worked out and hopefully a transfer will take place that will then allow Chairman Arafat to have the flexibility needed for movement around the occupied territories so he can take up his responsibilities once again to end the violence, end terrorism, and to rebuild the functioning structures... recreate functioning structures within the Palestinian Authority so that we can get back to a path of security, a path of negotiations and a path that will allow humanitarian reconstruction aid to come into the region. JIM LEHRER: And to Gwen Ifill. GWEN IFILL: For more on how the deal to release Arafat came together and why, we're joined by: Hisham Melhem, Washington correspondent for the Beirut newspaper, "As-Safir;" and David Makovsky, who was executive editor of "the Jerusalem Post," and diplomatic correspondent for "ha'aretz," Israel's leading daily. He is now a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. GWEN IFILL: So, David, is this a done deal, this deal to release Arafat? DAVID MAKOVSKY: My understanding is the basic outline is done. As the Secretary of State said in that clip there's a lot of modalities left to be done. I mean it seems like the CIA, MI-6 people are going to go out there and monitor these prisons. With all the technology available today in video cameras you don't necessarily have to be inside the prisons to know that these six people are being kept. But I think those modalities will be worked out, but the principle basically is done. GWEN IFILL: Hisham, Do they have to be released first before he walks free or does he walk free and then they are released? How does this work? HISHAM MELHEM: In a day or two we'll probably see the British team taking custody of the six Palestinian prisoners probably moved to a facility that was built by the British interestingly enough in 1940s in Jericho. Then within a week probably an American component will join them -- again a number between six to eight unarmed observers or what they're calling them now verifiers. These will be in charge of the six Palestinians but there are many other logistical and political issues still pending. I mean we don't know for instance whether these six will serve the sentences already rendered against them by the Palestinians or whether they will be retried again. The Americans are saying essentially that we want to make sure now that there will be no revolving doors that in a sense these people will be kept under the supervision of the British and the American observe is. GWEN IFILL: And, David, this was no mean feat to get Sharon and the Israeli parliament to agree to this. This was a pretty big reversal for Ariel Sharon. DAVID MAKOVSKY: It was. He's taking a lot of these from his conservative base and from his rival Benjamin Netanyahu. There are a lot of channels here. Obviously what was going on in Crawford Texas between the U.S. and the Saudis was a key driver. You had also kind of back channel Israeli-Palestinian discussions, Omri Sharon, the Prime Minister's son, who is in constant contact with Mohammed Rasheed who is Arafat's finance person was another channel. Then you had Colin Powell making a call to Sharon followed up by a Presidential call. It got really high drama, a six-hour cabinet meeting in the middle -- Condoleezza Rice calling Sharon's aides to find out what was going on. Things didn't look good. Condi Rice threw in an invitation to Sharon to come next week to Washington for the Prime Minister. But made the case really in passionate terms about U.S. interests with the Saudis and ultimately was the Prime Minister who swung his own Likud faction around who was dead against this thing and said we have got to do this for the sake of U.S.-Israel relations and he brought the cabinet behind him. GWEN IFILL: If Ariel Sharon felt he was under pressure to do this, Hisham, who was pressuring or who was talking to the Palestinians on the other side of this? HISHAM MELHEM: The Saudis played a principal role in convincing the Palestinians to accept this compromise. The evolution of this whole compromise which is now in the diplomatic parlance as the Lockerbie model to put the suspects under the control of a third party as happened with the Libyan controversy with the Americans and the British in the past few years. Colin Powell addressed that idea with the Palestinian leadership. Arafat was amenable to the idea. Later on the idea was fleshed out further with Bill Burns, Secretary Powell's assistant for near eastern affairs. Then the Saudis discussed at length their eight-point proposals that the conference presented to President Bush at Crawford last week, which included a resolution of the Ramallah siege. Again, the Saudis told the Americans that Arafat will accept the deal if Sharon accepts the deal. Then the machinery of the United States began to work. Then you had Condi Rice discussing it with Sharon, Colin Powell discussing it with Sharon. Then finally Saturday the President talked to Sharon and to sweeten the deal he offered them a visit to the White House probably next Tuesday. But in essence it took the United States a great deal of work. Colin Powell deserves part of the credit. The Saudis again who came with some proposals discussed it with the President also deserves some credit too. GWEN IFILL: There is some reporting out there that part of the sweetener also was that the UnitedStates would support Israel's resistance to the United Nations' investigation of whatever happened at Jenin. DAVID MAKOVSKY: There is no explicit quid pro quo. The Israelis would like... it didn't happen exactly that way, but there was a letter today the Foreign Minister Peres sent to Colin Powell listing six points of concern. And primarily I don't want to get into all the technical points but at the heart of it was this idea that if the UN is looking into the Jenin refugee camp, this is a UN... it's headed by UNRA, which is the UN refugee agency. They should look into how a UN camp is allowing all this weaponry, all these suicide bombers to exist there. 