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N. Korea Claims Successful Long-Range Missile Test; N. Korea Claims Missile Could Hit U.S.; China And Russia Condemn Missile Test; Trump Puts Emphasis On China To Control N. Korea; Trump, Putin To Hold Bilateral Meeting At G20. Aired 1-1:30p ET

Aired July 4, 2017 - 13:00   ET

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


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[13:00:15] BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: Hi there. I'm Brianna Keilar in for Wolf Blitzer. A Happy 4th of July to you. It's 1:00 p.m. here in Washington, 6:00 p.m. in London, and 1:30 Wednesday morning in Pyongyang, North Korea. Wherever you're watching from around the world, thank you so much for joining us.

We're going to start with an unprecedented launch by North Korea. State media there claiming it was a successful test of an intercontinental ballistic missile. It's a missile capable of reaching the United States. The type of missile has not been confirmed by the U.S., but the launch has still caused concern throughout the region. Also here in the United States, prompting a tweet from President Donald Trump. He said this. North Korea has just launched another missile.

Does this guy have anything better to do with his life? Hard to believe that South Korea and Japan will put up with this much longer. Perhaps China will put a heavy move on North Korea and end this nonsense once and for all. I want to bring in our International Correspondent Paula Hancocks, she is in Seoul for us and Pentagon Correspondent Barbara Starr following all of this from the Pentagon. I don't want to start with you, Paula. What more do we know about this launch, what's the reaction there in Seoul, not too far from it?

PAULA HANCOCKS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Brianna, North Korea says it was successful. They say it was an ICBM. They have said in a special broadcast that Kim Jong-un, the North Korean was there, he ordered this and at he was at the test site and was delighted with its success. Now, as far as North Korea is concerned, they say they can now hit anywhere in the world. I don't think there were any experts that take that as face value but there are many experts who are assessing with the altitude, the distance traveled and the time that it was flying from North Korea also data from Japan, South Korea and the U.S. as well. Assessing there is potentially an ICBM.

Some even saying potentially it could hit parts of Alaska, but at this point, the official word is what we're waiting for. The South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff saying they are still analyzing the data with the United States, but specifically saying they are not denying this at this point. So certainly officials are trying to figure are out exactly what it is. They do say, though, it has an improved range compared to the May 14th launch. Now, this May 14th launch was significant because all experts said that that was the biggest advancement in the nuclear missile program that North Korea has had to date. And if the JCS is saying, this is even better than -- it really shows South Korea and the United States there is significant progress being made by North Korea at this point. Brianna?

KEILAR: Barbara, still as the U.S. and South Korea works to confirm that this is an ICBM, they're clearly concerned that it is however. If this is an ICBM, this really changes the calculus. What are you hearing from the Pentagon?

BARBARA STARR, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Brianna, it changes the security calculation, really, across the Asia-Pacific region, Canada, the U.S., really across the world about the capability of Kim Jong-un. And U.S. officials are saying, look, this is no surprise. Military officials had warned for years now here in Washington, on Capitol Hill, everywhere, that this North Korean test program was moving forward. That Kim is testing and testing and testing, and that his goal was for an Intercontinental ballistic missile and a nuclear warhead on top of it and he may be getting closeout to the actual deliverable capability to do that.

So, first, no surprise. What we are seeing today, it's July 4th. No one was supposed to be at work. Right? Everybody is on holiday. I can tell you, here in the Pentagon, there have been a series of meetings. Meetings that are including officials across Washington, talking, huddling, trying to figure out what the Trump administration may want to say about this and what it may want to do about it. I think it's fair to say no one's looking for a shooting war with North Korea. You know, that would be a disaster.

But military options, they could send additional troops, aircraft, have more of a presence, they could ramp up yet again sanctions and diplomacy. But the real question is what would really work? Right now you see Russia and China pushing back, saying they do want to see a freeze on North Korea's program, but the price they want for that is for the U.S. to give up military exercises with South Korea. That's a non-starter. So at this point, what we see is tensions rising everywhere. A July 4th perhaps no one really expected.

KEILAR: And Paula, what about the timing of this? Of course, this is no coincidence coming here as we head into Independence Day in the U.S.

HANCOCKS: Well, that's right. That's -- it was actually July 4th already in North Korea when they launched this missile. So, that timing hasn't been lost on anybody. Also, bear in mind, it's just a few days after President Moon Jae-in, the South Korean president came back from that summit in Washington.

