:00:00. > :00:49.Now on BBC News, it's time for HARDtalk.
:00:50. > :00:58.Some very significant people have lined up condemning what you have
:00:59. > :01:04.done, or questioning you? Do you -- your wisdom has been questioned in
:01:05. > :01:08.publishing the cartoons again and again, pouring petrol on the flames.
:01:09. > :01:14.When you talk about frustration with governments now, at your whole
:01:15. > :01:27.career looks like it has been spent at war. How do you feel as President
:01:28. > :01:31.that you are going to go down in history as a president who presided
:01:32. > :01:45.over a loss of a large part of your territory? We understood that you
:01:46. > :01:50.wished to do this interview, and you wished to reply to questions that
:01:51. > :01:57.we, in the name of the BBC, are putting towards you, is that not
:01:58. > :02:04.right? Cheers! To the next 20 years! How come you all have water, and I
:02:05. > :02:09.have wine's that is terrible. So go on, you need to take us back to the
:02:10. > :02:13.first. We want to hear your thoughts on how it all started. The strangest
:02:14. > :02:16.thing about starting it was that people did not talk about the
:02:17. > :02:21.content, they were obsessed with what I might wear on sat. The ideas
:02:22. > :02:28.were so bizarre, ranging from a normal suit, to a smoking jacket and
:02:29. > :02:33.Azaz, at one particular time. Luckily, we got off that and got
:02:34. > :02:37.onto the interviews. -- fez. We got onto the idea that if you are going
:02:38. > :02:40.to do a 25 minute interview, it was then to have a different character,
:02:41. > :02:44.and it was good to start drilling down and become more of a cross
:02:45. > :02:49.examination and an interview, really putting facts to people. There a
:02:50. > :02:57.net. Wang Yu obsession with what facts are. But 20 years ago, we were
:02:58. > :03:04.clear with facts. -- there is a new obsession with what facts are. The
:03:05. > :03:11.show about the human rights agenda, because people were interested in
:03:12. > :03:15.that. I knew nothing about anything. Except that we got guests who did
:03:16. > :03:21.know things and had cases to answer. But a lot of it was also about what
:03:22. > :03:25.drove them. What drove them, but you had to come away after 35 minutes is
:03:26. > :03:30.something new. You could not just regurgitate the same thing. No, but
:03:31. > :03:34.I think that holding people to account, I still think they are the
:03:35. > :03:44.best HARDtalks. I only have one that I really remember very vividly, with
:03:45. > :03:48.the vice president of the Democratic Party two republic of the Congo. He
:03:49. > :03:54.was found guilty of human rights abuses. I think that for me is the
:03:55. > :03:58.best kind of HARDtalk, we have somebody who can really say... He
:03:59. > :04:02.speaks French, and he did not like the questions that I asked. He kept
:04:03. > :04:06.telling me that he did not understand what I was saying. He
:04:07. > :04:11.gave it to do thanks. I think one of the signals as the feedback that we
:04:12. > :04:15.get from our audience, particular as you talk with human rights agenda.
:04:16. > :04:18.When we do those interviews with powerful people who are not held to
:04:19. > :04:22.account in our own countries, we just get such a wave of positive
:04:23. > :04:28.feedback from our audience, thinking of the promised of Ethiopia.
:04:29. > :04:32.Wannasrichan, he was a strong leader. And he ruled his country was
:04:33. > :04:38.something of an iron fist, but when I challenged him on the specific
:04:39. > :04:42.human rights records, and abuses that we can put that his
:04:43. > :04:46.government's tour, he found it difficult. And it was a very
:04:47. > :04:50.contentious interview. Who presents the name of members of the election
:04:51. > :04:54.board to the house of the people 's representatives for approval? The
:04:55. > :04:58.President submitted the names to the Parliament. Now, if we were to
:04:59. > :05:03.appoint new election members, it would be the Prime Minister which
:05:04. > :05:07.would put the names to the Parliament. Where were you at that
:05:08. > :05:12.particular time? I was the president of the transitional government. So
:05:13. > :05:18.you still put forward the names? I think that is the point that a train
:05:19. > :05:21.to get to. Afterwards, the reaction we got nudges from Ethiopians in the
:05:22. > :05:25.country, but from Ethiopians all around the world, was thank you.