28 bombers came from the Jenin refugee camp. They're saying there should be a little symmetry. The problem has been the utter lack of trust between the UN and Israel that they could resolve it on their own, so even if there's no quid pro quo Israel is hopeful that the U.S. will intervene and iron out some of these issues and then they will... the monitoring, the investigation to continue. GWEN IFILL: Today, Hisham, Israel tank went into Hebron as a retaliation for an earlier attack, the same cycle we've seen. To what degree did that incursion, which once again came after the President asked Israel... Israeli forces to withdraw, to what degree does that put in jeopardy a deal like this? HISHAM MELHEM: Well, I heard from Arab sources as well as American sources a great deal of frustration today. They were talking about an Israeli pattern. Every time the President urges the Prime Minister publicly to withdraw from one area, the Prime Minister a few hours later enters another area. People were saying that if this continues, probably it will undermine any deal we reach on Yasser Arafat or on the church of nativity. People are hoping that the model can be repeated with the Church of Nativity again -- put those people under the custody of the American or British observers. Someone... one of my sources today couldn't hide his frustration when he said, look, it took the President this kind of tension and probing for Sharon to convince him to accept a compromise on a minor issue. What is it going to take to convince Sharon to stop settlement activities for instance if it requires that kind of intervention on the part of the President of the United States? So what the Prime Minister is doing... I mean there is this Israeli spin now that we compromise on Ramallah in order to take a harder line on Jenin and to chase Palestinians in various towns and cities. But I think the United Nations will be forced in the end to dispatch a force to Jenin with or without the approval of Sharon. GWEN IFILL: Is this a pattern we're talking about here? DAVID MAKOVSKY: I think the good news here -- where Hisham and I agree here -- I think that the good news of this model is if you could stop the revolving door because for ten years now one of the biggest most central problems of this peace process has been the idea that terrorists have been jailed today and then let out tomorrow morning. If under British or American cooperation there could now be clear that someone who is in prison stays in prison this could actually be a very important confidence building matter for the future. I think there's a little ray of hope here that can be built on. Maybe these guys from the Church of the Nativity, same thing. I mean these were suicide bombers from Bethlehem. That's why they're stuck there. GWEN IFILL: But what about when the President says withdraw and then Israelis not only don't withdraw but go into a new city? Is that pattern? Is this Israeli spin like he's talking about? DAVID MAKOVSKY: No. There was an attack in a settlement outside of Hebron killing like a five-year-old girl and few others. The perpetrators ran into the Hebron area. And so you can't say okay we'll stop here in Ramallah in terrorism but we're going to start in Hebron. It's not a diversion tactic. It's just the idea of Israel trying to defend it citizens. HISHAM MELHEM: Last week he did the same thing with Tulkarem. After the President urged him to withdraw, he just went into Tulkarem. DAVID MAKOVSKY: We agree. You stop the bombing, you stop the incursions. It's a very simple equation. GWEN IFILL: Assume this deal comes together, this Arafat release deal. What does he find when he walks out of his headquarters in Ramallah for the first time in months? What's there for him? Political infrastructure, physical infrastructure? HISHAM MELHEM: A wasteland, a great deal of desolation that Ariel Sharon is calling it peace. Even the Americans admit now... and this is according to the reports that Bill Burns has been sending here because he stayed there after Colin Powell left, that Arafat's ability to control his security structure has diminished considerably. It is going to be extremely difficult for Arafat to deliver on his own promises to the Saudis let alone to the Americans, to take charge of the security situation in the territories under his control, to control his own people let alone control Hamas and the Jihad. It will be a Herculean task even for Arafat if you say you'll his heart is in it and he's willing to do it. That's why I think the President is correct, there has to be a great deal of economic support to the Palestinians, humanitarian support for the Palestinians, but also the Palestinians are going to need help as Colin Powell understands very well to rebuild the security infrastructure to deliver on their own promises. GWEN IFILL: David. DAVID MAKOVSKY: First of all in Gaza is untouched. We've had this going on since Oslo '93. It's not like, oh, all of a sudden there's destruction. Where was he for nine years? If you want to start, let's start in Gaza. There were no incursions there. I agree with the principle of rehabilitation. There's apparently a lot of economic money out there to rebuild the economies of both sides. And I think that that's... that actually is a good idea. But we just got to keep the bombers out of these UN camps. I mean there is a Security Council resolutions on this. So I'm hopeful that it's a better day but it might be hope against experience given the leadership we've seen. GWEN IFILL: That will have to be the last word. David Makovsky, Hisham Melhem, thank you very much. DAVID MAKOVSKY: Thank you. HISHAM MELHEM: Thank you. FOCUS - WORLD VIEWS JIM LEHRER: Now an assessment of President Bush's overall foreign policy and to Margaret Warner. MARGARET WARNER: The Israeli- Palestinian conflict is but one of several interrelated foreign policy challenges President Bush has faced since September 11. For an assessment of how he's handling those challenges, we turn to: William Kristol, editor of the "Weekly