Look At International Stories Today
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Let's talk a little bit about Haiti now. It is at a crossroads this morning. Rebels can either accept a peace plan today or move ahead with their violent uprising. Our senior international editor, David Clinch, is here with more. And the rebels were at work overnight. They've taken over, what, Haiti's second largest city now?</s>DAVID CLINCH, CNN INTERNATIONAL EDITOR: The second largest city has been taken over and the rebels -- and there is a distinction, obviously, between the rebels and the political opposition. It's not always clear exactly what that distinction is, but the rebels, the armed rebels have made it clear that they have their sights set on the capital now. The level of violence going way up in Haiti. We've seen some really horrific sights in the last 24 or 48 hours. This peace plan, if you want to call it that, was a political plan that would have allowed the opposition to share power with Aristide. President Aristide making it clear that he was interested in it, but he himself talking about conditions of what level of cooperation he was prepared to give to the opposition and saying no criminals should be involved. Well...</s>COSTELLO: Which is a strange plan, anyway, to share power. And the rebels just want him out of there.</s>CLINCH: Yes. But, again, the distinction between the rebels and some elements of the rebels who are only interested in getting rid of Aristide completely and some elements of the political opposition, who have pushed from the start -- and some of them in a peaceful way, we should stress this, for more of a political power sharing. But the lines are getting very gray now between the opposition and this rebel movement. And certainly the rebel movement doesn't seem to be paying much attention to the political process right now. So we're watching very closely. France today calling for all of its citizens to get out of Haiti. So the situation not out of hand completely, but looking very bad there today. Another story we've been covering for the last few days, but just to sort of follow-up in it, the elections in Iran, which we've built up to for weeks and ended up with the situation that we more or less predicted, that the hard-liners prevented a lot of the reformers from running. The reformers called for a boycott. The elections went ahead. The hard-liners won. They won in a big way. But of course...</s>COSTELLO: But what was the turnout?</s>CLINCH: That, the...</s>COSTELLO: The voter turnout was the big thing.</s>CLINCH: The voter turnout was very, very low. The United States calling it a sham. The British, everybody else calling this election a sham. The reformers themselves, obviously, making it clear that it's a sham. This man, President Khatami, now in the middle, once again, of a confrontation with his hard-line ayatollah friends.</s>COSTELLO: So what's his next step?</s>CLINCH: Well, that remains to be seen. Of course, it's always possible to predict that there will be clashes. There have already been some minor clashes in some towns around Iran. It's always possible to predict that the tension will go up and up. But I don't know. We don't know. I mean Iran is an enigma. It's very difficult to predict exactly what will happen next. Some people have become so tired of this political process that it's not clear, really, that the level of tension will go up necessarily. They've just given up on the political process. So interesting and we need to watch that. Of course, the nuclear issue with Iran, as well, we have to keep an eye on. Our big stories today, of course, the Israeli barrier story and also Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld in Iraq today. A big bomb in northern Iraq today, up in Kirkuk. I don't know if we've got some just recent pictures of that. But clearly the level of violence there -- I think I just read that February had become or has already become the most violent month since the fall of Saddam Hussein so.</s>COSTELLO: Was this a long planned visit by Donald Rumsfeld?</s>CLINCH: I can't tell you. Well, you know, we hear...</s>COSTELLO: It was, Barbara Starr, said.</s>CLINCH: ... about some of these things and then we report it when they arrive and that's obviously always the format that we use. But then again things are planned and then changed. All we know is that he has arrived there in Iraq today and is meeting with both the civilian and the military leaders there. We'll hear more later.</s>COSTELLO: And he's there to build morale amongst the troops that...</s>CLINCH: Amongst other things. There are obviously some very serious issues that need to be looked at in the run up to the hand over of power at the end of June.</s>COSTELLO: Many thanks.</s>CLINCH: OK.</s>COSTELLO: All right, David. Do you have anything fun to talk about?</s>CLINCH: Well, the Rio carnival started but I don't think we have time for that.</s>COSTELLO: Oh, don't...</s>CLINCH: It's on for a few days. We'll get back to that again.</s>COSTELLO: All right, thank you, David.</s>CLINCH: OK.