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The Charlie Rose Show: The latest on the Tsunami relief effort (January 3, 2005) JAN EGELAND, UN Under-Secretary for Humanitarian Relief SEN. BILL FRIST (R-TN), Senate Majority Leader RICHARD HOLBROOKE, Former US Ambassador to the UN MICHAEL ELLIOTT, International Editor (Asia), Time   CHARLIE ROSE, HOST: Welcome to the broadcast. Tonight, the tsunami disaster. We'll talk with Jan Egeland of the United Nations. Bill Frist, the majority leader of the United States Senate. Former ambassador to the United Nations Richard Holbrooke. And Michael Elliott of "Time" magazine. All of that, next. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) CHARLIE ROSE: We begin this evening with the tsunami disaster. The death toll has now reached 155,000 people. Secretary of State Colin Powell and Governor Jeb Bush of Florida arrived today in Thailand. They are leading an American delegation to the worst affected areas. Also today, President Bush announced that his father, former President Bush, and President Clinton would head a national campaign to encourage private donations to the relief effort. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: To draw even greater amounts of private donations, I have asked two of America's most distinguished private citizens to head a nationwide charitable fund-raising effort. Both men, both presidents know the great decency of our people. They bring tremendous leadership experience to this role. And they bring good hearts. I'm grateful to the former Presidents Clinton and Bush for taking on this important responsibility and for serving our country once again.

HOW TO HELP: BACKGROUND News Sources Op-Eds Economic Impact Political Impact Children Health and Community Politics and Challenges of Giving Aid Photo Essays Blogs Teacher Materials Map of countries hit The Physics of Tsunamis Indian Ocean Tsunami: How the Wave Spread (Interactive animation)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CHARLIE ROSE: We begin with Jan Egeland, the U.N. undersecretary for humanitarian affairs. He is overseeing the U.N. tsunami relief effort, which is now the largest in its history. I am pleased to have him join us at a time that he could not be busier in his entire life. Thank you.

JAN EGELAND, U.N. EMERGENCY RELIEF COORDINATOR: Thank you for having me.

CHARLIE ROSE: There's no perfect question here, but you're at the center of the relief effort, which is what you do, humanitarian relief.

JAN EGELAND: That's my job.

CHARLIE ROSE: Tell me about it. I mean, just tell me what this crisis has been about, and what we ought to know and what we ought to understand.

JAN EGELAND: I try to coordinate a massive effort of 40, 50 donor countries, including the United States, providing relief to a dozen tsunami-affected countries, some of them totally devastated. It includes half a dozen U.N. first-class relief agencies, equally good Red Cross and Red Crescent agencies, and hundreds of non-governmental organizations, many of them from the United States, many from Europe, many from Asia and many from the countries themselves.

What we try to do is in record time get food, clothing, water and sanitation and basic health facilities to many hundreds of thousands affected people, whom can die if we fail, and who will live if we succeed. So the stakes are higher in this kind of work than perhaps in any other work. And therefore, it is so important that our member states help us to succeed, because it's only the U.N. that can coordinate this kind of a global effort.

CHARLIE ROSE: Only the U.N. can coordinate a global effort?

JAN EGELAND: Only the U.N. I mean, there is no coalition of countries who will be able to coordinate all of the world. The United Nations is the United Nations.

CHARLIE ROSE: And coordination is crucial to success.

JAN EGELAND: Coordination is crucial to success, because if 1,000 well-meaning aid agents come to the same airport at the same time with the same things, it will be a disaster in the disaster. If we have the World Food Program bringing in the food, the World Health Organization taking care of the health and UNICEF taking care of the children, and then non-governmental organizations working with us in the various sectors, it will succeed.

If we then also have my office for coordination, assembling all the people in the field and saying who should go left, who should go right, who should take care of repairing the roads, who should repair the airstrips, we will succeed.

At the moment, we're even coordinating enormous military and civil defense assets from many generous countries, including the United States, that we are using to get to those isolated places where we cannot get with the normal relief equipment.

CHARLIE ROSE: Am I correct in understanding that you have said this is the best humanitarian response you've ever seen?

JAN EGELAND: This is the best, the most generous, the most immediate humanitarian response I've ever seen, the world has ever seen.

CHARLIE ROSE: And the coordination is going, considering the difficulties, reasonably well?

JAN EGELAND: I think it's going reasonably well. In some places, it's going extraordinarily well. In other places, we are facing extraordinary difficulties. It is actually a logistical nightmare now in northern Sumatra and in Aceh, part of Indonesia.

CHARLIE ROSE: Where it was hardest hit.

JAN EGELAND: Which was the epicenter of the catastrophe. On the western Sumatra coast, there are hundreds of villages, some very small fishing villages, some bigger towns like Malabu (ph), which was 50,000 inhabitants. Most of the -- or all of these citizens are either dead or missing or refugees, displaced, because they were hit by the wall of water as an immediate impact of the earthquake.

CHARLIE ROSE: It's incomparable to anything that you can imagine.

JAN EGELAND: It is. It is...

CHARLIE ROSE: In terms of the human tragedy that was not brought about by some other war or....

JAN EGELAND: Exactly.

