An Exclusive Interview with Gen. David Petraeus on War against Terrorism

Aired January 11, 2010 - 15:00:00 ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

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CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN ANCHOR: Tonight, it's been the deadliest day for NATO troops in Afghanistan in months. The commander of U.S. Central Command, General David Petraeus, gives us an update on the war and on the threat from Yemen.

Good evening, everyone. I'm Christiane Amanpour. Welcome to the program.

Insurgents today killed three Americans, one French soldier, and two from unidentified countries. It was the deadliest day of attacks in Afghanistan since October. The violence raises concerns that U.S. and NATO casualties will increase as the U.S. and Europe send 37,000 more troops to Afghanistan.

But in an interview with People magazine, U.S. President Barack Obama said he has, quote, "no intention" of putting U.S. boots on the ground in Yemen. General David Petraeus told us what he thinks over the weekend, when I spoke to him at his headquarters in Tampa, Florida. It was his first interview since returning from his recent trip to Yemen, just after the foiled Christmas Day bomb plot.

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AMANPOUR: General Petraeus, thank you for joining us.

GEN. DAVID PETRAEUS, COMMANDER, U.S. CENTRAL COMMAND: Great to have you at CENTCOM.

AMANPOUR: Yemen is the focus now of the military and of -- of everybody who's looking at Al Qaida. Is Yemen a safe haven for Al Qaida today?

PETRAEUS: It is certainly the location of Al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, given that franchise, if you will, by Al Qaida senior leadership this past year. It's been in our view scope for a number of years.

We've been concerned about it even when I was in Iraq. We were concerned because it was a source of facilitation and foreign fighters and so forth. And without question, it has ramped up over the course of the last year or more in particular, with training camps and so forth there.

AMANPOUR: Is it the most important location for the war against Al Qaida?

PETRAEUS: I don't think it's the most important. That would likely still be the western Pakistan-Afghanistan border area. But certainly very important area, in an area where, again, it has been resurgent -- Somalia another one like that -- at a time when Al Qaida has suffered severe reverses in Saudi Arabia, been reduced considerably in Iraq, and, indeed, even in the western areas of Pakistan-Afghanistan.

AMANPOUR: You talk about suffering severe losses, for instance, in Saudi Arabia, but one American official has described precisely that victory there as really being like trying to nail jelly to a wall, in other words, you squeeze Al Qaida in one place and it pops up in another place. Do you face a generation of migrating jihadis?

PETRAEUS: Well, this is going to be an enduring effort, without question. And I have certainly never used a word like "victory" in this particular effort.

What you have is a need to confront Al Qaida, to confront extremism wherever it is and to try to do it all simultaneously. You remember in Iraq they used to say we're -- we were whacking moles. And I said, you're right, we have to whack a lot of moles all simultaneously. And that's what we have to do with this global movement that is Al Qaida.

AMANPOUR: Tell me right now, how do you assess -- are you winning against Al Qaida?

PETRAEUS: I think there's been progress overall over the course of the last year against Al Qaida. I think that in general its capability has diminished, but that's only, again, a relative judgment, because there's clearly substantial capability that -- that still is resident.

Even in -- in Iraq, for example, level of violence is down by over 90 percent, violent civilian deaths 90 percent. Al Qaida does still have an ability there to carry out periodic horrific attacks, and so we must maintain the pressure on Al Qaida wherever it is found.

AMANPOUR: You just went to Yemen, and you've just returned from Yemen. You had talks with the president of Yemen. Is the United States going to have direct involvement there, in other words, troops on the ground or launching strikes from inside Yemen?

PETRAEUS: Well, in fact, you talked to the Yemeni foreign minister, as well, and he was quite clear that Yemen does not want to have American ground troops there. And that's a good -- good response for us to hear, certainly.

AMANPOUR: You don't want to put ground troops there?

PETRAEUS: No, of course, we would always want a host nation to deal with a problem itself. We want to help. We're providing assistance. We're going to provide more assistance in the course of this year than we did last year, after, I think, having zeroed it out, as you'll recall, back in fiscal year '08.