[13:05:18] In a statement, he said he was disappointed that it came just after he had been there. And bear in mind, he was standing in the Rose Garden next to President Trump saying that he wanted North Korea to come back to the negotiating table. Was certainly moving further away from that position it appears. And then you have the G20 meeting a little later this week where there were going to be many things on the agenda but North Korea has now made sure that it is going to be talked about by pretty much every single leader in Germany. So, timing is everything when it comes to North Korean missile launches.

KEILAR: Sure is. Paul Hancocks, Barbarra Starr, thank you so much to both of you. I want to talk more about this thread in the response to this. We have Kimberly Dozier, she's a global affairs analyst and senior national security correspondent for The Daily Beast. We have CNN Military and Diplomatic Analyst John Kirby, also CNN Military Analyst Major General James Spider Marks. And I want to start with you on this because if we are talking, General, about an intercontinental ballistic missile with our without nuclear capability, it seems the writing would be on the wall that would be the direction that North Korea will be able to go then unimpeded, right? What does this mean?

JAMES SPIDER MARKS, CNN ANALYST: Yes. The -- there's no mystery that what North Korea wants to achieve is this ability, to have a nuke on top of the missile that can reach United States. What we saw today will determine based on intelligence collection and there is very aggressive layered intelligence collection. We have capabilities in space, we have capabilities in the air, we have capabilities on the sea and on the ground. So we'll get into all the telemetry data, all the thrust components and determine if this was in fact an ICBM- capable missile. Now, bear in mind, the range is not specifically important right now. It's the ability to get altitude and to get out of the atmosphere. And if that was -- if that was achieved, now we need to be concerned. That's an additional significant step that the North Koreans have not achieved yet. They go out -- they also they have to marry that up with these nukes that they have. So this is very, very significant for United States. We've been at this -- we've been at the precipice for a number of years now. The time for us to act is decreasing. North Korea will inevitably be able to marry these components up.

KEILAR: They will inevitably be able to marry these --

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MARKS: They will be able to do that unless something happens now and that is an entire array of capabilities that we have available to us, diplomatic, economic, isolation, increased pressure from Beijing and the United States certainly retains the military option, which is really the last resort. We've got to keep all of our options available.

KEILAR: Donald Trump, John, said in January, it's not going to happen. But it looks like that statement -- should we reassessing that statement where he said it's not going to happen?

JOHN KIRBY, CNN ANALYST: Yes. I think so based on --

KEILAR: And so, what does that mean? If you're Donald Trump, what are the options?

KIRBY: Well, I think as the general rightly said, there's an array of options that he has to explore. But look, I mean, he has been racing towards this capability. If it's true that he has it, then he has it. They've obviously crossed a threshold. Now, the options become more limited for the administration than they were before. It's just a matter -- it's just a fact. So, what he has to do now is take a look at the range of options and see how he wants to apply them. I mean, there are military options short of conflict that he could explore. Barbara touched on some of those. There are still diplomatic ones and there's frankly still economic ones, but obviously, when he can't take off the table is continued pressure in the international community particularly on Beijing. He can't take that off.

KEILAR: So, you mentioned a military option. But Kim, is there really a military option here that is that would really cause something short of potentially catastrophic?

KIIMBERLY DOZIER, CNN ANALYST: As the other two gentlemen at this table note, every military option has major downsides. The majority one being that you've got 28,000 U.S. troops plus the South Korean allies just over a border within artillery range of the North Korean military. So anything you do, there's that immediate risk of massive retaliation that could kill tens of thousands of people within a day. So that's why in terms of ramp ratcheting up the pressure, what the Trump administration now has to do is reassess its policy of relying on China to use economic leverage against Pyongyang. It doesn't look like that's going to go fast enough. That's why you see the Trump administration crack down on one Chinese bank that was helping fund Pyongyang but with this technological advance, they've got to be thinking this is not working.

KEILAR: And as the president is going to be in Germany, he's going to be meeting with South Korean leaders, Japanese leaders, Chinese leaders. Then, what can he do that -- Kim mentioned some things might just move too slowly but what is he going to be seeking from these leaders?

KIRBY: Well, I think -- I think he needs to reassure them quite frankly. Step one is letting them know that we're going to take our treaty alliance commitment seriously. And they are significant commitments that we have. Number two, he needs to press them to continue to put -- to implement fully the sanctions that are emplaced.

[13:10:21] I mean, the big problem with China is that they haven't fully implemented the sanctions that have been put on them. And there are options that he can take in terms of the, you know, exercises and overt sort of military readiness posture things that he can do that are well short of any kinetic or conflict but can -- could send a strong message to Pyongyang and to -- and to Beijing that we mean business.