CHARLIE ROSE: ... Holocaust.

JAN EGELAND: The immediacy of that kind of natural disaster is just incomprehensible. We thought that we had an unprecedented catastrophe last Christmas, when I worked through day and night for the earthquake-stricken population of Bam, in southern Iran. Twenty-five thousand, about 1,000 people died in a minute, as the city collapsed. Here we will have had many more than 150,000 people that were killed in a course of minutes. And that's why the whole world really wakes up.

My problem is that we have a tsunami every four months, more or less, in the Congo. So many people die there from neglect, disease, from preventable disease and because of the war. And I do not have money for our relief workers. What I would hope is that the generosity that the world is now showing for the tsunami victims is also shown for the equally miserable conditions that people have to live through in the Congo, in the Sudan, in the Guinea, in all of these forgotten and neglected emergencies.

CHARLIE ROSE: While you say this is the best response you've ever seen, you seem also to be saying it's not enough.

JAN EGELAND: Well, I hope it will be enough for this large group of victims. We're thinking of having to spend many years and many billions of dollars for the millions of people affected, but we're now between $2 and $3 billion already pledged by 40, 50....

CHARLIE ROSE: Nations.

JAN EGELAND: ...nations. We have a phenomenal outpouring of private generosity -- private corporations, individuals. In my own country, I think it's more than $40 per capita for every citizen. It is so also in other countries. In the United States, I've had thousands of individuals that are calling our offices and saying, can we give, can we go? Somebody said he's a helicopter pilot, can he go with his helicopter. Because I've said we need helicopters more than anything else. I've been very touched by the generosity.

CHARLIE ROSE: And what do you say to someone who wants to go with his helicopter?

JAN EGELAND: What we try to say to everybody is that...

CHARLIE ROSE: Give us money and let us...

JAN EGELAND: Well, we hand over all these offers to our logistics people, our human resource people, who are completely overwhelmed, of course. So in terms of helicopters, we ask basically for helicopter carriers from the big powers like the United States, because they have to go...

CHARLIE ROSE: Aircraft carriers and things like that, or...?

JAN EGELAND: Yes.

CHARLIE ROSE: There was a bit of controversy about you talking about rich nations. Tell me what you said or meant to say.

JAN EGELAND: There has been an enormous discussion on that. And I'm glad I have been able to clarify it, because I have a very serious message, I think, and that is that coordinating the world's relief efforts means I see how we are succeeding in some countries and places, like we're now succeeding for the tsunami victims in many countries, and how we fail utterly and see people die around us in so many countries.

CHARLIE ROSE: There's too much...

JAN EGELAND: Because we have no resources. And then I say, it is beyond me that the world is getting richer and richer and more and more nations are getting rich -- in Europe, in the Americas, in Asia, in the Gulf region -- there are more and more millionaires and billionaires. There are more and more public spending, more and more private spending.

CHARLIE ROSE: And more and more people living on $1 a day or $2 a day and not having money to take care of children who...

JAN EGELAND: And the U.N. having to cut rations for refugees and displaced.

CHARLIE ROSE: Why do you think that is?

JAN EGELAND: I don't know. I think -- I think maybe we're not good enough at getting our message across, and at least that's been good of all of this. I've started a bit of a discussion. I think the rich nations, combined the 30 or 40 now rich nations, should be able to foot the bill of feeding all the world's children, should be able to make all children get at least primary school education, get all children to get at least basic health care. These are the millennium development goals.

CHARLIE ROSE: Which nobody believes they'll meet.

JAN EGELAND: No, although the United Nations is really trying to get there. And in some areas, we're making progress. And in other areas, we're way behind. For example, we're way behind in combating AIDS in Africa. Like one example. And we are not having enough money to fight AIDS.

CHARLIE ROSE: Do you live in agony every day, because, you know, you see so much and you know that there's so much suffering and you know that there is resources to do something, but somehow resources are not meeting need?

JAN EGELAND: I'm privileged in many ways, because I see how we succeed, and I see how our work helps. I think many of my family members and others who watch on the television screens feel much more of a desperation, because they feel they cannot help. I feel I can now in my long days and nights working this, I think I can help. But yes, I also feel a deep sense of frustration. Times of anger of seeing that we are letting people suffer, because there are not enough resources in this very rich world of ours.

CHARLIE ROSE: Who has failed to bring the message then?

JAN EGELAND: Well, I've probably failed.

CHARLIE ROSE: The secretary-general, the president of the United States? Me?

JAN EGELAND: You, because you are in the media. Not you...

(CROSSTALK)

JAN EGELAND: This program is very, very balanced, but really the Western media focuses on one disaster at a time. Nobody talks about even Darfur now, which was the one disaster we were talking about, western Sudan, until the tsunami broke. Since the tsunami broke, it's been going worse in Darfur. It's been going worse in eastern Congo, which is possibly the world's worst disaster area the last 10 years. Millions of people may have perished in eastern Congo, millions. And the world does not wake up to this.

And we -- what I hope is that maybe in the wake of the tsunami, we can make the world wake up more to the forgotten and neglect emergencies.