Standard." Fareed Zakaria, editor of "Newsweek International," and a columnist for "Newsweek" magazine and the "Washington Post." And Jessica Tuchman Mathews, President of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Welcome, all. Jessica Mathews, the President finally got Yasser Arafat and Ariel Sharon to actually agree on something. Should this be seen as a coup for his foreign policy and his handling of foreign policy? JESSICA TUCHMAN MATHEWS, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace: I think coup overstates it but it's an important step on what is going to be a very long and bumpy road. MARGARET WARNER: Bill. WILLIAM KRISTOL, Weekly Standard: Well, I just don't think it means that much. Arafat I think is finished. The Oslo peace process is over. That's the big story of the last few weeks. This process from 1993 to 2002 the peace process that did not produce peace is over. Now we may be able to get a new peace process going through an international conference. But I think Arafat is no longer a central figure. MARGARET WARNER: Fareed Zakaria, do you think that the way the President handled this this weekend represents something of an evolution in his approach? FAREED ZAKARIA, Newsweek International: Margaret, I think it does mark an evolution in his approach and I think it marks the effective exercise of American power. Look, the United States has been calling for the withdrawal of Israeli troops and the ending of the seizure of Ramallah for four weeks with one flip flop in the middle. The reason it happened with the President did more than just toss words out at a news conference and actually used American power. He got on the phone. He got others online. And there was a kind of consistency. You know, the President talks a great deal about moral clarity. Which is very important in foreign policy. But there's also the importance of policy clarity. It's important that it be clear, it be consistent, that there aren't people undercutting you left, right and center, while you're pursuing a policy. MARGARET WARNER: Jessica Mathews, if you look back at what President Bush has for instance said about Yasser Arafat you wouldn't have expected this deal to take place. How do you explain it? JESSICA TUCHMAN MATHEWS: Well, I think it's clear that much as we'd perhaps prefer to have some other leader of the Palestinian people, that Sharon's policy has... policies have brought Arafat back into the center and that U.S. policy had to deal with that, had to... and I think the other important point about this is that if there was ever a situation that illustrated the dangers of overdoing talk about moral clarity, this is it, and that seeking moral clarity in a situation of moral ambiguity, where there's right and wrong on both sides, is a misguided goal. And I hope the Administration takes that lesson from it. MARGARET WARNER: When you say moral clarity, do you mean essentially dividing the world into good and evil. JESSICA TUCHMAN MATHEWS: I do, yeah. MARGARET WARNER: Or sketching out American foreign policy as a fight against evil. JESSICA TUCHMAN MATHEWS: There are a whole bunch of risks with doing this. One is it's an invitation to oversimplification. And you get things out of it, slogans like axis of evil that lump together totally different countries and that are very counterproductive to U.S. interests. It also invites you to expose your own weakness because governments almost never act with moral clarity for a very good reason. And that is that they have competing interests. And the U.S., above all, has lots of competing interests. Foreign policy is about making choices. Fareed is right. You've got to have some degree of policy clarity. You want to act with as much of a moral content as you can, but moral clarity as a policy goal which has now become such a mantra of everybody's... any policy can be used to support almost any policy. It's a mistake. And we have suffered I think since 9/11 and increasingly over the last couple months with the policy that wrongly portrays the world as right and wrong, with us or against us. MARGARET WARNER: Do you think, Bill Kristol that the President has overemphasized this moral clarity, this good versus evil as a sort of guiding principle of his foreign policy? WILLIAM KRISTOL: I think good and evil is a pretty good guiding principle of life. And it's a very good guiding principle for American foreign policy. The countries -- the regimes that he labeled the axis of evil do have one thing in common which is they're pretty evil. People would be better off if they were changed and we should seek to change those regimes, diplomatically if we can and militarily if we must. That's a reasonable and an important goal of American foreign policy given that they're developing weapons of mass destruction. I'm a defender of moral clarity. I mean obviously there are times when you have to make compromises. MARGARET WARNER: Was this one of those times? WILLIAM KRISTOL: Sure it was. I think the reason he did it incidentally was not that he's changed his mind about Arafat; it was because it was important to the Saudis. The Administration in my view incorrectly but still this is their view thinks it's very important to give the Saudis some gesture that shows that the Crown Prince Abdullah's trip was -- produced something. The easiest thing to produce was to let Arafat go free from Ramallah and wander around I guess the rest of the West Bank. But I think that's what was involved here. It wasn't a change of the President's attitude towards Arafat or I think towards the basic Israeli-Palestinian dynamic. It was a little bit of a gesture to the Saudis. JESSICA TUCHMAN MATHEWS: Of course, it not just Arafat. Not just the Saudis, the whole Arab world. MARGARET WARNER: Fareed Zakaria, people close to the President have said for months now that September 11 really gave him a focus. And really gave him a way to have a coherence and a consistency to his approach to the world. One, do you think that's true? And two, do you think it's been