RELEVANT PORTION OF CBC INTERVIEW RELEASED

September 12, 2002
Ottawa, Ontario

It is being wrongly reported today that in an interview broadcast on CBC television last night Prime Minister Jean Chrétien singled out the United States for responsibility for the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

In fact, in response to a question about how he thought the world had changed on September 11th, the Prime Minister took the opportunity to point to the need for all Western developed countries to reflect on the long-term consequences of the growing divide between rich and poor nations - a divide which has clearly been used by fanatics to fan resentment toward the developed world. It is a gross misconstruction of his remarks to suggest that he was blaming the United States for the attacks. Indeed, the forceful action Canada has taken, shoulder to shoulder with the United States, to track down and bring to justice those behind the attacks is unequivocal proof of the views of the Prime Minister, the government and the people of Canada as to who is responsible for September 11th .

In order for Canadians to come to an unfiltered judgement as to the intent and meaning of the Prime Minister's remarks, a transcript of the relevant portion of the interview is enclosed. In this regard, we also encourage Canadians to view the interview as it was broadcast on the CBC. It was part of a documentary entitled "Untold Story" and can be viewed on the CBC website at cbc.ca.

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PMO Press Office: (613) 957-5555

RELEVANT PORTION OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE INTERVIEW

Peter Mansbridge: By the end of the day, what were you thinking about in terms of how the world had changed?

Prime Minister Chrétien: But I've said that it is a division in the world that is building up. And I knew that it was the inspiration of it. For me, I think that the rest of the world is a bit too selfish, and that there is a lot of resentment. I felt it when I dealt with the African file for the Summit of the G8. You know, the poor, relatively, get poorer all the time. And the rich are getting richer all the time. You know, now we see the abuse of the system with problems in the United States at this moment with the corporate world, you know. When you think that, you know, you have to let go somebody in the Cabinet because perhaps relatively very minor things…of guidelines. And there was billions of dollars that were basically stolen from the shareholders. And we have to you know solving the problems when you read history. Everybody don't know when to stop. There is a moment, you know, when you have to stop. There is a moment when you have very powerful (inaudible).

I said that in New York one day. I said, you know talking, it was Wall Street, and it was a crowd of capitalists, of course, and they were complaining because we have a normal relation with Cuba, and this and that, and, you know, we cannot do everything we want. And I said...if I recall, it was probably these words: 'When you're powerful like you are, you guys, is the time to be nice.' And it is one of the problems. You know, you cannot exercise your powers to the point that of humiliation for the others. And that is what the Western world, not only the Americans, the Western world has to realize, because they are human beings too, and there are long-term consequences if you don't look hard at the reality in 10 or 20, or 30 years from now. And I do think that the Western world is going to be too rich in relation to the poor world. And necessarily, you know, we look upon us being arrogant, self-satisfying, greedy and with no limits. And the 11th of September is an occasion for me to realize that it's even more."