CHARLIE ROSE: So somehow these terrible and tragic deaths and so many young people and so many children, somehow the world wakes up to the idea...

JAN EGELAND: I hope and I think -- it's been very heartening to see how many world leaders have taken sort of the lead of the relief effort. Very often, the people we're dealing with are the low-level bureaucrats of many ministries, who come with their contribution from their governments. But here, we have world leaders coming out and saying, my country wants to give, and I appeal to the public to give. This is the way it should be.

CHARLIE ROSE: You also believe -- and I think you have said this and correct me if I'm wrong -- that you think people are willing to be taxed more.

JAN EGELAND: What I quote -- and I see many people criticizing me for that -- there are public opinion polls...

CHARLIE ROSE: What did you say?

JAN EGELAND: Well, what I said is that politicians often believe that the people will not want to give more to foreign assistance. Polls from very many countries -- I do not know enough about the United States in this -- but I know about Europe well. And in most European countries, if the public is told 0.2 percent of your gross national income is going to foreign assistance, is that enough? They say no, we should give more. Very often, if you ask people how much do you think is given to foreign assistance and they say, a few percent. Well, it is a fraction of a percent that is given in foreign assistance.

We give privately, all of us, all the time. But our private assistance often goes more to the high-profile catastrophes than the forgotten ones. It is actually the public spending. We have for Central African Republic that nobody even have heard about, it seems, where we have an ongoing emergency year after year after year.

CHARLIE ROSE: Do you worry that a month from now and six weeks from now, this woman will be forgotten about, because there will be another crisis or another -- as happened in Bam, I'm told.

JAN EGELAND: As happened in Bam, in the sense that many of those who really expected to not be in tents now and to have rebuilt a home still are in tents. I think it will vary from country to country. I think some of the countries affected may be more forgotten than the other ones. I'm afraid of Somalia, for example, where many, many thousands were hit. It's on that Horn of Africa, where the tsunami hit, and it hit bad. And it's the poorest country on Earth, really. Somalia is the place with the lowest -- with one of the highest mortality rates to start with, much higher than any of the Asian countries. And then they got the tsunami. Somalia would risk being forgotten.

I think most of the countries will not be forgotten in the Asian region, also because we will all keep this alive. It was and is so dramatic.

CHARLIE ROSE: I suspect you haven't gotten much sleep since this happened, but I thank you for coming.

JAN EGELAND: Thank you very much for having me.

CHARLIE ROSE: Jan Egeland, United Nations humanitarian relief effort. Back in a moment. Stay with us.

Continuing our look at the tsunami tragedy. Joining me from Washington, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist. This week he will join a group of American lawmakers on a humanitarian mission to the region. I am pleased that he joins me this evening to talk about that.

Let me ask you first to tell me about why and what is the nature of the group that you are going -- leading to the region, what you hope to accomplish, and why you think it's important?

SEN. BILL FRIST (R-TN), MAJORITY LEADER: Well, Charlie, on Tuesday, we kick off the 109th session of Congress. So Tuesday morning we'll be welcoming in late morning nine new United States senators, all of whom will take their pledge to uphold the Constitution. And then 12 hours later, I will leave and go to Sri Lanka.

And I will be spending about a day there, and then traveling on to India, to see the ravages and the effects of this great human tragedy that's unfolded over the last eight days. I'll be wearing the hat of the majority leader of the United States Senate, in part, to assess both the tragedy itself and the human manifestations of that, to review the aid that's coming in and to assess the coordination.

But probably equally importantly and maybe even more importantly, I'll be going as a physician, as one who will be looking at what will be the next, really, challenge that we have, this next wave of potential disaster that typically comes after a catastrophe like this. And that is the lack of potable water. The diseases, such as dysentery, such as cholera, such as typhoid fever, all of which usually can follow this sort of catastrophe within about a week, two weeks or three weeks, all of which is an end effect of a lack of potable water, and most of which can be prevented if we act and we act early enough, so that public health hat is one that I will be wearing at the same time.

CHARLIE ROSE: Who is going with you?

BILL FRIST: Well, tomorrow night, because we do come in session tomorrow and we will stay until Thursday, I will be the only United States senator going. I'll be joined by the rest of the delegation, Democrats and Republicans, Blanche Lincoln, Mary Landrieu, Mitch McConnell, Norm Coleman, Mike DeWine on Friday. And we will continue on to India, and we will be looking at the effects on the coast there. And then later in the trip, we'll be going on to Afghanistan and to Pakistan as well.

CHARLIE ROSE: I want to talk about that in just a moment. But let me just stay with the trip to India and to Sri Lanka. When you look at the situation beyond the potable water that you have mentioned, what ought to be the response of the United States now? Some criticism early on that some had that the response was slow at the beginning, but that's a footnote now to the greater issue of what can the world do? What can the world do is my question for you.

BILL FRIST: You know, Charlie, a lot. And it is the world. It's not just the United States. And it's not just the core group that was established within 48 hours. It is the world. And the rich outpouring of support, beginning with those expressions of compassion and caring that focused on prayer initially, because that's all that many people felt they could do.