useful? FAREED ZAKARIA: Oh, I think it's very true. And I think it's been very useful. Look, the President's handling of foreign policy has been in the first phase of this war on terrorism very good. He rallied the country. He infused this struggle with a certain kind of moral purpose and clarity, which was very useful. The problem is now we've gone past the kind of reactive phase of the war on terrorism, you know, fighting al-Qaida in Afghanistan, doing the initial rolling up of al-Qaida. We now move to the longer-term strategy. And we are at a crossroads because using those simple rules of thumb are not very useful when you get into this big messy world out there. I entirely agree with Bill Kristol that moral clarity is a good thing in life and in foreign policy in particular, but you have to remember that that doesn't tell you what to do tomorrow in a certain policy situation. Ronald Reagan was one for great moral clarity and spoke about the evils of communism, but he forged and expanded our alliance with Communist China. Winston Churchill railed about totalitarianism and he got into bed with Soviet Russia. So it's fine to have moral clarity but now we're going to have to figure out how we achieve American interests, which are much broader than a simple good versus evil in any specific circumstance. For example, we're against terrorism. But when we see the Russians respond to Chechen terrorism by leveling whole villages in Chechnya, are we just going to say, well, it's the war on terrorism and terrorism is bad and that means those fighting it are good? No, of course we're going to have a more nuanced response to it as we should. Even on moral issues leave alone political issues there's a whole world of grays out there. MARGARET WARNER: Do you see, Jessica Matthews, in this Administration an appreciate of those world of grays, an evolution to that or that? JESSICA TUCHMAN MATHEWS: No, not nearly enough. I think that there's a more important word missing from all this, which is legitimacy, missing from the administration's appreciation of the U.S. role in the world. The last thing we want over the long term is to live in a world where countries are invited to decide that they don't like another government or they have a right to depose it because they consider it evil. What we want and what is in our interest is to live in a rule of law... governed by the rule of law. And by that measure, it matters to the U.S. the legitimacy of how it acts, what it chooses to do, and there... and that also pre-supposes a recognition that other countries, particularly all 190 of them, you know, together, what they think matters. And I think more and more as this... since September 11 but in this recent period, the Administration has shown a very thinly veiled contempt for the opinions of others and a more and more of an inclination to say we'll decide. I mean this is the key issue about Iraq -- about moving against Iraq. We think they're evil. We'll act as a preventive self-defense. But, you know, suppose India decides that Pakistan is evil, we'll have a nuclear war on our hands. So it's not a good measure... MARGARET WARNER: This is a question for you, Bill Kristol. You are of course an advocate of action in Iraq. Is there the danger that Jessica Mathews just outlined? WILLIAM KRISTOL: No, I don't think.... MARGARET WARNER: In the sort of go it alone. WILLIAM KRISTOL: Well, obviously we should get the allies we can. I think we will have allies in deposing Saddam Hussein. This is not a subjective matter that we happen to think he's evil and other people happen to think he's good. He's a horribly brutal dictator, developing weapons of mass destruction in violation of UN resolutions -- no inspectors for three or four years. The alternative is not the rule of law. The alternative is to sit there and let him develop weapons of mass destruction. I don't think that's an acceptable alternative. JESSICA TUCHMAN MATHEWS: The alternative is an effective inspections regime, which we have not tried and could. MARGARET WARNER: Fareed Zakaria, jump in on this debate. FAREED ZAKARIA: Well, I think it's very important to try to fuse power and legitimacy. This is something the United States has always tried to do. I think that Iraq is a real problem. And I think that we have to do something about it. I would prefer that the Administration go down a path that tries to use international legal tools, the UN inspections, et cetera, and if that doesn't work, as I suspect it won't, you have built a certain kind of legitimacy and you have built allies, which makes it more likely you can act in a way that doesn't seem unilateral. This is something the United States has typically been very good at. You see, when you have the kind of power we do, I think Jessica is right. There is a danger that it seems... that, you know, that you are simply acting on whim. And it's important that we demonstrate that we are restrained by certain norms, conventions, only because it makes the exercise of our power more effective. The greatest empires in the world and the United States is in some sense an empire, havealways exercised power by seeming to take into account the interests of others. The President has been great at rallying the country toward a common purpose. Rallying the world toward a common purpose is a similar task. He can do it but he has to take into account the interests of other countries, the passions of other countries, and not do it in a way that, you know, gets... that subsumes or waters down our own interests or our own policy. These things are not either/or propositions. I think we have to do something about Iraq. I think the President is right about. Regime change is probably the only option. But there are ways to do that. That's what diplomacy is all about. JESSICA TUCHMAN MATHEWS: But I think you have to put this in the broader context of what other countries are seeing. Over the last two years, the United States has rejected the creation of the international criminal court, rejected the treaty