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Fletcher's Hurst Hannum speaks on All
Things Considered.
Interview: Law professors debate issue of US government giving Taliban evidence
gathered against Osama bin Laden 10/03/2001
NPR: All Things Considered Copyright 2001 National Public Radio, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
NOAH ADAMS, host: Tony Blair, Britain's prime minister, says he has seen incontrovertible evidence connecting Osama bin Laden to the attacks. NATO Secretary-General George
Robertson says he's convinced. But the Taliban has seen no such evidence and says it wants to before taking
action. We talked today to two professors of international law, Ruth Wedgwood of the School for Advanced
International Studies at Johns Hopkins, and Hurst HANNUM of the Fletcher School at Tufts University, raising
just that question: Should the Taliban be shown the evidence?
Professor HURST
HANNUM (Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University): Certainly think that it's appropriate to show them some kind of evidence. The US has not been known always for telling the truth in the world, and I think that to demand that
country give someone up, we should be willing to put at least some cards on the table. Certainly I would not go
so far as to compromise any security. The burden that we need to meet is not one of showing beyond a
reasonable doubt that bin Laden committed these acts, but I do think there's a burden to show that he's
responsible for some things.
ADAMS: On a practical matter, how could you show the Taliban anything that
would not compromise some security level?
Prof. HANNUM: Well, the American public has been promised
that we, too, will be shown evidence linking bin Laden to the bombings. I would think at the very least that the
Taliban would receive that kind of information, which we're still waiting for.
ADAMS: Professor Ruth Wedgwood, what do you think about this?
Professor RUTH WEDGWOOD (Yale University; Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies): Well, my concern is twofold. One is delay. There were
negotiations with the Libyan government for along about eight years to get them to agree to turn over the two
suspects in the Lockerbie Pan Am 103 airplane bombing case. Finally after years of negotiation they agreed.
But once you get yourself into one of these mare's nests, oftentimes you can't get out very easily, and it's a
well-known tactic to use negotiations as an attempt to delay military action. I guess my other concern in that
practical vein is that even as we speak, members of bin Laden's network as well as senior members of the
Taliban are scattering, going across the border into Tajikistan, even if they have to bribe a Russian border
guard, going into Pakistan, into the Pashtun area. This is not a costless delay. And I do think myself that there is
sufficient legal warrant for demanding that they give him over straight up. Number one, there is a new Security
Council resolution from the United Nations that says that states must deny safe harbor to those who either
commit or plan terrorist acts. So in that sense, there's an analogy directly to the Security Council's demand
made in the Lockerbie case. And number two, under Article 51, right of self-defense, this is no ordinary
criminal case. It's not a bank robbery. It's a man who was complicit and is still active in planning attacks, so his
turnover is part of the measures of the inherent right of self-defense.
ADAMS: Professor Hurst HANNUM, President Bush has said there's no negotiating here. We're not gonna be talking to the Taliban about anything.
Prof. HANNUM: Well, we talk about everybody about anything, and obviously one doesn't want to drag the
negotiations out in a way that will compromise our legitimate security interests. But I'm not convinced by
Professor Wedgwood's argument that delay is necessarily something bad in this case. We did, after all,
eventually get justice from the Libyans. Delay, as opposed to acting precipitously, may in fact build the coalition
that we're attempting to build around the world right now even more strongly than we could have done. Of
course, the Taliban are going to attempt to put themselves in the best position possible, but we need to identify
much more precisely than we've done thus far exactly what our goals are. Is the goal to end terrorism in the
world? Well, that's gonna take a long time, and it doesn't matter where bin Laden's men are going in the next
two weeks. Is the goal to overthrow the Taliban? Do we want to destabilize Afghanistan or do we want to
attempt to bring some more to that? How do we best do that? By dealing with the Taliban and attempting to
make them more moderate? Or by imposing demands that we really are unable to follow through on, except for
the fact that, of course, we can bomb them any time we want?
ADAMS: Ruth Wedgwood, what about that? You hear talk that this war against terrorism could extend five years, even beyond that.
Prof. WEDGWOOD: Well, first things first. Our immediate goal, to my mind, is to wrap up his networks, the four, five, 10,000
people he trained in Afghanistan, as best we can, and the longer you delay, the less chance there is of doing
that. Bin Laden is under indictment in the southern district of New York's Federal District Court. There's a
speaking indictment describing his role. I don't think that one wants to share with the Taliban, who are
themselves, if you like, a state harborer of terrorism, the nuts and bolts of how you made your case.
ADAMS: The indictment you speak of is for the Africa embassy bombings? Prof.
WEDGWOOD: That's correct. It was the bombing of the embassies in Tanzania and in Kenya.
ADAMS: What about this issue? The Taliban, its said, they seem to be almost desperate here. They want a direct dialogue with the United States. Is that asking too
much, Hurst HANNUM?
Prof. HANNUM: I don't think so. It's certainly no guarantee that they will get what
they want, nor do I think we should give in to any of their demands or requests. But refusing to talk to them,
frankly, seems to me to be simply leaving aside one potential resolution that would be in our favor without any
great purpose. Certainly Ruth Wedgwood is right that occasionally delay can have a negative security or
defense aspect. But I think that if one looks back at US actions over the last 20 years, we've had many more
problems in acting precipitously than we have in acting too late. And I simply can't imagine that a few days or a
few weeks or simply talking to a government we despise--we talk with many other governments we despise--is
a bad thing.
Prof. WEDGWOOD: Well, Mullah Omar has already told us to go fly a kite, and my favorite
example, the macabre example, of where delay cost us--I will just harken back to the Gulf War. Remember
that famous Primakov pause for peace where former Foreign Minister Primakov was allowed to go see
Saddam Hussein one last time just to see if they could persuade Saddam to stand down from his invasion of
Kuwait.
ADAMS: The Russian foreign minister.
Prof. WEDGWOOD: Correct. And in that interval--the UN commission on Iraq's investigation later revealed in that interval Saddam took the time to weaponize his
biological weapons, to put them into canisters.
Prof. HANNUM: And we also had the delay that enabled Jimmy Carter to go to Haiti and to negotiate a peaceful exit of the generals as opposed to an all-out invasion.
Prof. WEDGWOOD: That's a much more benign context.
Prof. HANNUM: Well, obviously it depends very much on the circumstances, and I'm certainly not in a position--perhaps you are in a better one--to judge the
military necessity of acting at this time. But as a matter of principle or policy to say that, `We refuse to discuss
anything' with a country at whom we claim we're at war, I just think that's nonsensical.
ADAMS: Thanks to both of you. I appreciate it very much.
Prof. HANNUM: Thank you. Good to talk with you again, Ruth. Prof.
WEDGWOOD: Bye-bye.
Prof. HANNUM: Take care.
ADAMS: Hurst HANNUM of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and Ruth Wedgwood, professor of advanced international law and
diplomacy at the School for International Studies at Johns Hopkins.
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