But then the tremendous outpouring, not just of the $350 million that we will deliver from government, but the people that I talked to in Nashville, Tennessee today, the doctors there who are going to be on a plane tomorrow to go to India. The medical residents from East Tennessee State University. The temples and the mosques who are collecting those funds, and again people now realize that the most effective thing they can do is send money and not canned goods and not clothes. But that immediate outpouring that has been so richly given out of people's hearts and the goodness of mankind that's being expressed every day.

From a technical standpoint, I'm sure there's a lot we can do as a country in terms of technical expertise, but starting with prayers, the money to follow, and the manifestations of all the good will and spirit, which will have to be there for a long time because of the psychological impact that leaves deep scars. All of that leaves me at least with a very heart-warming feeling.

CHARLIE ROSE: You said today I think on -- quoted in the AP, "I feel like I've been hit in the stomach. It's like 9/11, but so different. There is no one to blame."

BILL FRIST: Well, you know, it's a natural catastrophe. And since 9/11 and the active engagement in the war on terror, and the headlines appropriately so in the news for the last year-and-a-half, two years with what goes on in Iraq, we've grown very accustomed to having somebody that we can blame, somebody that we can direct anger to, that we can direct a sense of responsibility to, that we can focus a light on. In this case, it's -- it is a little bit like HIV/AIDS, a little virus that knows no barrier and doesn't know rich people versus poor people. It doesn't know a particular country. It's like the famines that we see around the world.

Yet this comes with a punch. This came over a five-minute period, a 10-minute period. Yet scars will be left, psychologically and economically, but probably most importantly psychologically in this population, in those 11 countries, for weeks and months and indeed years.

CHARLIE ROSE: Is it -- should it be said that the United States, because of the way it's responded to crises before, whether they're natural disasters, whether they're floods or hurricanes or whatever there might be, that this kind of response has been part of the American character and that the United States should in this case make sure, you know, that it is in fact leading the world, that there is no better time for the United States to show what it is about its character then in response to this tragedy?

BILL FRIST: Charlie, I believe so. I believe it is a moral cause and a moral responsibility. I think it does capture the very best of the American spirit as we know it. As a United States senator, I get to be -- and I say this with a great deal of humility -- but in a really blessed position, because whether it's through e-mail or constant phone calls, I hear from people throughout Tennessee and indeed throughout the country who are stepping up and say, you know, I've been hit, I want to give, I want to volunteer. It may be a doctor. It may be a social worker. But people are reaching out in the very best of the American spirit.

What is, you know, to me almost laughable are the comments that came early on. And I know people say that we were slow or not doing enough, but from my vantage point, as I talked to Secretary Powell in the first 24 hours and Condi Rice within the first 14 hours, as we talked about the six declaration of disasters, immediately or within hours which would allow the money that we appropriated last year to flow, coupled with the generosity of the airlines and FedEx today, each of which are willing to send over hundreds of thousands of pounds of supplies, when you mix that private sector and the public sector and the individuals reaching out and our governments, very rapid response. Very rapid response over a series of hours and days and over the course of the last week. You can't help but to be proud to be an American.

CHARLIE ROSE: Clearly that's true. And clearly the president said, you know, that when you talk about an American response, you're talking about the private sector, the non-governmental organizations, you're talking about a whole range of people. But it is in a sense at a time of tragedy, as the president who came to New York and with that bullhorn immediately, it is a time, it seems to me, to look in terms of not criticism now, but clearly this is a time in which you need for the president to be the symbol. And earlier the better. Without being caught up in the criticism of timing.

BILL FRIST: I think, I think, that's an appropriate critique. And I guess we'll always say something like that because we look immediately to the president of the United States.

But as a leader in the United States Senate, I want the American people to know that our government responded immediately. And people could say, well, the president maybe should have said something in the first six hours or eight hours or three hours more. But our government responded. And when you couple that with the generosity and that immediate outpouring from the private sector, again that American spirit, that coming together shows the very best of what we as a people are.

CHARLIE ROSE: You know what's interesting as well, right now to see the American military off the coast, because of helicopters and because of aircraft carriers, providing a kind of support that is essential.

BILL FRIST: I agree. And you know, not a lot has been said. There have been some good images, but not a lot has been said. And again, to me it demonstrated the very early response. And maybe it was because I listened to that response as I talked to the administration within the first 72 hours.

The fact that we took a whole carrier fleet, that we took two whole battle groups, that we took the Bonhomme Richard there, that is right now sending aircraft in. The fact that within 72 hours, we had 20 aircraft in the air, on the way, C-130s and cargo planes. It's an important image, because people have seen the United States military in Afghanistan initially, and now in Iraq. And we've seen our military men and women doing an outstanding job fighting the war on terror, sacrificing every day for us, and I think it is helpful to have that juxtaposed with a humanitarian mission that reflects a reaction that was early, that is there in the short term, will be there in the midterm and the long term, will lead the world, when you put private and public sector involvement side by side with that military might that we've seen in fighting this war on terror, because that is what being American is all about.

And it's good to see our military, I think, with those helicopters out. And you're hearing that story of the soldier who was in Iraq last year, who was fighting al Qaeda and who this year, the very same soldier, is delivering aid and medical supplies and food to fight this tragedy and the end effects of this tragedy that have played out over the last week.