to ban anti-personnel land mines, rejected the climate change treaty, unilaterally abrogated the anti-ballistic missile treaty, announced it will build a national missile defense. All of these decisions split us from our closest allies, Europe, unanimously, and we're overwhelmingly everyone that was voted on overwhelmingly approved by a great majority of countries in the world and in which the countries that opposed them, our company, were China, Cuba, Libya, Iran, Iraq. In only one case, two other democracies, India and Israel in one case. Now that kind of isolation is not a position from which the country can rally the rest of the countries of the world towards its interests. MARGARET WARNER: Self-defeating. FAREED ZAKARIA: The one point.... MARGARET WARNER: No. I'll let Fareed. FAREED ZAKARIA: I'm sorry. MARGARET WARNER: Go ahead, Fareed. FAREED ZAKARIA: The one point I would make, Jessica. I think that the United States and the Bush Administration should have tried much harder to work within these organizations and treaties but the United States does have -- play a unique role in the world. We are, you know, the Hegemon of the world. Our troops are out there keeping peace, making peace, fighting wars. It is... we occupy a slightly different place in the world than Sweden or Norway. MARGARET WARNER: I'm so sorry. We have to leave it there. We're totally out of time. Thank you all three. JIM LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight: Back home in Chicago, a Los Angeles neighborhood, and an Anne Taylor Fleming essay. UPDATE - CHURCH IN CRISIS JIM LEHRER: In recent days, American Catholic Cardinals have returned from their Vatican meetings with the Pope to face their flock. Elizabeth Brackett of WTTW-Chicago spent time this weekend with one of them. ELIZABETH BRACKETT: At an airport news conference shortly after his return to Chicago, Cardinal Francis George began to try and explain the recommendations from the conference. The most controversial recommendation: Only priests who are serial sexual offenders should be immediately removed from the priesthood. CARDINAL FRANCIS GEORGE: I understand some people are saying it wasn't successful because we didn't agree on a so- called zero tolerance policy, it therefore was not a success, but in fact, it wasn't our job to agree on that. We talked to the Holy Father, his own pain and anxiety about the situation was made extremely clear. ELIZABETH BRACKETT: He said little about the controversy that afternoon, as he consecrated a new church building at the predominantly Hispanic Holy Family Church in Waukegan. But many parishioners we spoke to had hoped for a zero tolerance policy from the Cardinals. Parishioner Lilly Valadez had watched the conference closely. LILLY VALADEZ: I actually thought they were going to do something like A... maybe zero tolerance, you know, since they traveled to Rome, I thought it was going to be something more dramatic. ELIZABETH BRACKETT: Did that disappoint you or not? LILLY VALADEZ: It's a very hard issue and to think that a priest sexually abusing children, it's just very hard to understand. ELIZABETH BRACKETT: It was the interpretation of zero tolerance that troubled Cardinal George. CARDINAL FRANCIS GEORGE: What does a zero tolerance policy mean? What do they mean by that? So anything like this you're on the streets? I think you have to take it case by case. If the perpetrator feels some remorse, you can do a lot of things. If he feels absolutely no remorse, then he should be in protective custody not only in jail until the term rests out, but after that -- protected, so he can't harm anybody if you have somebody who in a sense is reformable, well then other forms of monitoring are possible. ELIZABETH BRACKETT: Priests received strong support at Holy Family, influenced perhaps by the extraordinary actions of their Pastor, Reverend Gary Graf, who had just donated part of his liver to save a parishioner's life. REV. GARY GRAF: Even as the sins of the very, very, very few priests bring us shame, so also today the good deeds and the self sacrifice of a very, very, very good priest, your Pastor, Father Gary Graf, brings us all great pride. ( Applause ) ELIZABETH BRACKETT: Parishioner Auscencio Quiroz strongly supports the Cardinal. AUSCENCIO QUROZ: I think he's being in a very strong side. He's supporting what the Pope is trying to push through, and I agree with them that he's saying that it's a crime what the priests are doing, and we're going to support them in any way possible. ELIZABETH BRACKETT: Members of the church had a harder time with the question of what to do about priests who sexually abused children years ago. Parishioner, Pastor Martinez. PASTOR MARTINEZ: That's really hard, really hard to say. It needs to be dealt from with within their parish. From my experience I couldn't say, I could not say what should be done with that person. ELIZABETH BRACKETT: Some of the archdiocesan priests had hoped for a stronger statement from the Cardinals. Father Esquiel Sanchez directs the archdiocese office for Hispanic Catholics. FATHER ESQUIEL SANCHEZ, Chicago Archdiocese: What I would have like to have heard was no tolerance for pedophilia at all, and all of us feel that way, because it affects us so badly. ELIZABETH BRACKETT: And no tolerance would mean? FATHER ESQUIEL SANCHEZ: No tolerance that as soon as we hear of a case that someone who has exercised in sexual misconduct with a min... with a child, has no place in the priesthood. You cannot exercise public ministry with that background, because the priesthood is a public ministry. You're consistently public, this Church and churches our huge, 400 or 500 people at a time and more so than that. And so it's hard to have a moral voice when you have that kind of background. ELIZABETH BRACKETT: On Sunday at a northwest suburban parish's 100th anniversary celebration, again the Cardinal touched only briefly on the Rome meetings. SPOKESMAN: The only good thing about this terribly shameful period that we find ourselves, is