uprisings, are not an international problem, they're domestic issues. it's domestic repression and the people are suffering but that doesn't mean the security council should act. >> rose: we continue with wendy kopp, the founder of teach for america. >> we need to change whole life paths and that requires transformational change. we need to step back, center ourselves and look at the last 20 years, which are extraordinary. we can through education... we should try to tackle poverty. we should absolutely do everything we can to lesson poverty but we don't need to wait for that. we can literally provide education that changes kids' lives. >> rose: we conclude with the great mexican writer carlos fuentes. >> i'm a writer and when i was very young i had the fear of the the blank page, the white page. it was like a monster. now i don't have that. every evening i know what i'm going to write the next day. but during the nighttime, dreams come and then i see things very differently. it's very magical but it keeps

me open to mystery. >> rose: libya, teach for america and carlos fuentes when we continue. seven years ago, i had this idea. to make baby food the way moms would. happybaby strives to make the best organic baby food. in a business like ours, personal connections are so important. we use our american express open gold card to further those connections. last year we took dozens of trips using membership rewards points to meet with the farmers that grow our sweet potatoes and merchants that sell our product. we've gone from being in 5 stores to 7,500. booming is using points to make connections that grow your business.

captioning sponsored by rose communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. >> rose: we begin program once again with change that is taking place in the middle east and in north africa. the unrest sweeping that part of the world has taken its latest and bloodiest turn in libya. the anti-government revolt that began six days ago has spread from benghazi to tripoli, the libyan capital. protestors are demanding an end to the 40 year rule of libyan leader colonel qaddafi and clashed with security forces. witnesses say helicopters and warplanes fired into crowds in parts of tripoli. the obama administration has condemned the government's use of lethal force. earlier today, the deputy ambassador of libya's mission to the united nations renounced

colonel qaddafi calling on them to step down and leave the country. joining me now are professor dirk vandewalle of dartmouth college and barbara plett of the british broadcasting corporation. professor, let me go to you first, tell me where you think things are at 5:00 p.m. on monday. >> i think at this point we are at kind of a crucial phase. it seems the demonstrations have started to take place in tripoli and tripoli in many ways is in a sense the big prize. green square in tripoli is really the symbol of qaddafi's revolution. it's where he holds his annual parades. it's where three days ago he still walked around to prove thaefs still in charge. and my hunch is that if indeed these demonstrations continue, particularly around green square but extend beyond tripoli as

well and that the kind of fighting we've seen continues, that this may very well be the crucial 48 hours ahead of us that will decide whether or not this regime can stay in power or whether or not it will be overwhelmed by the political energy of all these libyans that have come out in the street and demonstrated against the regime. >> rose: what will the army do? >> there really is no libyan army the way that we talk about an army in tunisia and egypt. in fact, qaddafi for a very long time has deliberately made sure that there is no national army that could perhaps rise up against them. remember that qaddafi himself comes from a military background. and so rather what we have are a number of overlapping security apparatuss and revolutionary committees and that are really in a sense the watchdogs and the ideological watchdogs of the

regime. and it's really these security organizations and these militias if you want, that are now fighting the population. so it's not so much the army. there are some army units but they are usually tied very specifically either to a son of qaddafi or to some of the tribes and then controlled through a different committee in libya. so these are really security forces and not really the army. >> rose: barbara plett, thank you for joining us. i've been watching you all day on bbc world news. tell me where we are at this moment in terms of what the security council might think about or what are the contemplations at the united nations? >> well, we've had a very interesting development here today. the security council has been deafeningly silent over the past weeks of arab uprisings. generally there are some members in particular on the council who feel these are domestic issues, not a threat to international peace and security which is what

the role of the security council is. but today we had the staff of the libyan embassy headed by the deputy ambassador, ibraham al bashi coming out and calling on the security council to intervene, an extraordinary development, i haven't been able to find a precedent for it, actually. they condemned colonel qaddafi. they said he was leading a genocide against their people. they expressed reports. and they asked the security council to impose a fz no-fly zone over tripoli, the capital city, as well as to establish safe passages for the movement of medical supplies into the country. the council hasn't responded yet. there will be procedural issues and the whole question of whether they would want to take this up. >> rose: where is if ambassador? >> that's a good question. we don't know where the ambassador is. we asked the deputy ambassador, he didn't say anything about where the ambassador was or what his position was.