CHARLIE ROSE: Senator Frist, thank you very much for joining us. I look forward to talking to you when you come back about the trip to Pakistan and your other travels in that region as well.

BILL FRIST: Thank you, Charlie.

CHARLIE ROSE: Back in a moment. Senator Bill Frist, majority leader of the United States Senate. Stay with us.

"The New York Times" today reported that a group of veteran U.S. foreign policy experts secretly met with the U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan last month in New York. They advised him how to improve his leadership style and his relationship with the United Nations and the United States. The secretary-general is on his way to Southeast Asia this evening to address the tsunami disaster.

Joining me now is Richard Holbrooke. He is a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and a leading foreign policy expert. And he was at this meeting, and it took place on December 5th at his apartment. Let me begin with that point.

RICHARD HOLBROOKE, FORMER U.S. AMBASSADOR TO U.N.: I'm sorry we couldn't invite you, Charlie. But these things happen.

CHARLIE ROSE: Why would I come? I'm not a leading foreign policy expert.

RICHARD HOLBROOKE: That's news to me. I'm happy to be here. Happy new year. These are very serious issues, particularly after the tsunami, which came after this meeting.

CHARLIE ROSE: I want to come to that.

RICHARD HOLBROOKE: Delighted to talk to you tonight.

CHARLIE ROSE: All right. So let me just start with this idea. What was the motivation for this meeting? Whose idea was it, and what role did you play?

RICHARD HOLBROOKE: The meeting was one of a series of meetings that Secretary-General Annan conducted in the last six weeks. I think the animating event of all of the things that came to a head and were discussed in that meeting was really the American election. It was clear to the Bush administration, in their own mind, that the U.N. had people in it who had openly sided with President Bush's opponent in the election. And the Bush administration was clearly not happy with the U.N.

The secretary-general had sent a letter to President Bush, Prime Minister Blair and Prime Minister Allawi of Iraq before the Fallujah offensive, urging them not to do it. That letter was clearly a mistake. And that and other factors had caused friction.

So after the election, Kofi Annan and I and many other people talked about these issues. Kofi Annan reached out to senior staff in his own institution. He talked to people like President Clinton, Sir Jeremy Greenstock, your frequent guest on this program.

CHARLIE ROSE: Who was invited but couldn't come.

RICHARD HOLBROOKE: Who was invited but was in Bahrain that day, and many other people. Ambassador Zaid (ph) of Jordan was among those he talked to. And we talked about the fact that the U.N. could not succeed if it was in fundamental opposition to the United States. It just can't. The U.S. needs the U.N. and the U.N. needs the U.S. It's as simple as that.

CHARLIE ROSE: You have said or someone has said if the United States fails to support the United Nations, it's a failure, the United Nations fails.

RICHARD HOLBROOKE: I believe that to be true. We are the founding nation. We're the host nation, the largest contributor. And you cannot function in opposition. And the friction between Washington and the U.N. headquarters was real and palpable.

So as a result of these conversations, secretary-general suggested that we put together a very small group of people he trusted and who were friends, and to keep it confidential. And in fact, it remained confidential for a month. And even counting the three weeks between scheduling it and its holding, it kept a secret for seven weeks. Pretty good in the U.N.

CHARLIE ROSE: The very good reporter Warren Hoge began to hear about it and did the story.

RICHARD HOLBROOKE: Warren Hoge pieced it together, wrote a very accurate story on the front page of today' New York Times." And that's where we are.

CHARLIE ROSE: OK, let me get to the context here. He comes to your house. It's a three-hour meeting. Evidently he sits and listens, does not debate. It is not, in your words, confrontational, but it is unalloyed, I think is the word you used. It really deals with what you think the secretary has to do, and the meeting comes out of great respect for him and great commitment to the United Nations.

RICHARD HOLBROOKE: Respect, indeed affection for him. He -- everyone in that meeting -- there were only five or six of us -- really cares about him and the institution.

CHARLIE ROSE: Les Gelb was there.

RICHARD HOLBROOKE: Les Gelb. Tim Wirth and Kathy Bushkin. They run the United Nations Foundation, which is Ted Turner's organization. John Ruggie, a Harvard professor, who had been a senior adviser and is a real expert. And Madir Mostajevich (ph), who is a former employee of his now working at Goldman Sachs, and one insider, his Assistant Secretary-General Robert Orr.

That was all. We invited Greenstock, who couldn't come.

And we talked. The one thing you said I would slightly modify, not to quibble, was Kofi Annan didn't sit there mute. He listened. He took notes. He responded. He heard our views. They -- he had also taken soundings from other people.

Between the time we had scheduled the meeting and the time it took place, Senator Norman Coleman had called for his resignation, which had sharpened the sense of it. The Congress was debating. There was concern that Congress might try to hold back the dues. This preceded the tsunami.

And the central point was the one you already made. The U.S. without the U.N. and the U.N. without the U.S. are two institutions which would both suffer, the U.N. frankly more than the U.S. And that Secretary-General Annan -- and there was a certain irony here, because most of the people in that meeting undoubtedly supported President Bush's opponent as I did, Senator Kerry -- but the fact is the public, the American public had reelected George W. Bush, and we had to move forward. And the U.N., above all, had to not only live with but work with the administration.