KEILAR: So, if he needs to reassure -- if President Trump needs to reassure South Korea, needs to reassure Japan and then you have a tweet from him where he's saying, South Korea and Japan aren't going to put up with this much longer even though those countries are very reliant on the U.S. for, you know, holding the -- holding the club to support them. What message does that send to them? MARKS: Well, you know, frankly I think we would all agree that the

tweets are not necessarily helpful. We get inside the psyche a little bit, maybe we have a --

KEILAR: Is it -- is that a lack of understanding of where the U.S. is with these countries?

MARKS: No. If you're going to use that tweet, it should be, we should not stand for this anymore. The United States relationship with South Korea and Japan is inviolate, it is strong, it's a foundational relationship in the region. We have been very true to them and they have been very, very supportive of us for decades. That's the approach that we need to take, which is, folks, we are in this together. We can't afford to allow this to occur. I mean, everything that Kimberly says, having spent a good deal of my life on that peninsula.

What concerns me is the artillery range that Seoul is within and the North Koreans. So we can't attack that in advance, we can't attack that artillery in advance. The discussion is, look, guys, we can't afford to have a nuclear on North Korea, right? We all agree? Great. We agree. Here's what's going to happen. We either challenge his ability to achieve that nuclear capability, our priority right now very, very aggressively. And we're talking to our allies, to our friends, the Chinese -- hopefully our friends, the Chinese to really apply this pressure because we can't allow it to get there. That is an unacceptable option and if we see it getting closer, closer, closer, there will be a military strike, there will be nothing else that we can do as that window gets closer and then gets closed and closed and closed. There are actions that we have to take that are very, very painful right now.

KEILAR: Kim, so what -- so those actions are very painful. We have China and Russia agreeing jointly that North Korea should not be a nuclear entity, should not be nuclearly armed. But they're also saying that South Korea and the U.S. shouldn't be engaged in these joint military operations. We heard Barbara's report. That's just not going to fly. What are they really expecting? Is that just posturing?

DOZIER: Well, another option you could see is China and Russia offering Pyongyang a sort of diplomatic half measure way out to slow everything down. Convince Pyongyang to freeze its program for talks, who knows how long those could go on. And what that would also do is in terms of China and Russia in a geopolitical battle with the United States to become the superpowers that decide the course of things across the globe, they would be seen as the ones who were solving this crisis, not the White House, not the United States.

KEILAR: Why would North Korea agree to that though?

DOZIER: They won't.

KIRBY: They won't. They won't. But I don't take the joint Russia/China statement, it should not be taken seriously by anybody. It was more a show than anything else that kind of just tweak our noses about where things stand, but, no. Look. He has been -- he, Kim, has been racing towards this capability. It gives him the ultimate bargaining chip if and when there's ever any return to the negotiating table. Right now he has no incentive to want to sit down and talk to anybody.

DOZIER: So you don't that Moscow and Beijing could come up with some sort of incentive that could slow them down?

KIRBY: No, I don't.

MARKS: Well, you know, the United States could also jump in the middle of this which we haven't really talked about and say look, what is -- what about the notion of some form of recognition? We don't diplomatically recognize Pyongyang. That would give him the big stature that he has been trying to achieve forever and ever to include this nuclear capability. Now they would have to be preconditions, very aggressive precondition but that could happen. I mean, that kind of makes you want to throw up in your mouth, but it could happen and that could be the way out other than a nuclearized North. And I think, also, we should put on the table and I think we have, regime change is unimportant. We should not care whether Kim's in place for another 1,000 years, provided he doesn't have a nuke. But we need to tell the Chinese that. That's the message for Beijing.

KEILAR: It is stunning that we are having this conversation. Thank you so much, General Admiral. And Kim, I do appreciate it. Coming up. Amid these new tests from North Korea, the White House now says that President Trump is going to hold formal talks with Vladimir Putin at the G20, not an informal pull-aside as we previously expected. And now the pope is weighing it on a terminally ill baby in London. What the Vatican is offering the child's parents, next.

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KEILAR: Well, we've got some important new details on the meeting between President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin set to take place Friday at the G-20 Summit in Europe. Both the White House and the Kremlin are now confirming just a short time ago here that the two leaders are going to sit down for an official bilateral meeting while at the summit. It's the first official meeting between the two leaders. The first face-to-face meeting, period, between these two men.

And I want to bring in now CNN's Ivan Watson in Moscow.