so what we got were the staff on down from the ambassador and rather in a very u.n. way, that may have some bearing on how the security council will look at this because they'll be looking procedurally on what the official request is and by whom it was made and who is the deputy ambassador. is he now in charge of the mission? where is the legitimate permanent representative here and does he reflect the request of a government? all those things are things the security council will grapple with. >> rose: do either of you have any good information as to where colonel qaddafi is? >> well, all i can say is that the secretary general ban ki-moon spoke to colonel qaddafi sometime during today. i think we got the news around midday and presumably he's spoken to colonel qaddafi shortly before that. we didn't get a clear confirmation about where the libyan leader was at the time, but it was understood that he was in libya at that time. >> rose: because there was a report, i think, by the british foreign minister that somehow the rumor was he was flying to

venezuela. >> there have been all kinds of rumors about the whereabouts of colonel qaddafi, but until now as barbara just said, we don't really know exactly where he is or what plans have been made or will be made in case he needs to leave the country at this particular point in time. >> the deputy ambassador here did make an appeal also to the neighboring countries saying don't allow colonel qaddafi to escape into the neighborhood and don't allow him to transfer any assets out of libya. so that's something that was on the minds of the delegation here as well. >> rose: why is he using mercenaries? >> i must admit the notion of mercenarys in libya and the use of mercenaries is rather strange. the security apparatus in libya are quite strong, counting several thousand people. and normfully the past the security forces were perfectly

capable of containing any kind of opposition of violence. now, of course, there's always the possibility that the opposition, the kind of energy that was released in benghazi by these demonstrators spread so rapidly that in a sense it could no longer be contained and perhaps that at that point the lib libyans called in somers theirs. but libya has always prided itself on being able to contain whatever difficulties it has within its own borders, with its own personnel. so personally for me this notion of mercenaries coming into libya is something i must admit i had never heard of before. >> rose: is civil war a possibility here? >> i'm not sure that civil war directly is a possibility. what i think is very likely... look, this is a political system that in a sense is a shell. beyond qaddafi and a few confidantes there is really a major political vacuum. that is regime that for 40 years

has very systematically done away with any kind of opposition has not really trained any future leadership for the country and has tried to eviscerated any opposition that existed within society at large and what we're seeing, of course, is that the security organizations with their back against the wall because it truly is a life or death situation for the security operations and that in a sense they are the last... both the first and the last defense for the regime. if they falter then essentially what we have in libya is an enormous political vacuum and my hunch is that we would probably see quite a bit of chaos and violence and bloodshed in the days ahead. whether or not that will lead to civil war is a whole different question because one of the issues in libya, of course, is oil. and the country has historically

been united over oil and access to oil that needed to be shared by the provinces. so my hunch is in the future if indeed qaddafi were to go that oil would perhaps provide again the uniting element between these two provinces but, of course, it's still too early to know. we won't really know until we see what the fallout is, how extensive the damage will have been both to infrastructure, to people, how many people will have died and at that particular point in time we will probably have a much better idea whether or not this will be just continued chaos for a while or a much deeper device that divides up the country. my personal opinion would be that we're looking at sustained upheaval and sustained chaos rather than civil war at this point. >> if i could just add there, charlie, you may recall that on sunday night the son of connell qaddafi made a speech in which he warned that there could be civil war and that is something

that has upset many libyans. we've had a lot of callers into the bbc today who said that they saw that as a very ominous sign and it was something that incensed the libyan delegation here. it was one of the first the ambassador said, that the speech was in effect a declaration of war so although i don't know if they actually fear the civil war, they saw that as an ominous sign from the regime. >> rose: the deputy ambassador said "we're sure what is going on in libya is crimes against humanity and crimes of war. we find it impossible to stay silent and we have to transfer the voice of libyan people to the world. we state clearly the libyan mission is a mission for the libyan people, not the regime. the regime of qaddafi has already started genocide against the libyan people. we warn all african countries who are sending their soldiers to qaddafi that they will not see their soldiers coming back." do they have a set of circumstances that would demand u.n. action? >> well, they do have the authority to do a quite a lot of thing.

they have the authority to impose sanctions, they have the authority to impose a no-fly zone. they have the authority for military intervention in a country if the situation is deemed a threat to international peace and security. but that is just very rarely used. most recently during the 1991 gulf war against iraq. and i think it would be most unlikely for that to happen in this case because i expect military intervention of some kind would be needed to impose the safe corridors that the deputy ambassador was asking for. but you have this split in the council, this reluctance on behalf of some of the members, in particular like russia and china who would say this particular instance as all the arab uprisings are not an international problem, it's domestic repression and the people are suffering but that doesn't mean the security council should act. i think what we will see is a certain amount of debate over whether to hold a meeting and then when whether to issue a statement and what the statement would say. but to actually authorize some kind of military a act in a case