So this is an effort that we want to help them to deal with a problem that threatens their very writ of government and their very existence as they know it.

AMANPOUR: You talk about providing more aid. From what I can gather, aid was sort of increased by about $12 million between '09 and 2010.

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You said when you were there that it was going to double next year or in this year. Is that going to happen?

PETRAEUS: I think it will. The programs that we submitted that were part of the budget that has since been approved -- the appropriations bill that's been signed by the president -- would, in fact, more than double the security assistance. Last year, it was somewhere around $70 million. Over the course of this fiscal year, it should be somewhere around $150 million or more, and the amount of economic aid increased, as well.

AMANPOUR: Isn't that, though, paltry? I mean, it's a big sum, but isn't it really paltry, given that Al Qaida is the United States' chief objective, destroying, defeating, whatever you want to call it, compared to the billions of dollars that are spent in Afghanistan that had been spent in Iraq and elsewhere, I mean, $150 million?

PETRAEUS: Well, first of all, we're not the only country with a huge interest in what goes on in Yemen. And, in fact, there are very significant sums provided by other partners in this effort, the Saudis...

AMANPOUR: Such as?

PETRAEUS: Saudis reportedly $2 billion in the course of a year, the Emirates, I think, just publicly pledged, I believe, some $600 million or $700 million. So there are very significant other partners in this particular endeavor to help Yemen, and that's appropriate. We all have a significant interest. There's going to be a -- a big conference in London. After the conference on Afghanistan, the Yemeni president was very pleased with that.

Indeed, some years ago, there was a pledge of billions of dollars in aid to Yemen, but not all of that has been provided, in part because of the security concerns, in part because absorption capability of the Yemeni government and so forth.

AMANPOUR: There is the former U.S. ambassador to Yemen who's saying today that, in fact, there's no strategy beyond throwing money and arms at this program -- at this problem, there's no development strategy. Most people say that this is not going to be won by the military alone. Do you agree with that, that this needs real aid, a real strategy of development, because it's the great poverty there that's a recruiting tool for Al Qaida?

PETRAEUS: Well, there's no question it has to be a whole-of- government approach and, again, ideally, governments, with an "s," again, denoting that it's many more than just the U.S. government that have a stake in success there. Certainly, security, though, is -- again, without that, you cannot provide the aid and the assistance.

AMANPOUR: But do you agree that the sort of the -- the desire for quick results, the -- the short-termism that the United States has often described as, needs to change? Do you think there needs to be a systemic change to issues such as Yemen, which is so obvious, so many people say, that the grinding poverty there is such a recruiting tool?

PETRAEUS: I think that's exactly right. I think, really, that we have arrived at that conclusion. I think we recognize that these are not short-term problems. These aren't campaigns where you muster a force, take the hill, plant the flag, and go home to a victory parade. These are endeavors that have to be comprehensive in nature, and they have to be enduring in their timeframe.

AMANPOUR: Let me ask you -- the foreign minister told us that they had perhaps, quote, "spared" Al Qaida in the fight against their other secessionists and other rebellions in that -- in that country. We're going to play that sound bite.

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ABU BAKR AL-QIRBI, YEMENI FOREIGN MINISTER: I think our fault was that maybe we should spare Al Qaida in the last year or -- because of the confrontation in the south and the (inaudible) but Al Qaida took advantage of that.

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AMANPOUR: Do you believe that the Yemeni government is as committed to fighting Al Qaida as it is to the other problems it faces in its own country there?

PETRAEUS: Well, time will tell, but we have certainly seen significant commitment over the course of recent months in particular. Now, I think it's now well known that in July I went into Yemen, had a very, very good, very constructive meeting with President Saleh. It was at that time that we really started embarking on the much more serious intelligence-sharing, and this is very much a two-way street, because the Yemenis are, indeed, committed to this.

AMANPOUR: General Petraeus, we're going to go to a break. We'll talk more about Yemen and the catastrophic failure of intelligence that led to that suicide bombing in Afghanistan and other issues, when we return.

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