Follow Christiane on social media:
What time is Amanpour on CNN?
Check showtimes to see when Amanpour is on CNN where you are. Or watch online.
Schama on talking of Jewish history: ‘Stop being so nervous’
By Mick Krever, CNN
To many people, particularly non-Jews, the story of the Jewish people is one of sadness and tragedy; it is that very stereotype that Historian Simon Schama set out to shatter with his latest project, The Story of the Jews.
“Particularly to the non-Jewish world, Jews are mostly defined … through the frame of Auschwitz and the Holocaust, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” Schama told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Wednesday. “And I can’t run away from that, but that of course is not the whole story.”
The Story of the Jews is a five-part BBC series and book out now in the UK; it releases in the U.S. this spring, with the series airing on PBS.
Many people who come to the Jewish story, he said, are nervous, whether because of “a kind of Jewish truculence” or because they do not want patronize.
“Part of the series states stop being so nervous,” he said. “We're all in this together.”
WEB EXTRA: Angela Kane
In this web extra, CNN's Christiane Amanpour speaks with Angela Kane, U.N. High Representative for Disarmament Affairs, about alleged Syrian evidence that the opposition used chemical weapons, asl well as about the difficulties presented by gathering evidence in a war zone.
Amanpour's full interview with Kane can be seen here.
U.N. to Russia: Syria chemical report 'stands for itself’
By Mick Krever, CNN
The United Nations official in charge of weapons inspectors said that the report alleging chemical weapons use in Syria “stands for itself,” shooting back Russian allegations that the report was “biased” and “distorted.”
“It is a very sound, scientific report,” Angela Kane, U.N. High Representative for Disarmament Affairs, told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Wednesday in her first television interview since the report was released. “It has forty pages. It is buttressed by scientific evaluation, by diagnosis and by assessments, and so therefore I have no heard any criticisms of the findings themselves. The findings show that there is use of chemical weapons – what the inspectors found on the ground.”
The allegations of bias came from Russia’s deputy foreign minister, Sergey Ryabkov, who met with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on Wednesday.
Israel Cabinet Minister Lapid on Syria, Iran: Words not enough
By Mick Krever, CNN
It may not be Yair Lapid’s job, but he certainly has a lot to say about foreign policy.
“If you want to negotiate you better have a big stick in your hand – or in this case a big Tomahawk,” he told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour of negotiations with Syria on Tuesday. “It’s the Middle East; you have to have sticks with the carrots.”
Lapid, a former journalist and TV presenter, threw a wrench into Israeli politics when his upstart moderate party, Yesh Atid, took second place in the last election.
He is clearly a man with ambitions. He was widely rumored to have wanted the post of foreign minister; he was given finance. Most observers assume he covets the prime minister’s office.
So it’s no surprise that he has plenty to say about some of the top international issues on Israel’s agenda: Syria and Iran.
His views come down to this: Words are great, but we care about deeds.
“Unless there is a credible threat, all the negotiations [on Syria] are just empty words,” he said. “This is not over. It won’t be over until all weapons of mass destruction will be out of Syria. Then we will know this whole move has succeeded.”
EXCLUSIVE: Inside lab that tested Syria chemical weapon evidence
By Fred Pleitgen and Andrew Carey, CNN
The Hague, Netherlands (CNN) - When U.N. weapons inspectors left their hotel to investigate claims of chemical weapons use in the suburbs of Damascus in late August, most of the experts travelling in the convoy of armoured SUVs were not United Nations staff at all.
In fact, nine of the 12 were inspectors from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).
The OPCW is the implementing body of the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), an international treaty which bans the possession of chemical weapons, and has been signed and ratified by 189 countries around the world.
Syria has just applied to join, presenting the OPCW with perhaps the most challenging assignment in its near 20-year history, as the country is still locked in a deadly civil war.
The OPCW's experts have monitored the cataloguing and destruction of chemical weapons in countries ranging from the United States and Russia to Libya. They have also worked in Iraq, which was the first time its inspectors were sent into a live battlefield.