of domestic repression i think is most unlikely. >> charlie, could i go back for a second to the speech of what barbara mentioned? in a sense it was a very important speech and i think another tipping point in many ways, perhaps away from the regime, and that is the son has always portrayed himself as a reformer suddenly what we saw last night was in a sense the language and the symbols that he used were very much his father has used for 40 years. so the logic was we will defend ourselves to the last bullet. and if you don't gather yourself around the libyan flag then what you're doing, you're a traitor to libya because you're allowing the americans to come in, you're allowing islamic movements to come in and eventually this will lead to to a civil war. that is the kind of language and the kind of apock lip pick

vision that his father, moammar qaddafi, used to be fond of. and and perhaps carried some weight at the beginning of the revolution in the early 1970s but the whole point is that by now that doesn't carry any weight at all anymore. i would think most of the protestors who are in benghazi and tripoli on the street. and, again, it showed in a sense how the regime was consolidating itself around the family but my hunch is that in a sthens will not be effective, that most libyans... for most libyans this is completely irrelevant by now. >> rose: are the people in the streets in ben as is give who are... benghazi who have extraordinary risk of death based on what we have seen, are they different, are they saying as the people in the streets of tunisia and cairo? >> well, they are the same in the sense that in many ways is

the same kind of symptom wes found tunisia and egypt. here the big difference is libya has made a substantial amount of money, none of which has really substantially trickled down into the population. so you have a young population which, because of the earlier economic embargo and some many other decisions that the qaddafi regime has taken, in many ways has not had very good chances to advance itself, the education system is not very good, the wages are relatively low, but above all, i think, there is a feeling that libya with all this enormous amount of reservoir of money that it has should have been much farther along. and there's a very strong feeling much like there was in egypt and tunisia that a lot of what has not happened in libya and what should have happened can be put at the feet of this regime.

now, in some ways, the regime itself was not truly seen as much as chrep toe cat i can, for example, as tunisia or egypt were but nevertheless, there was a number of pent-up grievances that go far back that now sudden came to the fore and assumed the kind of political energy that frankly many of us had not estimated really existed in libya at this time. >> rose: in a broader question, barbara, beyond libya, is the united nations... what is the sort of growing attitude about what the united nations should be doing about this uprising that's sweeping through the middle east? >> well, that's a difficult question. you've had on the one hand the secretary general of the united nations making quite a lot of statements when certain incidents took place, he would come out and respond to them. he kept repeating the same principles in the case of egypt,

in the case of bahrain, in the case of tunisia and now in the case of libya in that he calls for the violence to end, calls for civilians to be protected, calls for peaceful protests to be allowed, he calls for the government to listen to the legitimate demands of their people and to have a broad will have based discussion with the opposition. all of these are statements in principle. but when it comes to the broader question about what the u.n. can do, it's not at all clear. the security council really is tied up at the moment with this issue of whether these uprisings are domestic internal issues that the council should stay away from or whether they do constitute some kind of international threat. at the moment the decision has been to fall on the former side. now if you have mass movements of refugees, if you had conflicts spilling across border then it would be much clearer what the role of the security council should be. there is something called the right to protect under which the

u.n. security council can also act it has the right when civilians are being massacred or very much acted against by their governments to protect them in some way. but that's also controversial. again, that cease something that members like russia and china would be reluctant to act on. so i have to say that although there's a lot of buzz in the corridors about what's been happening in the arab world over the past couple weeks, you've had very little said officially in a security council but also from the diplomats themselves. very difficult to get statements from diplomats who are watching their countries crumble and they're not sure what their own position would be. so it's quite unusual in that respect. >> rose: you said the next 48 hours may be crucial. what are the scenarios that may be at play? >> well, there were essentially two scenarios and the first scenario is that the regime gets overwhelmed by the demonstrations that in a sense these tipping points that i talked about really get to the level where the regime has to bowe out and take leave.