Kofi Annan after that meeting went to Washington and had his farewell meeting with Secretary Powell, and more significantly than that had his first private meeting with the new secretary of state, incoming, Condoleezza Rice. I leave it to the participants to characterize that, but I know that the U.N. people there, just Kofi Annan and one assistant, felt very gratified by that.

On December 23rd, Kofi Annan and President Bush spoke. Not just a brief congratulatory conversation, but something that went a little further and talked about working together. And then very significantly today, Kofi Annan appointed a new chief of staff, Mark Malloch Brown, another frequent guest on your program, who assumes what I consider the second most important job at the U.N.: The chief of staff job, replacing Riza Iqbal. And Mark Malloch Brown is a substantial and very different kind of person. And they had a very interesting press conference today, in fact.

CHARLIE ROSE: The criticism of the secretary-general, the criticism, is that he had lost the confidence of some people, or there was some real question about the confidence of his leadership at the United Nations. Two, oil-for-food was a scandal which will be soon more intensified because of the report coming from Paul Volcker. A sense that what? That his leadership after a very good four years had not gone well?

RICHARD HOLBROOKE: Let me -- there are four external events of enormous importance in which the U.N. is central, and in which Kofi Annan and his team need to perform. And there are two scandals they need to deal with. The scandals are the one you just mentioned, oil-for-food, and this terrible sex scandal in the Congo, the pedophile scandal.

CHARLIE ROSE: Peacekeepers involved with...

RICHARD HOLBROOKE: Yes, the pedophile scandal. The French have already put in jail the man who apparently was the ringleader. But when you have these scandals, no one blames the secretary-general for it, but there has to be full accountability. The four great international issues in which the U.N. is central are the tsunami response -- and I know Jan Egeland, who was on your program tonight, has been leading that response. Egeland, Kofi Annan and Mark Malloch Brown, the three people we've been talking about, are all on their way to Indonesia tonight, as you said earlier, to deal with this.

Third, the elections in Iraq, the issue which is most important to the Bush administration, but which is in the hands of the U.N. And finally the Palestinian elections.

So the array of issues before the U.N. are enormous. It's not a time to start attacking Kofi Annan or the U.N., it's a time to strengthen Kofi Annan and the U.N.

CHARLIE ROSE: Well, also one of your criticisms, according to the Warren Hoge's story, is that you don't feel that the U.N. had sufficiently been responsive, and Kofi Annan and the office of the secretary-general had been sufficiently responsible to the criticisms made against it.

RICHARD HOLBROOKE: Oh, that was stated in the meeting by some of its participants, yes.

CHARLIE ROSE: That Norm Coleman, who was on this program calling for the secretary-general's resignation, and others.

RICHARD HOLBROOKE: Of course, I disagree strongly with Norm Coleman on this, although he and I have worked together closely on other issues, including HIV/AIDS. I just think that attacking the secretary-general, particularly by a committee chairman who is in charge of an investigation in which the secretary-general is a factor, was quite wrong.

CHARLIE ROSE: Also, he was angered by the fact that he had requested information from the Volcker report in which -- Volcker did not choose to give.

RICHARD HOLBROOKE: The Volcker commission is an enormously important part of this story, and we'll have to see how it plays out.

CHARLIE ROSE: But you were concerned, according to the Hoge story, about lapse in his leadership in the two years, and that it had eclipsed the accomplishments of the first four years.

RICHARD HOLBROOKE: Well, I didn't -- none of that is attributed to me in the story, and I actually didn't say it quite that way. But let me be clear, because you're saying something very important. Kofi Annan has been secretary-general for eight years. He's won the Nobel Peace Prize and done some great things. And by his own admission, 2004 was a horrible year.

CHARLIE ROSE: Annus horriblis, or whatever it was.

RICHARD HOLBROOKE: Your Latin has always been better than mine, but he was quoting her majesty the queen.

CHARLIE ROSE: This is a man who I've heard speak fluent French too. Go ahead.

RICHARD HOLBROOKE: So Kofi knew it was a tough year. The Norm Coleman call for resignation was an additional wake-up call. The meeting would have taken place anyway. This was one of a series of meetings.

The most important thing to me, Charlie, is that Secretary-General Annan -- and I talked to him just before I came over here tonight to tell him I was coming over. He was sorry he couldn't join you himself. But I'm sure he'll be on as soon as he gets back.

CHARLIE ROSE: The invitation is outstanding.

RICHARD HOLBROOKE: No, he knows that. And he -- he just wanted to be understood that reform and reinvigorated U.N. is what he's going to do. And he's not going to play out a 10-year period, but he's got a two-year term ahead of him. And again, today is a very good day for you and I to talk about this, because of the appointment of Mark Malloch Brown.

CHARLIE ROSE: OK. I want to -- but that -- I want to come to tsunami as well and the fact that the secretary-general and Jan Egeland are on their way over there...

RICHARD HOLBROOKE: And Mark Malloch Brown.