Ivan, what do we read about this, that this is a full meeting? This is a formal meeting, which is significant to say this is a bilateral meeting instead of what we referred to as a pull-aside meeting just in a hallways on the sidelines of this summit.

IVAN WATSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: It's really important because you haven't had the U.S. and Russian president in a bilateral meeting since September of 2015, approaching nearly two years. The list of areas where Moscow and Washington have tension, it's really long. It includes the Ukraine conflict. It includes the Syria conflict. It includes fighter jets buzzing each other in many different theaters. And it includes more recent kind of examples of tension. Just a couple weeks ago the U.S. slapping sanctions on dozens of additional Russian people and entities in relation to its annexation of Crimea in 2014. The Russians cancelling a meeting between a U.S. undersecretary of state and a Russian deputy foreign minister a day after that in a tit for tat move. It includes Russian anger at the U.S. shooting down a Syrian warplane just a couple weeks ago and ongoing Russian anger about two Russian diplomatic compounds that were seized by the outgoing Obama administration over allegations that Russia was intervening in the U.S. electoral process.

[13:20:30] So the list is a mile long and you have a top Kremlin official saying that relations right now are at zero and that hopefully, from the Russian perspective, that a meeting could help protect basically international stability at this stage. That's how dire they say the situation and the bilateral relations are right now.

Brianna.

KEILAR: The personalities in this, Ivan, are going to be - I think they're going to contribute a lot to the outcome of this meeting. I talked to one Republican lawmaker yesterday who said that he's expecting these two leaders to try to out alpha each other. How much of that do you think we'll see?

WATSON: Yes, we've got two men who like to play up their macho personas, but - but there's another element to this, too. You have Donald Trump, who's a relatively new president, who's going to be meeting with Vladimir Putin, who - this will be his fourth U.S. president that he'll be meeting with. The levels of experience here, the difference here is massive. Putin's been playing at this game, he's been a commander in chief, a head of state, for quite a long time. And he's also coming from a position of strength. His base here, his support on the domestic political front is very solid. Yes, Russia has economic problems. It's - it is suffering from sanctions, but he doesn't have a real challenger here on the domestic front. Whereas, the Trump administration is quite new at this. It's facing challenges in the courts, in Congress, on the streets and Trump has record low, you know, public opinion figures as well back home. So the big question - one big question will be, will Putin try to take advantage of his vast experience and his position of relative political strength coming into this meeting?

KEILAR: You know he certainly will try. Ivan Watson, thank you for your insight, in Moscow for us.

I want to talk about this big meeting. We really can't under - overstate that. Let's bring in our political panel to discuss this. Rebecca Berg, she's a CNN political analyst and a national political reporter for Real Clear Politics. Once again we have retired Admiral John Kirby, a CNN military and diplomatic analyst. He's also the former Pentagon, as well as the State Department spokesman. And Jackie Kucinich, CNN political analyst and the Washington bureau chief for "The Daily Beast."

OK, I want to ask you, with your extensive experience of just the protocol when it comes to the State Department and it comes to the executive branch. If you have two - these two leaders, they initially were supposed to have this informal pull-aside, which signaled something. It sort of says, OK, well, we're just going to get together in a more casual way. Now it's been upgraded, we learned today, to a bilateral meeting. This is a formal meeting. What do we take away from that?

REAR ADMIRAL JOHN KIRBY (RET.), CNN MILITARY AND DIPLOMATIC ANALYST: So it will be - you can take away a couple of things. First, the agenda will probably be much more specific and much more formal. In other words, there will be a list of topics for both sides to want to engage on. You'll have opening statements by both guys. Cameras in the room for those - for those opening statements. Maybe even some press statements afterwards. Those are possible.

But, more importantly, you're going to have more people at the table, more people in the room, certainly more formal note-taking and a more, hopefully, a more comprehensive discussion about some of these big issues that a pull-aside just doesn't give you the option. Usually they're very small. They're very - in a small room. Only a couple of staffers there. And usually there's no big record of what was discussed or any outcomes thereof. So I think it's just - it more formalizes it. And, frankly, this is good for the president. This - you know, if he - if he's well briefed and he's well prepared, Ivan's exactly right, Putin has a very experienced hand at this. If - this formality, this structure, can actually work to the president's advantage.

KEILAR: But, Rebecca, we heard from the national security adviser, H.R. McMaster. You know, we hear - we - John Kirby is saying, if this is structured, this can play to his advantage. But McMaster was saying there's no specific agenda. He's going to talk about what he wants to talk about. What are some of the concerns that folks have if the president goes into this and he's winging it? Or does this sort of eliminate the chance that he will be ad-libbing?