and otherwise, of course, there's the alternative that the kind of violence that we've seen which has been truly vicious and which is in a sense not surprising coming from a regime that has prided itself on being able to put any uprising down. and if that indeed continues, then what we would see in libya, of course, would be... would gather an enormous bloodbath taking revenge for what has happened. so either way which ever ever side wins i think will be very problematic for lib yashgs perhaps a lot of revenge on both sides. but again, beyond all that, that kind of enormous political vacuum that looms and one of the sides will eventually have to fill with very little experience and very little background and, again, a society that has truly been eviscerated in many ways. so whatever happens in the next 48 to 72 hours in libya will undoubtedly not be a very pretty

picture. >> rose: dirk vandewalle from dartmouth, thank you for joining us, and barbara plett. thank you. >> my pleasure. >> rose: wendy kopp is here. she is the founder and c.e.o. of teach for america. while a student at princeton in 1989, she came up with the idea of a national teaching corps. for her senior thesis she imagined an organization that would recruit the brightest graduates to teach in the country's neediest communities. she's here to share what she has learned about the education challenges facing our country and she has a new book called "a chance to make history: what works and what doesn't in providing an excellent education for all." i'm pleased to have her back on this program. welcome. >> thank you. >> rose: where are we and what must we do to reach the goals that we would like to? >> well, my fundamental message was that we have made extraordinary progress in the last 20 years and yet it's humbling to realize how much is left to be done. to the first point, though, you know, 20 years ago the

prevailing notion backed up by the research at the time was that students' socioeconomic background determined their educational outcomes and in turn life outcomes. today we know that that's not true. we have all over the country not only whole classrooms of kids whose teachers put them on a different trajectory, but now literally hundreds of schools in the most underresourced areas in the country that are taking whole buildings full of kids who face all the extra challenges of poverty and putting them on a come pleadly different trajectory than their socioeconomic background would predict. so we know something we didn't know 20 years ago. >> rose: and is that scalable? >> i deeply believe that it is. >> rose: that's the big question? >> that's the new question. and that's progress, right? before we were asking can this be done? today we're asking can we scale it. even to that question, i look at the progress that's been made in the last five years. five years ago if we had brought

our education policy leaders together and asked them what are the most impossible to move school systems in the country we would have had a big debate but they would have said new orleans and washington, d.c. are near the top of the pack. and those are the two of the fastest-improving urban school systems in the country right now. we have seen a level of policy change in this country in the last two years that is completely unprecedented. policy change that is rooted in the learnings of what is going on differently in these schools that i would call transformational schools. >> rose: and what are those learnings? >> you know, i think always... so i think about a school... say north star elementary school in newark, new jersey, right? now i walk down... this school is taking its students who are almost all receiving free and reduced price lunch, afsh students, students who are coming in significantly behind and it's putting them... i mean it's literally this is one of the highest-performing elementary schools in the whole

state of new jersey, irrespective of economic background of the kids. i walk down the hallway oaf this school and saw student work on the walls that literally, you know, on an absolute scale just stunning student work. kindergarteners writing in full sentences in both english and spanish. stunning on an absolute scale of excellent. so what is going on differently here? there's a school leader, julie jackson, who has embraced a different mandate for than most public schools have. most schools in general view their mandate as to put learning opportunities in front of kids. in this case the man da is different. the mandate is literally we're going to change the educational trajectory of our kids and in turn their life trajectory. and this school leader is bound and determined to do whatever it takes to accomplish this that end and she does what any great leader does when they're trying to accomplish very ambitious outcomes, which is first of all she fixates on attracting and

developing an incredibly talented team-- the other teachers, the staff in her schools are her top priority. she does so much to build a powerful culture of achievement in that building. just like a great leader builds a powerful culture. she does whatever it takes, she takes nothing as a given other than the end goal. so the point is that, you know, one, we need to embrace a different mandate for what our schools in low-income communities should accomplish and thin we need to realize this is going to take the same level of leadership, energy, discipline as it takes to accomplish extraordinary outcomes really in any endeavor. >> rose: i mean, one thing that you are saying and you say in this book is this notion that you need better teachers, yes. but that's not enough. >> right. >> rose: you need a culture. you need a system, and you need leadership that extends throughout the building and throughout the system. and only when that you have can k you scale it up to where it ought to be. >> right. and the question is how do we create whole systems of

transformational schools. ultimately we're going to realize first of all we have to make a huge investment in developing the leadership pipeline. we need more julie jacksons. there's no short cut to that. >> rose: can you teach... can you make a julie jackson? is that something they they're born with? i'm talking about leadership, not the ability to teach. >> i think it takes recruiting people with real leadership characteristics into teaching. >> rose: do you know what they are? >> we've done a lot of research about it. i think about leadership skills as perseverance in the face of challenges. the ability to influence and motivate others, the problem-solving ability, critical thinking skills, operating... the ability to operate effectively with a larger team, respect and humility. certainly in this case we need people who have very high expectations for kids in urban and rural areas who deeply believe in kids. and who are willing to work