:05:26. > :05:30.Thank you for putting the questions to our Prime Minister. Had with
:05:31. > :05:34.being in the room, we would have put the same questions. I think the
:05:35. > :05:37.leaders who submit themselves to a HARDtalk interrogation are
:05:38. > :05:42.sometimes, in a way, almost respected for doing that. It is
:05:43. > :05:46.those who just refuse... They want to take you on and they want to
:05:47. > :05:49.submit themselves to 24 minutes of sustained questioning. And that is
:05:50. > :05:54.often a selling point, I think, when I say to people which relate to do
:05:55. > :05:57.the show? Who was your favourite? Is a favourite in HARDtalk that you can
:05:58. > :06:01.remember? There is one person who brought me up short. I think
:06:02. > :06:05.sometimes the interviews is apprising. The once you do not feel
:06:06. > :06:09.I go to be good stain your memory. This is Denis Mack are. The UN
:06:10. > :06:14.official in charge of displaced people. I was doing the usual thing
:06:15. > :06:20.you do with UN officials, and at one point, he put up his hands and said
:06:21. > :06:24.wait a minute, hold on a minute. -- McNamara. And I got this feeling
:06:25. > :06:28.that the back of my spine, thinking, something is coming. Something I
:06:29. > :06:35.might not like. He said, I can save millions of people, I have a small
:06:36. > :06:39.plane. What I can, a flat into a war zone pick up as many women and
:06:40. > :06:42.children as I can, pick them up, fly the plane, and landed somewhere
:06:43. > :06:46.safe. He looked to be across the table and said, how many lives have
:06:47. > :06:53.you saved? And I just went, good question. A little bit of humility
:06:54. > :06:57.is not a bad thing. I know from the four of us, we are not necessarily
:06:58. > :07:00.noted that quality, but a little bit of humility from journalists, we set
:07:01. > :07:04.listed on the fence and criticise everybody else, is a good thing,
:07:05. > :07:09.sometimes. We don't do the difficult things in life. But it is the people
:07:10. > :07:14.who surprise you in interviews, it is not, and it was the runner are
:07:15. > :07:19.not necessarily the ones that you expect. You can go into something
:07:20. > :07:24.saying... Which ones do you remember? I think it is a Belgian
:07:25. > :07:29.doctor that I had not heard of before. And it was ages ago. And he
:07:30. > :07:38.was talking about how he was in central Africa and started noticing
:07:39. > :07:42.something, this was a doctor who had identified that the AIDS was not
:07:43. > :07:46.just restricted to gaze, but was throughout Africa. I remember
:07:47. > :07:52.talking to many Heather Stanning back -- I remember the Heather
:07:53. > :08:01.Stanning up on the back of my neck. And you have that moment. -- hair
:08:02. > :08:05.standing. We do a lot of interviews were we to opinion formers and
:08:06. > :08:12.people who influence people through their work. And I thinking of a
:08:13. > :08:16.writer, and are to a do, and she had what are the favourite quotes of me
:08:17. > :08:24.from a HARDtalk interview I had done. And she said the African
:08:25. > :08:28.woman, she is not a downtrodden wretch, so when we interview people
:08:29. > :08:31.like that, we are actually challenging perceptions and actually
:08:32. > :08:37.stereotypes and prejudices, and so in that sense, you are sort of
:08:38. > :08:42.dealing with material that is a hard topic that somebody might not grasp.
