Wolf Blitzer asked Edwards and Obama the same two questions on Pakistan. Here are there answers. Judge...
BLITZER: Welcome back to LARRY KING LIVE. I'm Wolf Blitzer in New York. We're following the fall-out from the assassination of Former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. Joining us now is Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, a former senator from North Carolina. What would you do right now if you were president, senator, given the hand you're dealt with in Pakistan?
JOHN EDWARDS (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Well, the most important thing for the president of the United States to do under these circumstances is first acknowledge an incredible tragedy, the death of an extraordinary and brave woman, who went back to Pakistan, risking her own life, to push for democracy and the democratization process. I was actually with Benazir Bhutto in Abu Dhabi, where we both spoke at a conference a few years ago. She spoke then about the path to democracy in Pakistan being baptized in blood.
I think she knew very well what the risk was when she went back, but she loved her people and wanted to help them. This is a terribly tragic day for Pakistan.
What America needs to do and what the president needs to do is be a source of strength and calm in this very volatile environment. I actually spoke with the ambassador who you had on earlier in the program this morning, told him I would like to speak to President Musharraf, who I got to know a few years ago. Would he have the president call me? He did. In that conversation, I urged him to continue the democratization process. He said he would.
I also urged him to allow independent international investigators into Pakistan to have a transparent process that the rest of the world could trust to get to the bottom of this. Why did it happen? He said he hadn't considered it at that moment but that he would consider it. I think it's very important for the international community to attach some credibility to what the actual facts are.
I heard you discussing with others the security situation, the former prime minister's concern about the security situation. I know there are a lot of suspicions about what could have happened. The only way to allay those suspicions and for the rest of the world to be satisfied with the result is to bring international independent investigators who engage in a transparent process.
I also, by the way -- I also spoke to him about the upcoming elections.
BLITZER: Should the U.S. continue these billions in dollars of military assistance to Pakistan?
EDWARDS: It needs to be changed, Wolf. We should have already reformed our aid package to Pakistan. We have about 10 billion dollars invested in Pakistan and Musharraf. Too much of that has been invested in Musharraf, as opposed to being invested in Pakistan.
We haven't had enough conditions attached to this money. They still haven't secured the northwest portion of the country. Al Qaeda is still operating freely there. They have not moved in the way they need to toward open, free and fair elections and toward a real Democratic process. So there's a great deal of work left to be done in Pakistan. America has, and the president of the United States has, enormous leverage with this economic package and this aid package. We need to be using that leverage.
BLITZER: I'll ask you the same question I asked John Edwards. If you were president right now, you were dealt this hand involving Pakistan, the war on terror, the hunt for bin Laden, a nuclear armed Islamic country, what do you immediately do?
OBAMA: The first thing we want to do is contact the Pakistani government to get assurances from them the nuclear stockpiles are secured and all indications, based on the information I gathered today, is that there is a high degree of confidence that they are.
The second thing is to make sure that Musharraf is sending a clear message to the family of Bhutto and her supporters that he recognizes this is a tragedy and expresses sympathies to try to keep tempers cooled in the capitol cities and the major urban areas.
The third thing we have to do is make sure elections continue. If they're not going to continue as planned on January 8th, then shortly there after. But there has to be a clear message from the Musharraf government that, in fact, this won't be used as an excuse to subvert democracy.
Now, the long-term is that we have to continue to make sure that we are seeing action from the Pakistani government when it comes to going after terrorism. And this is a -- this sad situation, in part, results from a failure on the part of the Musharraf government to actively pursue al Qaeda. This is something I've talked about for many months during the course of this presidential campaign. It's something that we have to focus our attention on, because this is one of the serious dangers that is presented not just for the region but ultimately for the United States.
BLITZER: Bill Richardson, the governor of New Mexico, one of your Democratic presidential rivals -- he put out a statement today saying that he calls on President Bush to press President Pervez Musharraf to step aside and to suspend U.S. military aid to Pakistan. Are you ready to go that far?
OBAMA: I said very early on, when emergency rule was initiated by Musharraf, that we should suspend military aid that is not directly related to going after terrorists until you had full restoration of democracy, including releasing political prisoners, and insuring that there's freedom of expression and freedom of the press during the election period. So that's something that I've talked about for quite some time.
Wolf, it's important for us to look at this in context. We have made a series of poor decision, poor judgments, when it comes to dealing with Islamic militants and the stability of the region in the Middle East as a whole. We went into Iraq when we should not have. We took our eye off the ball with respect to Afghanistan. We did not press to make sure we had rooted out al Qaeda. We fanned anti- American sentiment in Pakistan. We have encouraged, because of our actions in Iraq, the sort of militancy we are seeing all around the Middle East.
Those are the broad, long-term issues we're going to have to deal with if we're going to assure the safety and security of the United States. And that's what I intend to do as president of the United States.
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0712/27/lkl.01.html
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