relentlessly in pursuit of that mission. >> rose: what have you come to learn about why people come to teach for america? >> you know, the chief reason people come to teach for america is they want to make a different. they want to give back, to make an impact and, you know, when... and i think teach for america makes it possible for people to act on that inclination. >> rose: it gives them a vehicle and a place where they can give back. >> and make a difference. make a huge impact. >> rose: how long do they stay with you? with the educational system. >> they commit initially two years. so we have 20,000 teach for america alumni now and 60% of them are working full time in education. some of them as teachers, some of them we have school principals, many other district leaders. we think it's important that some of them leave and become policy leaders and lawyers and doctors and business people, people who can influence the

overall context in which our schools function. >> rose: how are we doing in the obama administration with respect to support for education? >> well, we've seen a pace of change in the last three years two years in education policy that is completely unprecedented. and i think that secretary duncan has... and the president have... through making it a priority and actually acting on the lessons that we see taking... in the transformational schools. like they realize there's nothing elusive about this. this is about committing ourselves to high standards. it's about people and leadership. >> rose: do you want to see no child left behind continue? >> i think there are elements of no child left behind that we have to maintain. i think we took a radical step forward when we committed ourselves to transparency of data and to disaggregating data so we could understand in any

given school how are all the kids doing, not just how are the average kids doing but how are all the kids doing and i think that that aspect of n.c.l.b. has changed the conversation that goes on in our school systems. i think what we saw over the last eight years is just the limitations of any effort to kind of centrally mandate what needs to happen in the community. >> but was it a problem the way it was constructed or the way it was fundd? >> i think... i actually think it's more than anything the way it was structured. i mean, when we really ground ourselves in the lessons of these schools that are highly successful always, as i said, run by a school leader who feels full ownership and commitment over the end goal, right? yet we have a policy context that instead of focusing on powerful committed people and

empowering them and unleashing them and saying "go after the results" we try to micromanage our educators. we have an entire policy construct starting with n.c.l.b. at the federal level and in every state that is trying to literally control. it's built on the best of intentions but not a lot of faith in our education... educators. and we will have incremental progress and incremental change does not change lives. we need to change full life paths and that requires transformational change. so we need to step back, center ourselves in the lessons of the last 20 years which are extraordinary. we can through education... we should try to tackle poverty, we should absolutely do everything we can to lessen poverty but we don't need to wait for that. we can literally provide education that changing kids. >> rose: and you can do it immediately or it will take you

ten years to make sure that for all the kids across the country you reach the level that you would like to see? >> i mean, it is extraordinarily difficult to do what i'm talking about doing and yet it's much more difficult for the kids, the families and all over the country if we don't take it on. so that's the lesson. >> rose: when you go and talk to those schools, whether they're places like that harlem academy and all kinds of places like that, where people have gotten there by some lottery process. just to see what happens, number one, where some of the principals you talk rabbit there and everybody knows what teach for america has done. but to see the passion of the parents and what it means to see the children in an environment that they believe will give them a better life than they have. that's just the most amazing process to see happening in front of your very eyes and it's all about, as you say, culture, system, leadership and across

the board connection. >> all the basics and yet sometimes our public discussion doesn't ultimately relate to what we see happening. >> rose: speaking of that, can the teachers' union-- who's taken a lot of hits-- can they and are they coming into the process in a way they're asking... you know, i understand how education is changing and we want to engage the change-- or not. >> i think we've certainly seen quite a bit of evidence that some districts... we are engaging and being very constructive allies for the change effort. what's unfortunate in my mind, if we changed all the unions tomorrow and we need unions to change, we would still have largely the situation we have today because you know what? we need to change our districts.

teacher dismissal rates are the same in states that have very low unionization levels and essentially no collective bargaining... they're 1% in the state. which just tells you we've got a larger problem. and my view is we all need to change. >> rose: but that suggests you think the goal ought to be teacher dismissal. >> it's just that i think we've got a lot of people right now in this country very worked up about teacher unions and i think we should be very worked up about everything. or at least maybe admit that we're all blameless but nonetheless all commit ourselves to change and to center ourselves in the principles of success that we see at work and the tools that are putting kids on a different path. >> rose: i want to touch three quick bases. you are at risk of losing some federal funding because your $20 million worth because you have been... you are by definition... >> yes, i think this is a very unintended consequence of the anti-earmark swirl. and i guess... i can't

imagine... every senator and congress person i talked to says "you're not an earmark" and yet we are so we really need to clarify the definition of earmarks. we're a national authorized program that operates in 31 states. that's not what people think of when they think of earmarks. >> rose: second, teach america now has an international dimension. it's not just teach for america. >> that's right. well, there's a global network of which teach for america is one part, called teach for all. it's only about three or four years old and there are 18 programs across the world that are working to build movements in their country by enlisting their future leaders and committing two years to teach in underresourced communities and then fostering their develop, as life long leaders. >> rose: what's the best book you've ever read on leadership? >> hmm, i love jim collins' book "built to last, good to great." >> rose: and what do they tell you? >> >> they're so true to everything i believe. they tell you the importance of