CHARLIE ROSE: ... when this program airs. But it is also said in this article that someone within the group contacted the Bush administration to get some feeling for them. And the Bush administration supposedly said -- whoever spoke for the administration at the White House -- said, we will not demand the firing if Kofi Annan does not serve out his two-year term, it will be because of Volcker report and something growing out of that, not because of pressure from the United States.

RICHARD HOLBROOKE: That quote is accurate. Someone in the meeting did say that. That is completely accurate. It wasn't me. And I'd rather not say -- I'm obviously not close to the Bush administration, although ironically I was trying to improve relations between the administration and the U.N. Someone did say that.

CHARLIE ROSE: Are they open, according to the meeting with Condi Rice, are they open to the idea of improving relations? They're prepared to do -- take their steps as well?

RICHARD HOLBROOKE: Once again, I wasn't in the Kofi Annan-Condoleezza Rice meeting, but I think the fact that it took place was significant. The fact that President Bush and Kofi Annan spoke in late December, just before Christmas, is significant. The fact that there's a core group for the tsunami relief is significant.

And remember this: The U.N. is in charge of the thing that's most important to the Bush administration, the elections in Iraq. And the U.S. administration is in a critical position, and one of the things most important to the U.N., which is to be sure that the Congress does not go forward and withhold dues again as they did several years ago in the late 1990s.

CHARLIE ROSE: Do you think that's a real possibility?

RICHARD HOLBROOKE: Before the tsunami, before the U.N. reforms, I don't think it was a possibility. I know that conservative and right-wing members of Congress were preparing such legislation. It was clear. They had even said so publicly. It is my hope that as a result of the signs of collaboration -- and they are very tentative, and we have to see who the Bush administration sends to the U.N. as ambassador to replace Senator Danforth. Danforth did a terrific job, but he didn't stay long, as long as I'd hoped he would. Because of the early signs, because of the collaboration and cooperation on the tsunami, because of Iraq. And because in the end the U.S. does need the U.N. to help it in issues of such immense importance as Iraq, and the world needs the U.N. because of the tsunami, I am hopeful, I'm hopeful that the House of Representatives, which is where the problem lies now, not in the Senate anymore, will not do this kind of bill, withholding dues.

And if they do, most importantly, that the Bush administration will openly say this is not the right thing to do or the right way to go at the issue.

CHARLIE ROSE: OK. Secretary-general said he found the meeting helpful and supportive. So clearly it was a benefit to him to listen to friends offer constructive criticism.

RICHARD HOLBROOKE: And he had done this with other people. I mentioned President Clinton earlier.

CHARLIE ROSE: Tsunami. How do you characterize the way the world has responded to this tragedy?

RICHARD HOLBROOKE: Phase one, too slow, too little and almost inexplicable. Maybe it was vacation time. Maybe they didn't realize the dimensions. But the initial reaction was way too slow, especially in Washington.

CHARLIE ROSE: OK. The world generally, but especially in Washington.

RICHARD HOLBROOKE: Your other guest on this program tonight played a very important role in this. Jan Egeland, the head of the emergency relief division of the U.N., made his statement saying that rich nations had been too stingy. Egeland, whom I know very well...

CHARLIE ROSE: And on all the weekend talk shows had to defend himself, because everybody assumed he was talking about the United States...

RICHARD HOLBROOKE: Well, two points...

CHARLIE ROSE: Because at that point "The New York Times" also had editorialized that he was in fact right in saying that.

RICHARD HOLBROOKE: Well, two points. No. 1, he never mentioned the United States. And when I talked to him, and when I talked to Kofi Annan, they made a point of this. But No. 2, Charlie, he was right.

CHARLIE ROSE: Exactly.

RICHARD HOLBROOKE: And "The New York Times" was right. Jan Egeland is a man who has given his life to humanitarian service all over the world. I've worked very closely with him as a friend and as a government official. And he is almost guileless in his direct honesty, as your viewers tonight can see watching him. And I'm just telling you that when Jan said that, perhaps the word stingy was inappropriate, but the way some of the right-wing press jumped it as though he had committed a crime against humanity, when millions of people were in danger, when over 100,000 people had been washed away and lost at sea, was quite grotesque.

What's the bottom line on it? He said it. People attacked him. And the United States government made a 1,000 percent increase overnight in its involvement, plus sending military aircraft and carriers into the region. So all I can say is, the mini-flap, the trivial issue of what Jan Egeland said is zero compared to the effect of what Jan Egeland -- and by the way Les Gelb, who also said similar things on television, and others, did. During a period when everyone was on vacation, a handful of people, Egeland, Les Gelb and others, went out and said the truth. The world has to step up to the plate. And then belatedly, but thank God they did it. The administration came through.

CHARLIE ROSE: There are those who say that they missed an opportunity, especially the president did, because he could have if he came out of the block early, would have helped his own reputation around the world, because this was a crying -- this was a brilliant opportunity, shining opportunity for the United States to take the lead in doing good.