that perhaps there is a chance to speak words that tell the world who we are as Christ's people. It is very, very hard to explain how it is that one can be out of the ministry, but not out of the priesthood. ELIZABETH BRACKETT: Dorothy Petraitis has rarely missed a Sunday at St. James. She was concerned that Cardinal George had put too much emphasis on priests and not enough on victims. DOROTHY PETRAITIS: I think before he rejects zero tolerance, he ought to look at all the issues involved in that. What I read in the paper today he is looking at how the Church might support priests who have been accused, and, you know, I hope they do that. At the same token, I've worked with those who have been sexually abused, not by priests, but in the general population, and it is an awful thing to happen. So I hope that they take into account not only looking after the priests, but also looking after victims. ELIZABETH BRACKETT: The Cardinal had been sharply criticized by the national organization for women in Chicago after appearing to underestimate the trauma of young girls sexual abuse by priests. But the Cardinal says he was painfully aware of the violation of trust in any sexual abuse. CARDINAL FRANCIS GEORGE: That's the horror of that abuse and every other abuse. For the most part, it's done by people whom they have come to trust and like. It's not strangers who do this, it's people in their families, it's the teacher, it's the priest; it's the leader of the youth group. They know these people. This is not rape in the sense that, it is statutory rape, but I mean, it's not as if they're taken by violence on the street. All these cases, they betrayed trust. These are people that trusted. That's the horror of it. ELIZABETH BRACKETT: At St. James' Parish, Jenny Quinn wanted to see more steps taken to combat that horror. JENNY QUINN: I have actually have two friends who are considering leaving for good as a result of what's happening here, and I think that... that he needs to know that. That he is losing young people and young people are the future of the Church. And I think if he really is smart, he'll be as aggressive as he possibly can be and send the right message so that young people stay with the Church and aren't ashamed to say that they're Catholic. ELIZABETH BRACKETT: The Cardinal's are hearing that, says George, and will do whatever it takes to heal the wounds when the bishops meet to finalize sexual abuse policies in June. CARDINAL FRANCIS GEORGE: If people want one strike and your on the streets, we'll do that. We'll do that. That's a pastoral response to the feeling of people. But we've got a few months, let's think it through so that some kind of considered response is possible. If it isn't possible in order to restore pastoral confidence of the people in the priests and Bishops, that's the way well go, and we've all said that. And if that's what people want and they insist that that's the only way that this can be handled, that's what we will do. I'm saying I don't, at this point personally think, we should not do that without asking a couple more questions. ELIZABETH BRACKETT: Parishioners and clergy will be closely watching the June Bishop's meeting in Dallas. CONVERSATION JIM LEHRER: Next tonight, a conversation about a new book that looks at one neighborhood in Los Angeles. Ray Suarez has that. RAY SUAREZ: The book is "The Republic of East LA." It's a collection of short stories about the barrios of Los Angeles. The author is Luis Rodriguez, essayist, poet and storyteller. He's lived and worked in the Los Angeles neighborhood he writes about, and in these stories he sketches very real people living with hope, struggle, modest victories, and sometimes crushing setbacks. Luis Rodriguez, welcome. LUIS RODRIGUEZ: Thank you for having me. RAY SUAREZ: Now, you've been a published poet for a long time. You got a lot of attention with your memoir. LUIS RODRIGUEZ: Mm-hmm. RAY SUAREZ: Why did you turn to fiction? LUIS RODRIGUEZ: You know, I actually started writing them about 20 years ago. The oldest story's about 20 years old, and I think what happened, over the last three years I really got into thinking I could do this -- because all my non-fiction work, it focuses on reality and things. I really thought it was good to begin to imagine these people -- based on real people, based on experiences I knew -- but kind of like imagine them in different situations or how they would grow. And that was intriguing to me, but also I thought I could probably do it, and ended up with about a dozen stories. RAY SUAREZ: Well, the East LA that emerges from your stories is, on the one hand, like a separate universe from the rest of LA that's known by tourists and many Americans from TV shows -- very much a part, yet very much hooked into the life of the rest of the city, all at the same time. LUIS RODRIGUEZ: Yeah. I think that's kind of what makes it what it is. It's got a flavor all its own. People who don't know LA, the LA has a certain kind of sameness, you know, but when you get to East LA, it's like a different world. People are out in the street. People are actually... families are everywhere. There's things happening all the time. It's more compacted. And I wanted to catch that flavor while, at the same time, it definitely tied into all the communities, especially the working-class communities all around LA and other cities, because these stories are really ultimately about working-class people. RAY SUAREZ: The people have their own language, customs, street ways, extended families, relations, yet they still have to live in that other city. They work there. Sometimes their kids go to school there. Their bosses live there. So that west side is there, but not there, at the same time. LUIS RODRIGUEZ: Yeah, it's almost amazing because you can see downtown's big huge skyscrapers over, looming the barrios. But there's people there that have never been further beyond downtown. There's some who have never been to the beach. And this is an amazing thing when you think about