focus and attaining true strategic clarity and building powerful cultures and investing in first who? it's all about people. i think all the lessons honestly that i've learned in the journey around building teach for america itself and that i've seen to account for success in the parts of our school systems that are working in in credible ways, it's always about all the basics. >> rose: thank you for coming. >> thank you for having me. >> rose: carlos fuentes is here. the "new york times" has called him mexico's most celebrated novelist. he's also a critic, a historian, a playwright and the former mexican ambassador to france. the success of his first novel "where the air is clear" helped launch the latin american literary boom of the 1960s. since then he has published over two dozen works of fiction and non-fiction including "the death of artemio cruz" "terra nostra and the gold gringo" his latest

book is called "destiny and dede sire" that follows the lives of two young men as they navigate corruption in mexico. i'm pleased to have carlos fuentes back on this program, welcome, sir. >> glad to be back, charlie, thank you very much. >> 82 now and going strong. >> and going strong. >> rose: does it get easier or harder or... >> it gets easier in many things because you... i'm a writer and when i was very young i had the fear of a blank page, the white page, like a monster. now i don't have that. every evening i know what i'm going to write the next day but during the time time dreams come and then i write something very different. very magical but it keeps me open to mystery. >> is magical realism here? >> a bit because you have a dead woman, a mother speaking, there's the prophet ezekiel taking my protagonist all over

the place on his wings so there's a bit of everything. the way life is. just talk a bit about... this is a story told by a narrator who's dead. >> yeah. >> rose: head severed. acapulco, was it? >> yeah. >> rose: and then he tells the story of these two young boys who have a journey and the journey is... starts from the teenagers and one ends up leaving school to tour the world the other becomes a lawyer, one becomes the aid to the richest man around in mexico. and the other becomes an aide to the president. and then they both meet their own fate. where did this idea come from and what do you want it to say about contemporary mexican... >> it's one of the oldest ideas in the world because it comes from the bible. >> rose: yes, that's right. cain and awell? >> cain and ahbel who are brothers, the first brothers of the world and who are brothers but end up as bitter enemies and

one kills the other. so that the biblical framework. then it's set in contemporary mexico, which is a very complex country. sometimes it's simplified for consumption. but it's fantastically complex. one can never find out everything they would like to know about mexico and it's entering a new stage of great conflict because we have achieved democracy. for 70 years we were ruled by one party, the party of revolutionary institutions but democracy has coincided with crime and violence. so it's a terrible moment in which i personally think that it's coming to an end and we're going to have an open door or something but which should respond to the fact that 50 million mexicans-- almost half of the population-- are 30 years old or less. a young country and one cannot leave these 50 million young

people to choose between crime and ignorance. one must open new avenues from work, for progress, for responsibility and we have a lot to do in mexico in that sense because we've been living very comfortably off the money sent by workers in the united states of tourism and of oil but these are all factors that are going down or less important and we have a whole country to develop. we haven't done it, good infrastructure for many decades. we have to open up education, we have to open up health, hospitals, communications but the present government are at a stand still and both the public and the private sector are sort of afraid and doing what they always do it's not a time in mexico to do what you always do. you have to do something different. >> rose: does the president have that mission? >> i'm not sure. i don't think. so i really don't think so. i think he's a politician, the

old guard from the right ring. he's a decent man who's an honorable man but i don't think he has the wider vision for the mexico of the 21st century which means incorporating 50 million young people into work. >> rose: some like to write that mexico has possibilities of becoming a failed state. in which non-state actors take over because they have guns and violence and money. is that possible? >> i don't think so. it took a long time to get a mexican state. we floundered, we have some blessed memory. and juarez created a national state in mexico and we've been building on that rock but now events have surpassed the traditional state. we have to have something new, something that sees the future in mexico in terms of

incorporation and of opening up spaces that are now... not precisely clothed but not functioning in the wide open way we would like to see it in order for the country to bound for we cannot depend eternally on what workers send from the united states. we cannot depend internally on... >> rose: but you can't do that as long as you have the level of violence that you do have, can you? >> well, it's a level of violence which is limited. >> rose: limited to certain places. >> certain places. i live in mexico city. there's violence in mexico city. this is the north of mexico, it's sinaloa. >> rose: it's acapulco, monterrey. >> it happens in many places but it's not generalized. it's terrible, it makes many mexicans sick, angry, but it's not the... it is more or less the exception, not the rule. nevertheless it is there. we have to go beyond that. we have to create a new set of