:08:43. > :08:48.I think those HARDtalks are quite important. And what about you,
:08:49. > :08:52.Stephen? It is a huge adrenaline rush to get an interview that you
:08:53. > :08:58.worked on for months and months and months, that is difficult to
:08:59. > :09:03.organise, that is frankly... The person doesn't want to do a comedy
:09:04. > :09:06.and persuade them to do it, and that would include going to Caracas to
:09:07. > :09:11.interview Hugo Chavez, which took a lot of persuasion are not just from
:09:12. > :09:16.me, but bizarrely from Oliver stone, the filmmaker. I interviewed him for
:09:17. > :09:23.HARDtalk, and he became... Your producer? While he knew Hugo Chavez
:09:24. > :09:27.quite well. And he said Stephen, I think they can help. And one day, I
:09:28. > :09:33.got this phone call, and all of a sudden was on the phone and he said
:09:34. > :09:37.Stephen, it is on. Hugo Chavez was fronting the South American film
:09:38. > :09:41.Festival, and it was a red carpet thing, and I was invited on to the
:09:42. > :09:45.red carpet to beat him, and I said Hugo Chavez, we do need at this
:09:46. > :09:48.interview. Peter Beattie come to the palace later. When that up as a
:09:49. > :09:55.palace with Oliver stone, who came along, too, with the HARDtalk route,
:09:56. > :10:00.and the Venezuelan film crew, and we recorded an hour with Hugo Chavez.
:10:01. > :10:02.-- crew. He weighed his finger in my face, and said I suppose the BBC
:10:03. > :10:30.said such an idiot. So that was an adrenaline buzz. But
:10:31. > :10:37.the other one that was very different was the corrections boss
:10:38. > :10:47.of the prison system in Georgia, the man who had to sign off on every
:10:48. > :10:55.execution. A man called Alan Ault, who in essence push the button to
:10:56. > :11:01.electrocute a series of prisoners on death row in Georgia. And he overuse
:11:02. > :11:10.can to find this job was destroying him. I still have nightmares, not
:11:11. > :11:16.every night, but often. It is still a very hard pill to swallow. And it
:11:17. > :11:25.stays in your psyche I guess forever. It is the most premeditated
:11:26. > :11:30.murder possible. The manual is about that peak, and the progression that
:11:31. > :11:35.you go through to execute someone... Everytime I think it is behind me,
:11:36. > :11:40.then something happens and it all comes back with a rush. -- is about
:11:41. > :11:48.that peak. I was out at Lexington Avenue bought at the time I had a
:11:49. > :11:54.flight. -- airport. This morning I was going somewhere on another
:11:55. > :11:57.airline, are usually called Delta airlines. I checked in with all
:11:58. > :12:08.these people, and the plane crashed and killed everyone. And I had to go
:12:09. > :12:14.again. All those feelings came back, although spaces came back. All those
:12:15. > :12:25.nightmares came back. -- all those faces. And just had to keep dealing
:12:26. > :12:30.with it again and again. I remember a man called Hugh Thomson, who was a
:12:31. > :12:35.US helicopter pilot during the event now more. And in 1968, he was
:12:36. > :12:40.trained to divert Vietcong fire away from some of the American troops. He
:12:41. > :12:45.flew low over a clearing, and saw something that state in his mind
:12:46. > :12:49.until he died. He saw the picture of American troops massacring
:12:50. > :12:57.villagers, unknown to villagers, and a little place that became known
:12:58. > :13:01.notoriously as a site of a massacre. He brought the helicopter down and
:13:02. > :13:06.told us then to train their guns on the fellow American soldiers, who
:13:07. > :13:17.were garrotting, raping, shooting, and stabbing a numbed villages.
:13:18. > :13:25.Vietnamese villages. -- villagers. He stopped it. It took 30 years
:13:26. > :13:29.before anybody said thank you. But you ostracised awhile, won't you?
:13:30. > :13:32.You would go to the officers mess and everybody would disappear.
:13:33. > :13:37.Actually, when it first broke, people did not know the facts. And
:13:38. > :13:42.they forgot all about it. Very soon after it happened. But personally,
:13:43. > :13:43.you paid a high price in terms of depression, didn't you, over the
:13:44. > :13:59.years? A lot of nightmares. There's been multiple marriages.
:14:00. > :14:04.It's been hard for you to carry around, hasn't it? No, it's life,
:14:05. > :14:15.you know? You have to do it, you know, life goes on. Can you ever
:14:16. > :14:22.forgive the people who did that? No. Nope, I can't, I don't think I am
:14:23. > :14:26.man enough to. I know the pain and suffering that was inflicted for no
:14:27. > :14:37.reason, no reason whatsoever, there was no threat. There was no enemy.