it. How can you live in LA and not have gone to the beach? But there's self-contained parts of those communities. Yes, there's people that get around, they work in those places, they know where the job and come back home, and they seem to just see home as "that's where everything is." That's where their families are. And there's kids that I know that just don't know anything else. They mention LA... they actually use LA like it was another world. It's, like, "wait a minute, you live in LA" "Oh." They never think of it this way. RAY SUAREZ: But the people on the west side don't exactly get to East LA that often, either. LUIS RODRIGUEZ: Exactly. That's the other side of it. They really ignore it. It's a city that people talk about. It's got rumors all over the place. People know about the gangs and poverty, but very few would ever venture into East LA Proper. Very few, if you ask them what's it like, they have no idea. They just know what's over there is across the LA River, and that's really the end of it. RAY SUAREZ: The cast of characters that emerges from these stories sort of illustrate the whole range of Mexican- American life at the beginning of this century. Some people have been here for many generations. English has become more dominant than Spanish in their home. Manypeople got here just, like, the day before yesterday, yet they live together. LUIS RODRIGUEZ: I wanted to bring that out. There's tensions because of it, of course there's also connections, but the tensions people don't talk about. And, as you know, one of the stories actually has two brothers who see differently the Mexican population coming in. And you do have these people who have been there so long, and all they do is speak English, and then you've got this new large number of immigrants that's recently come in. And then, all of a sudden, you start seeing fairly poor people looking at each other and saying, "wait a minute, I'm better than you." You know what I'm saying? They start playing that game, you know, "we're both poor but I'm better than you." Pretty soon you start seeing people put people down. And I wanted to bring it out because I see that East LA has got a lot of beauty, it's got a lot of strength, but it also has some of these things that we need to look at. Why do we end up hating our own people just because their status or their place is different than ours, or because they speak more Spanish or vice versa? I think it's a matter of looking at what we have as a community that ties us, versus what makes us different. RAY SUAREZ: There are people with more and less education, people who have married out and married in-- are these the kinds of strains that we'd see on a typical block in East LA? LUIS RODRIGUEZ: Well, you know, I think partly when you go to East LA, You know, some blocks are almost all recent immigrants, and then some are older. People actually will own their homes in East LA, which is not that many, but the ones that do have been there for many generations. You have to know kind of like which area is what. Then you have all these in- between things. I think what I wanted to do with these stories was to kind of bring in more of that part of East LA that we're not used to. Again, I'm not saying that the gangs are unfair, or the poverty is unfair-- it's all there-- but that's what generally people talk about. What I wanted to do is... it's in my book, too. What I wanted to do was bring these other people that you don't normally think about, like a young kid who has a rap/metal band. People don't even think that East LA would even pay attention to that. But East LA, like all parts of this country, they have all kind of tastes. They have reggae bands, they have rap, and they have the traditional kind of music, the mariachis and others. They also have los lobos-type bands, but they also have punk bands, and rap and metal bands, and I wanted people to realize that East LA has all the variety of different things that most people wouldn't think that it would have. RAY SUAREZ: And an aspiring journalist and skilled tradesmen. You know, just like anyplace else. LUIS RODRIGUEZ: That's right, and even a winito. ( Laughs ) I had to tell the winito story, too. RAY SUAREZ: Meaning, for those who don't know? LUIS RODRIGUEZ: Yeah, there's a little story about a young guy who ends up an alcoholic. But it's, like, you see the winitos in the corner, you know they're in the neighborhood, but whoever bothers to find out what their story is? And I wanted to bring in a story of one of them, just to see how that would work out. It's a very sad story, because basically, you think about it, there's some sadness that has to be part of that, but I wanted to bring in this kind of evolution of this young man who he becomes one of the local town drunks. RAY SUAREZ: So, when you finish these stories, do you want people to walk away from the book thinking, "this is a different place from anyplace I know"? Or do you want them to have this experience with your book and say, "you know, life in this place is a lot like life in many places in the rest of America?" LUIS RODRIGUEZ: I think the best thing is if they thought both those things at once. To me, if the stories work, if they thought, "man, these are people that are very unique, very special," and at the same time, they're thinking, "you know what? I know these communities. I've been there. They're in Chicago. They're in New York. They're in Texas." You know what I'm saying? And they're not even all Mexicans. Sometimes you can see that working-class strain of immigrants who come to this country over several generations. And they... they're part of that, you know, so I wanted people to be able to find those connections as well as to say you know, these are also very uniquely vital people in their own way. RAY SUAREZ: And is life getting better in the neighborhoods that you're writing about? Did the boom of the '90s miss the boats in East LA, as well as other places in the Southland? LUIS RODRIGUEZ: Well, I think like most parts of the