laws and development. the problem is that as young people become what we call ninis in mexico, neither work nor study, if they're left adrift there... they will be tempted by crime. if we offer them new work, prospects of development for the possibilities mexico has. >> let me stay withish w the issue in terms of what has to be done about the violence regardless of how localized it is. do you support the effort of the president to do something about it and to use whatever means necessary to stop it? >> listen, this violence is not new in mexico. it's at least 30 years old. few previous presidents condemned violence. they had one banned by the other they supported some people against others, is that kind of thing. calderon decided to legitimize it. two weeks after taking power in a hotly debated election, i

think he won but 0.5%. >> rose: running against the mayor of mexico city. >> yeah. to win by 0.5% with someone who's won by 80%. nevertheless he tried to justify himself by declaring a war on crime. and these are the results. the criminals fought the war against the presidents, the police are corrupt, the army is not fit for this kind of activity we're in this... the fact is we must understand first of all that this is a situation that compromises both mexico and the united states. the arms are bought in the united states. the consumers are in the united states. once the drugs cross the boarder where do they go? who consumes them who are the north american capitalists? we don't know about that. we nomex can criminals. we don't know anything about u.s. laundering of money. >> rose: what do you mean by

"u.s. laundering of money"? >> things are laundered in this country. once we cross the border what happens? we don't know where the drugs go how they... the money is laundered. drug money is laundered, the consumption,s where it? >> rose: so what are you suggesting? >> i'm suggesting mexico and the united states come together and decide on a common policy to fight this this is a problem that is not unilateral or bilateral. it has become a global problem. i'm part of a group headed by the former presidents of colombia and mexico in which we propose starting to think about a world of legalized drugs. >> rose: legalized drugs or legalized... >> yeah. the consumption of drugs can be legalized, not penalized. for example drug takers should not be sent to jail. >> rose: so you would treat drugs like alcohol? >> in a way, in a way. the moment the that drugs are

not persecuted, not considered a crime the level of consumption descends as what happened in the united states with alcohol. when alcohol was not permitted it was desired. when it was permitted it wasn't that much of a problem. >> rose: so this is you and the former president of brazil and the former president of mexico. >> and colombia. three presidents. this is the group to which i belong, yes. >> rose: and what are you doing to make these things become a reality. >> we're proposing ideas and we're pushing towards a world in which drug consumption can be legalized and treated not as a crime but as a malady or a habit or something that it does not create an empire based on the consumption and selling of drugs. >> rose: so the president has met with the president of mexico-- the president of the united states. the secretary of state has been to mexico to the rest of latin america. are they conversations taking place now that you think there productive?

>> i don't know. i don't know. i think they're at a standstill. i think president obama's attention is elsewhere, really. >> rose: yes, of course it is. he's meeting with the president of china as we speak. >> he's thinking of the world at large. doing a pretty good job, i have to say. >> rose: you like him? >> oh, i admire him. i think he's done fantastic and after bush's policies of preemptive action against any state that was deemed hostile, you have obama visiting egypt, visiting the middle east, saying i can be friends with anybody. what happens afterward depends on you, not me. but his stance, his political international stance is there. it is openness and friendship with everybody. if they want to make sure beyond here's my hand. completely different policy from bushes. and this is a man, your president obama, who has the approval of 80% of the world. >> rose: much less than that in the united states. >> much less in the united states but very high in the world. very high. we are very happy that we have

this president. >> rose: when you look at latin america today, there are two... there are several trends there. you have in brazil a certain leadership that has taken from lula and has passed on to a new president. you have morales, you have chavez. you have the new president of chile. what's the direction in latin america. >> rose: pluralism. >> rose: which you like? >> which i like. i don't agree with chvs, he is very bad news. >> and becoming more dictatorial by the day. >> well, with less resources. his only resources are attacking the united states and saying that i ear attacking him. he doesn't have any other resources. he's very poor. >> rose: he has oil. >> he has oil and he has... >> rose: a lot of it. >> a lot of oil which doesn't even employ well, the resources. there's a very good president in