RICHARD HOLBROOKE: It was incontrovertibly true what you just said, but it is really now a historical footnote. The secretary of state and the president's brother are in the region. The U.S. has stepped up to the plate. The U.N. and the U.S. are working very closely together in this core group. That there was a 72- to 96-hour too slow reaction is clear. But you know, better, better than not doing it at all. And I think history is not -- it's not clear yet what the final balance will be on this tsunami relief issue, because local governments are involved, the dimensions of it are still unclear. This is a monumental undertaking.

CHARLIE ROSE: Thank you for coming.

RICHARD HOLBROOKE: My honor.

CHARLIE ROSE: Richard Holbrooke, former ambassador to the United Nations. At his apartment, a series or a meeting with some friends of Kofi Annan to talk about the future of Kofi Annan, and also the future of the United Nations, coming at a time in which we face in the world one of the greatest human disasters in terms of natural disasters ever.

Back in a moment. Stay with us.

Joining me now by phone from Hong Kong is Michael Elliott, international editor for "Time" magazine in Asia. He was in Phuket, Thailand when the tsunami struck. I am pleased to have him tell us where -- what he saw. I have been showing, Michael -- you cannot see this but I am showing to the audience at home -- a special report, "Time" magazine, with this powerful figure of a woman taken on December 26th, 2004. How goes the response effort today?

MICHAEL ELLIOTT, TIME MAGAZINE: Well, you know, every interview that I've done in the last week, Charlie, you know, I've always made one point. And I hope I kind of made it, you know, forcefully as the week has gone on. And that is that it is so important for the American audience to realize that while every death is tragic in every country, the situation in Indonesia is qualitatively different from the situation anywhere else. The coast of Sumatra and the northern tip of Sumatra, which is called Aceh, was of course much closer both to the earthquake and to the tsunami. It's extremely poor. It's been racked by a very bloody local insurgency for many years. The only kind of real organized power there is the Indonesian army, but the Indonesian army itself of course was hit by the earthquake and by desertions afterwards.

So in Indonesia, you've had whole villages that have been wiped out, whole towns that have been wiped out. An extraordinarily difficult situation in terms of getting aid and distribution there. And so that's why, as Senator Frist says, the helicopter -- the helicopter facilities from the Abraham Lincoln battle group have been very important.

CHARLIE ROSE: Have you talked to people who have lost members of their family and somehow survived?

MICHAEL ELLIOTT: I've not myself. I have reporters all over the region who have been filing extraordinary stories. I have had -- I have three people -- we at "Time" magazine have three people now in Sumatra and northern Aceh, who are collecting stories, really, of villages, villages and towns that have just completely disappeared.

So the focus of the aid effort, the greatest challenge for the aid effort is Indonesia and Sumatra.

In Thailand, my sense is that the aid effort is going fine. I mean, the Thais are an extremely resourceful people. You have pretty effective central government, very effective central government in many ways. And somewhere like Phuket and the areas around it, which were quite badly hit, you know, are by Southeast Asian standards, pretty rich and pretty resourceful. So the aid operation there is kind of going on fine.

But in Indonesia, the difficulties are really immense. And just, you know, just to kind of underline what I heard you chatting before I came on, Charlie, with Senator Frist, who was talking about the importance of potable water. That is absolutely a critical matter. What people die of after diseases like -- after disasters like this are water-borne diseases. Malarial diseases...

CHARLIE ROSE: Yeah, malaria, typhoid, dysentery and...

MICHAEL ELLIOTT: So anything one can do to clean water is crucial.

CHARLIE ROSE: What do you think the most important lesson of this is?

MICHAEL ELLIOTT: Well, I suppose, you know, it's a trite thing to say, but the most important lesson is that we're all one world. I mean, one of the extraordinary things about this disaster is the number of people from different countries that have been affected by it, not just because the tsunami itself touched 11 or 12 countries, but because of the tourists who were there. I was in a hotel in Phuket that I would say was 50 percent Swedish in terms of the guests. Proportionately, let's kind of try and kind of play with some figures. Proportionately, this disaster is 30 times as great to Sweden as 9/11 was for the United States.

CHARLIE ROSE: Thirty times as great to Sweden...

MICHAEL ELLIOTT: Thirty times as great.

CHARLIE ROSE: ... as 9/11 was for the United States?

MICHAEL ELLIOTT: For the United States. Sweden is a country of nine million people. There may well be 3,500 people dead.

CHARLIE ROSE: Wow.

MICHAEL ELLIOTT: The U.S. is a country of maybe 300 million people, about 3,000 dead in the World Trade Center. So you can multiply it by a factor of 30. I mean, and although no one has been quite as hard hit as Sweden, all of the Nordic countries have seen an astonishing disaster here.

So you know, I guess we learned we were one world, if that doesn't sound too trite. And the, you know, the response from around the world -- and I hope we don't get into one-upmanship about who is doing more -- you know, the response from around the world has been extraordinary. Indeed, U.N. administrators say that they have never seen such an extraordinary outpouring of aid and assistance.

CHARLIE ROSE: Michael, thank you so much. It's good to have you.

MICHAEL ELLIOTT: All right, Charlie. Talk to you soon. Take care.

CHARLIE ROSE: Michael Elliott from the international edition of "Time" had a lot to do with this cover story in the domestic edition of "Time" magazine.

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