country, it's affected by what happened in the economy. On the one hand, the economy changed on them. These were factory-working people. The big plants, where a lot of them are working-- the meat packing, there is a big steel mill that, in fact, I used to work in-- they all left. They all left in the '80s, and then the people who were left were, "well, what else do we do?" So they get into the service industries. And supposedly that's what's helping them, but even that's not helping. And I think that they're representative of all the economic shifts that's going on in this country where you've got communities that have been pretty much abandoned. The thing that keeps East LA alive, though, is the large number of Mexican immigrants who come in who work at the very lowest of the economic, you know, ladder that there could be, but they're still hard- working people, they're still good people. They still have great values from Mexico that they bring in, and this keeps the kind of churning that East LA is, the kind of mix that it keeps showing up. So I think, on the one hand, it's suffered a lot over the last few years, but on the other hand, I think it also gained a lot of strength, and who knows what the future is going to hold? But when the recession happened, they suffer along with it. But when things pick up a little bit, some of them do better. RAY SUAREZ: "The Republic of East LA." Luis Rodriguez, thanks. LUIS RODRIGUEZ: My pleasure. ESSAY - KIDS WITH CAMERAS JIM LEHRER: Finally tonight, some children in Los Angeles picture life in South Africa. Essayist Anne Taylor Fleming has their story. ANNE TAYLOR FLEMING: The photographs would be compelling no matter who took them. The faces of South Africa: Dancers in full tribal regalia; a homeless girl, pretty and blonde; a mother and child in one of the townships-- they capture what the best pictures often do: The tension between beauty and sorrow. It is hard to imagine that these photographs in this exhibit at the Los Angeles City Hall were taken by kids-- eight, eleven, thirteen. These young photojournalists were among the 7,000 delegates who attended the third world conference against racism that was held in Durban, South Africa, late last summer. Their trip-- and ambitions-- began here in this building, the old Venice Library in this struggling slice of west Los Angeles, home to the Venice arts Mecca, one of those small optimistic neighborhood organizations that hustles to stay afloat and is dedicated to bringing the arts to lower- income kids. (Singing) Six of the lucky ones, who have participated in photography workshops, went on the South Africa trip, sponsored by the Los Angeles Human Relations Commission. It was a noisy, intense, and joyous two-week stay. They went from downtown Durban, site of quite a few anti-western demonstrations, into the townships and the countryside, clicking away as they went, this small photo-tribe of American kids. MICHAEL LINARTE, Age 11: I thought I was going to go to, like, some kind of "national geographic" kind of thing where there was lions and tigers, and people live in huts and stuff like that. When I got there, they actually had, like, houses, but not very good quality houses, unless you went to, like, the better areas. JUSTIN HILL, Age 17: People would walk up to me and ask me... speak to me in Zulu, and I'll say, "no, no, no, no-- I'm from America." And then, after they hear me speak, they go, like, "whoa, okay." ANNE TAYLOR FLEMING: Their cameras gave them an articulateness beyond their years, allowing them to frame images they could not frame with words. In the townships, they taught the local kids how to use cameras and took pictures of burning sugarcane fields. They photographed AIDS orphans, kids about their own age who had lost their parents to the disease, and photographed children in homeless shelters. RAE WRIGHT, Age 9: She came out with her mother, and she asked her if we could take shots of her. Her mother said sure, and so we went in front of her house, and just took shots. ANNE TAYLOR FLEMING: Eight-year-old Ray took the picture of this young girl, who lives in a shelter. The group had taken with them pictures from home, a kind of ambassadorial show-and-tell, to say, "see, people suffer where we come from, too." DELISA ALEJANDRO, Age 13: They thought that America had no poverty, any poverty, that it was just, like, a wonderful place, but then when they looked at some of the books, they were, like, "this is America? I didn't expect it to be like that." ANNE TAYLOR FLEMING: Now they had pictures from South Africa to bring back here and show their friends and classmates, their parents, and their city. They had been out in the world, and like good photojournalists, had brought the world back with them. They also returned to their country feeling lucky and grateful for everything they have. EAMON WRIGHT, Age 13: I actually met a guy from Afghanistan. I met Hasidic Jews, I met, like, Egyptians, everyone. SELENA VARGAS, Age 16: I take them more seriously now. I do, and stuff, because, like, over there, they were just, like... like, they had only a limited amount of stuff and everything so now I take, like... you can never take anything for granted anymore. MICHAEL LINARTE: It made me feel really grateful to live in a house with a loving family. ANNE TAYLOR FLEMING: More than anything, they have their photographs, the beautiful yet haunting images kids took of other kids thousands of miles on the other side of the globe, and often, like the best of photojournalism, some of their work transcends the boundaries of photojournalism and crosses over into art. I'm Anne Taylor Fleming. RECAP JIM LEHRER: Again, the major developments of the day: Israeli troops took over the West Bank town of Hebron after an attack on a nearby Jewish settlement. And Yasser Arafat remained confined to his Ramallah headquarters. But he may be allowed to travel this week under a new agreement. We'll see you online, and again here tomorrow evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.