REBECCA BERG, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: well, color me skeptical, Brianna, that the president would actually be winging this meeting. I think what H.R. McMaster said publicly might be just him being a little bit diplomatic towards the president, giving the president his ultimate authority to talk about what he wants to talk about and set the agenda. We know that Donald Trump is not a president who likes to feel constrained or too tightly tethered to any sort of restrictions. And so this could be just his advisors trying to give him as much flexibility as possible. But you can bet that before this meeting there is a great deal of preparation going on. His advisers are running down the options of things he can address and certainly there are going to be issues that you cannot avoid addressing and the president will need to address no matter what, including North Korea, including Syria, potentially election meddling, although the White House has indicated he would not bring that up in this setting.

[13:25:39] JACKIE KUCINICH, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, and the Kremlin has released things that they do want to talk about. They want to talk about these compounds that were seized. They want to talk about sanctions. They want to talk about -

KEILAR: By the Obama administration in December.

KUCINICH: By the Obama administration. Yes, right at -

KEILAR: When they booted out Russian diplomats/intel folks.

KUCINICH: Exactly. They want to talk about the crisis in Syria. They said that they - one of the ways - one of the places they could find some common ground is fighting international terrorism. So the Kremlin has sort of set out their parameters.

One thing we haven't seen, and what the White House has been - has seemed to have indicated that is not going to be brought up is election meddling. And while the president is under pressure here at home to discuss this and perhaps look Putin in the eye and pull an Obama and say, cut it out, he might leave that meeting and not do that. And what will be the fallout there? We just don't know.

KEILAR: Can - to playing devil's advocate to that, would it be - would he be the best messenger to say, cut it out, when it was only recently that he seemed to grudgingly accepted that this occurred?

KUCINICH: It's a good point. It's a really good point. But, again, we're talking about - this is bigger than Donald Trump. This has always been bigger than Donald Trump about the Russia election meddling. So could he step back from that and perhaps confront Putin? We don't know the answer to that question. It doesn't seem like they're going there, though, at this point.

KIRBY: Look, even if it's unpalatable for him to talk about from 2016's perspective, he could simply - easily do this by going forward and say, look -

KUCINICH: Right.

KIRBY: We've got a midterm coming up in a year and a half. We've got another one in 2020. Now, going forward, this is unacceptable. But he doesn't necessarily have to fall back on what happened in 2016.

BERG: Right. And another question, of course, from this meeting is, does Donald Trump offer the Russians any concessions? Does he offer Putin any concessions? Russia has been asking for this compound back that was taken from them as part of sanctions against Russia. Will Donald Trump offer that as sort of a peace offering? We're not sure.

KEILAR: We know that he's asked staff for options. Among those include some sanctions relief. I look back to that Oval Office meeting that he had with the Russian ambassador and the Russian foreign minister where he talks about Jim Comey, calls him a nut job and he reveals classified information that he really should not have. It was information that was technically the property of the Israelis. So it was sort of a two-for-one misstep that he made there. If you are staffing President Trump and you're getting him ready for this, looking at that meeting, what - how do you try to redirect him going into this one?

KIRBY: The first thing you do is you - you determine, as Jackie rightly says, what matters to us. What major points do we want to get across to them? Then you need to kind of red team it. You've got to think about what they're going to come at you with. Here's what we expect Putin to complain about. Here's what we expect him to offer you. And sort of figure out how you're going to go forward from there. But you've got to - you've got to not only play offense, you've got to play defense in a meeting with these guys. They're very, very crafty. I've been in plenty of the bilats between John Kerry and Sergey Lavrov. They know what they're going. You have to go in with a game plan and you have to go in with a sense of, here's how - when we walk out, here's what we want to say we did. Here's what success looks like.

KEILAR: And yet there's always an unpredictable nature to these things. With President Trump, he does like to be unpredictable.

KUCINICH: Yes, and that - that is the wildcard. But I'm sure his staff as this point is hoping that he sticks to the script because you have to imagine they're going through a lot of briefings at - over this Fourth of July period at this point.

KEILAR: Yes. And you know he wants to do well here.

KUCINICH: Yes.

KEILAR: He wants to be perceived as being done well. So we will - we will see.

All right, thank you so much, panel. I do appreciate it. Rebecca Berg, Jackie Kucinich and Admiral John Kirby, thanks to all of you.

Coming up, ISIS on the run. U.S.-backed forces getting closer to driving the group out of two strongholds. What this means for the war or terror, next.

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