:14:38. > :14:44.They might have all grown up to be enemy, but that's not what a soldier
:14:45. > :14:50.does in any country. It's just not. I mean, you think of those who
:14:51. > :14:54.walked away from it, got on with their lives, had children, set up
:14:55. > :15:02.businesses. They've got to live with themselves. I imagine some of them
:15:03. > :15:12.don't have an easy time. I'm OK with what I did. I just, you know, I know
:15:13. > :15:21.they're unnecessary pain and suffering, I know how fragile human
:15:22. > :15:24.life is. We probably all have that experience of leaving an interviewee
:15:25. > :15:29.and feeling incredibly emotional, possibly crying. The only time I've
:15:30. > :15:34.ever cried in front of an interviewee was on HARDtalk,
:15:35. > :15:39.thankfully it wasn't on camera, most of the audience would have done too,
:15:40. > :15:42.it was the Yazidi girl. It was translated so it was extraordinary
:15:43. > :15:47.sitting opposite someone who was speaking an opposite language to you
:15:48. > :15:51.but we had simultaneous translation, very broken, and hearing this
:15:52. > :15:54.extraordinary story and the most effective thing, often it's not the
:15:55. > :15:59.most gruesome stuff with these stories, what sticks in my head was
:16:00. > :16:03.her describing how in order to secure a minute phone call with her
:16:04. > :16:05.brother she had to lick Honey off Vitolo of her husband, suppose it
:16:06. > :16:58.husband -- lick Honey off the toe. I had one interviewee who... The
:16:59. > :17:02.topic was so difficult for him, Egyptian, very wealthy Egyptian
:17:03. > :17:06.industrialist, and the topic was so hard, it was when President Hamid
:17:07. > :17:10.more sea was there and a lot of the cops in Egypt were concerned about
:17:11. > :17:15.the mood turning against them -- President Mohamed Morsi. He stop the
:17:16. > :17:20.interview after 11 minutes because the topic was so difficult for him
:17:21. > :17:24.was life or death for him, he was worried about his family's safety,
:17:25. > :17:29.we continue the interview but it shows you how difficult the subject
:17:30. > :17:33.matter is. One thing I've done and I really appreciate the opportunity to
:17:34. > :17:37.do it is take the show on the road, because to reach some of these
:17:38. > :17:42.stories, some of these places as well, not everyone can come to the
:17:43. > :17:46.HARDtalk studio in London. I can actually go on the road and do it
:17:47. > :17:55.myself so the reportage becomes me gathering the information, some of
:17:56. > :17:58.the case that we put, for example in Honduras to the President of the
:17:59. > :18:01.country after we'd been to the city that has the highest homicide rate
:18:02. > :18:05.in the world, which is being crippled by Gangnam, drug cartel
:18:06. > :18:09.warfare. We could naturally talk to people suffering from that reality
:18:10. > :18:14.before going into the corridors of power -- by gang.
:18:15. > :18:19.To get an eyewitness account, I paid a visit to the home of Hilda. She
:18:20. > :18:23.was on the boat which came under heavy fire. She took a bullet
:18:24. > :18:29.through her thigh and remains seriously ill. Her son-in-law and to
:18:30. > :18:35.pregnant women were killed. Hilder insists all were innocent victims,
:18:36. > :18:41.not drugs traffickers, simply villagers coming back from a trip
:18:42. > :18:45.downriver. -- Hilda. I think you put your finger on something that's
:18:46. > :18:48.really important and has become more important over the years, we've seen
:18:49. > :18:53.democracy rolled back considerably over the last ten to 15 years and it
:18:54. > :18:57.becomes I think that much more important that we hold people to
:18:58. > :19:01.account. When you think about the rollback of democracy even in
:19:02. > :19:04.Europe, we're getting the growth of the free-market dictatorships and
:19:05. > :19:09.people are accepting of this. Social media, which is obviously
:19:10. > :19:16.something... Opinion has been elevated beyond facts. But human
:19:17. > :19:19.rights has been downgraded consistently and it shouldn't be. We
:19:20. > :19:23.still need to mention the names of the disappeared, the dates when they
:19:24. > :19:26.disappeared, the dates their bullet ridden bodies were found on the
:19:27. > :19:29.streets, the powerful people who were responsible. The producers, the
:19:30. > :19:33.researchers that work on the team, we are so rigourous with our facts.