"We try to get as much information as we can about what we are doing," Franz Ontal, OPCW's head of inspector training, recently told CNN, during an exclusive visit to the organization's lab and staging facility in the Netherlands.
Assad moving chemical weapons to Iraq and Lebanon, Syria opposition General Salim Idriss claims to CNN’s Amanpour
By Mick Krever, CNN
(CNN) - The head of the opposition Free Syrian Army told CNN's Christiane Amanpour on Thursday he has intelligence showing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's government is moving its chemical weapons out of the country.
"Today, we have information that the regime began to move chemical materials and chemical weapons to Lebanon and to Iraq," Gen. Salim Idriss said from inside Syria.
CNN could not independently verify Idriss' claim.
Several senior Israeli officials told CNN's Elise Labott that they have not seen movements into Lebanon or Iraq, and that they did not believe it made sense for the Syrians to be moving weapons so soon.
And Iraq categorically denied that chemical weapons had crossed into its territory, with an adviser to Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki speculating "there is a political agency behind this claim."
"We were the victims of chemical weapons under Saddam's regime," said the adviser, Ali al-Moussawi. "And we will never allow to let any country to transfer chemical materials to our lands at all."
Still, if the allegation were true, it could fundamentally shift the assessments of U.S. intelligence officials, CNN's Barbara Starr reports.
Syria solution not possible without Iran, top UN political official Feltman tells CNN's Amanpour
Russia's plan to have Syria destroy its chemical weapons has put diplomacy, and the United Nations, front and center.
So is a diplomatic solution possible?
Not without Iran's cooperation, Jeffrey Feltman, the top UN political official, told CNN's Christiane Amanpour.
Click above to see Amanpour's full interview with Feltman.
Madeleine Albright explains diplomacy on Syria
“In my mind," Former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright told CNN's Christiane Amanpour on Thursday, "there is no question that the threat of the use of force is what brought this diplomatic venue into place, and what made President Putin understand that this was something that should concern them in terms of getting his client, President Assad, to in fact give up his weapons, his chemical weapons.”
Click above to watch Amanpour's interview with Albright, and find out what insight she has into Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov's negotiating strategies.
CNN’s eyewitness to Halabja chemical attack
By Mick Krever
The world may hardly have known of the chemical attack that occurred in Syria on August 21 were it not for the startling images that emerged in the immediate aftermath.
“The images from this massacre are sickening,” U.S. President Barack Obama said in his address on Syria this week. “Men, women, children lying in rows, killed by poison gas; others foaming at the mouth, gasping for breath; a father clutching his dead children.”
But in 1988, when Saddam Hussein gassed the Iraqi Kurdish village of Halabja, the only way for news organizations to get images of the massacre was to send their own cameramen to the scene.
Rich Brooks, one of CNN’s longest-serving photojournalists, travelled to the scene, and told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Wednesday what it was like.
“We weren't sure what we were going to see exactly,” he said. “But what I remember vividly was entering the village and just how still and silent it was. Initially, we saw birds on the ground and then we saw cattle and sheep. And then we turned a corner into a street that was just full of bodies. And you've seen it before and the smell was overwhelming.”
Syria can only be contained, not extinguished, top former U.S. diplomat Ryan Crocker tells CNN’s Amanpour
By Mick Krever, CNN
The United States has fundamentally misread the uprising and subsequent civil war in Syria, the former American ambassador to that country and one of American’s most experienced Foreign Service officers told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Wednesday.
“I think we made a mistake right at the beginning in somehow thinking that Syria was like Egypt, like Tunisia, like Libya,” Ryan Crocker told Amanpour. “You and I know it's not.”
That misreading has lead Crocker to a stark conclusion.
“Assad isn't going anywhere outside of Syria anytime soon, if ever,” he said. “And maybe we're beginning to understand that.”
Crocker is a career diplomat who has served as ambassador to Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Kuwait, Afghanistan and Pakistan.
@camanpour on Twitter