colombia, santos. >> rose: the new president. >> he's my pupil at harvard. front row. >> rose: front row student? was he a good student? >> very good student. >> rose: he was taking creative writing from you? >> no, i gave a course on latin american civilization. he was there. so you have the variety. latin america cannot be presented under a unified concept. it is a very diverse fight. each nation has found its own way, i think. chile is one kind of government, venezuela is another, ecuador is another, so it's very diversified. >> rose: how's gabrielle garcia marquez doing? >> he's all right. he's in mexico. >> rose: you sound very cool about that. >> he's my friend. >> rose: he is your good friend. >> very good different. >> rose: do you two have different views of castro today? >> i think so. we've lived with it for many decade. >> rose: loofs lafs yes, i know. i'm just trying to get you to... >> no, no, he has one vision of

castro and i have a different vision. >> rose: his vision is what? >> his vision is castro is good for cuba. i don't think so. >> rose: you don't think so. when do you think we'll see the transition to something different? >> they're as old as i am, the two castro brothers and i don't know when the succession will be but a lot will depend on how the united states deals with the cuban succession. i obama has been very good at establishing certain parameters of u.s. policy a which are good and would permit in the future once the castros are gone to have a better relationship with cuba. this takes into account that a lot of cuban people may not like the government. they like the social policies, they like the education, the health system and they are patriots. cuba has always been a colony of spain and the united states, now it's a free country thanks to the castros. that i like that even though they may suffer. >> rose: even now they recognize the dependence they had on russia was ill-advised.

>> and that's gone. so now you have the possibility of the two cubas-- cuba in florida and the cuba in cuba-- coming together. but that depends on the kind of policies the united states follows. >> rose: your relationship to america has been... you've had great friends here, great friends in the it will a trar tradition, mailer and buckley was a friend. bill styron was a close friend. >> very close friend. >> rose: so you've lad lots of great friendships here. but have you considered america a friend? >> oh, yes, yes. you know, i grew up here in the roosevelt years which gave me a great impression of the greatness of the united states. i love the united states, the roosevelts and in the deal. when i have criticized the united states it's because the united states has not lived up to roosevelt. it has not lived up to its great tradition. that's been my criticism. the sense of disappointments and what the united states should be and was not. but now with obama i think it's good for the united states.

i think it's recovered the great tradition that roosevelt and clinton and truman as some of the great presidents had. >> rose: so you're optimistic for america's future snowed >> very much. very much. it's very difficult for president obama to make the american public at large understand that the united states is no longer the sole power. you had two confrontations with the soviet union, the soviet union disappeared then you had unilateral power and now you have a country that is a great country, a powerful country but the competition comes from china india, brazil. they were considered third-world countries. >> i think you're wrong on that. i think that the united states and the president understand that. what we're looking at now is an opportunity... >> does the public understand it? >> i think they do. >> oh, well, i'm very glad to hear that. that's not my impression. >> rose: i think people understand the politicians have to make hard decisions about how you invest in your future. it's not so much that you assume that your relationship is not

going to be changed because there's a rise of the rest of the world but also in brazil it's an emerging market. they're the strongest country in latin america. >> they used to be third-world countries 20 years ago. now they are emerging powers. >> rose: they're the strongest country in latin america. >> but i'm glad the united states understand this is. >> rose: i think they do. >> sometimes we have the impression in latin america that the united states doesn't understand it. >> rose: but does mexico understand it's no longer the voice in latin america? that brazil is? >> it certainly does. absolutely. brazil is the great leader in gnat lath tin america, argentina used to be the great leader. >> rose: did you like lula? >> very much. they've had 14 years of great presidents. >> when you look at the culture,

the culture is rich and strong in mexico in terms of an appreciation of its culture and heritage? >> i think we are living in a curious contradiction between the richness and continuity of the culture and the lack of political and economic equivalence to the culture. the culture is very strong, very... has a long tradition. the politics are still minor. the economics are minor compared to the culture. culture is up here, the politics are down here. that happens throughout latin america. the culture is much stronger than the politics. >> rose: but mexico is better today because it doesn't dominate? >> it's better as a democracy but now it has the problem with drugs which was tempered or negotiated by the p.r.i. governments and the conservative calderon has not been able to cope with this. it's become a major problem for mexico and, as i say, it was a problem shared with the united states which we'll only solve globally. very difficult. very difficult.

>> rose: this book is called "destiny and desire" a novel by carlos fuentes. he has won lots of prizes including the cervantes prize. this is translate bid edith grossman. when you read this in english, what's the... >> it's a new book because of course i think spanish, i dream in spanish, i make love in spanish. >> rose: i would hope so. >> suddenly having it in another language it forces me to... she's a great translator so i read a new book. i can only read myself in french and english in translation but it's the sensation of a book written by another person which is good because it means the book has gone into another culture, another language. i'm happy about that. >> rose: great to see you. >> great to see you again, charlie.

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