:19:34. > :19:36.I don't know if you feel this as well, but a lot of the people we
:19:37. > :19:42.interviewed over the years should either be in front of criminal
:19:43. > :19:46.trials all war tribunal is warcrimes tribunal is but they weren't. The
:19:47. > :19:51.only thing you can do in a free society is put the questions to
:19:52. > :19:59.them. That was the strength I think of HARDtalk. My experience with Mrs
:20:00. > :20:03.Milos Antic, Milos Antic's wife, who was a serial deny about the ethnic
:20:04. > :20:07.cleansing that had taken place in the former Yugoslavia. Do you think
:20:08. > :20:14.he will come home from The Hague Monday?
:20:15. > :20:55.Thank you very much indeed for being with us on the programme.
:20:56. > :21:12.No, I'm asking questions that are of interest to the public.
:21:13. > :21:22.You reminded me of one another rather moment in my HARDtalk career
:21:23. > :21:27.when I did an interview with former Nigerian President of passenger and
:21:28. > :21:30.it was again quite a contentious interview and human rights and
:21:31. > :21:34.corruption were two topics that came up in the interview, I'm sure that
:21:35. > :21:38.was no surprise to him, but we gathered a lot of evidence, spoke to
:21:39. > :21:42.quite a lot of people and it was seen as a forensic test of his
:21:43. > :21:46.record when he was in power. At the end of the interview, we did the
:21:47. > :21:50.normal handshake, because as we all know the hand Sheikh happens on
:21:51. > :21:57.HARDtalk, and as the credits rolled and the lights dimmed in the studio,
:21:58. > :22:00.he said with gritted teeth tomorrow, Stephen, you will be hearing from my
:22:01. > :22:05.lawyers. A wonderful way a man, clearly not in power any more, felt
:22:06. > :22:11.there was some sort of walk around him and some sort of intimidation
:22:12. > :22:15.tactic he could apply. I met him, a charming man in his own way, at an
:22:16. > :22:22.event afterwards and he could not have been nicer. I had eight, I
:22:23. > :22:30.won't name him, a leading businessmen -- I had a. Go on, we
:22:31. > :22:36.won't tell! In the world of finance, I won't say, he might sue me. He
:22:37. > :22:41.said I have to think of a way to get back on you! Bodyguards, where are
:22:42. > :22:45.you? That instant reaction when they haven't enjoyed it. They know when
:22:46. > :22:51.they come on, they often have a sense of what's in store, they are
:22:52. > :22:54.perhaps more prepared. I think the extra time we have really matters.
:22:55. > :23:05.From the word go... And they haven't even give me a chance! I was kicked
:23:06. > :23:08.under the table by one British politician, Mo Mowlam, former
:23:09. > :23:13.Northern Ireland Secretary. After this interview, she was wearing
:23:14. > :23:22.sharp heels and pointed toes, she kicked me under the heel macro bt --
:23:23. > :23:25.date -- table. You might have deserved it! It is important that
:23:26. > :23:29.you give the same treatment to everybody and this is how the
:23:30. > :23:34.programme has lasted so long, you're as tough with everybody and you have
:23:35. > :23:38.to be. I want to say, here we are all talking about HARDtalk and it's
:23:39. > :23:42.funny, people might think there is competition between us but actually
:23:43. > :23:46.what I think is nice is we are also committed to the programme that
:23:47. > :23:52.anybody, any one of us who has done a great HARDtalk, I think great,
:23:53. > :23:55.it's wonderful for the programme. There is a bond between us. We share
:23:56. > :24:00.something. We've bonded over this meal but I don't think I'm the only
:24:01. > :24:02.one who has done any eating -- I think I'm. The old BBC sausage
:24:03. > :24:25.rolls. Times have really moved on! High pressure is going to be
:24:26. > :24:31.the dominating force for the weather across the UK for the rest of this
:24:32. > :24:35.week and into the weekend.