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The Amanpour Hour

Interview With Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT); Interview With One Of The Exonerated Central Park Five And New York City Councilmember For Harlem Yusef Salaam; Heartbreak For Chibok Families 10 Years On; Chief Climate Reporter On Staying Hopeful Despite Global Warming; Peacemakers Blair, Clinton And Ahern Reunite; Terence Blanchard's Showstopping Opera Returns. Aired 11a-12p ET

Aired April 13, 2024 - 11:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[10:59:44]

(CROSSTALKING)

CHRIS WALLACE, CNN HOST: And here's the question I have about this. I mean we've been talking about the gun show loophole for decades and people say, well, we've got to pass legislation. We don't pass legislation.

Do you think that the Biden administration has come up --

LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, JOURNALIST AND PODCAST HOST, "NEW YORK TIMES": Because Republicans don't want them to.

WALLACE: -- with some magic solution that nobody else thought of? Or do you think that they're just going to do this rule? And like other Biden rules that ends up getting thrown out in court.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: I think it's going to be contested, but I think it's very important that this actually gets put into the agenda and that people start talking about it because we have a gun problem in this country. And something has to be done about it.

WALLACE: And it's also a good campaign issue.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Yes, it is.

WALLACE: Gang, thank you all for being here. And thank you for spending part of your day with us. And we'll see you right back here next week.

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Hello everyone, and welcome to THE AMANPOUR HOUR. Here's where we're headed this week.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS (I-VT): I think our policy has got to be very clear -- not another nickel.

AMANPOUR: Conditioning U.S. aid to Israel to stop the carnage in Gaza. Bernie Sanders, the senator from Vermont, joins me. Then, one of the exonerated Central Park five, Yusef Salaam tells me about his extraordinary journey from prisoner to elected New York City council member.

YUSEF SALAAM, NEW YORK CITY COUNCIL MEMBER: Having been run over by the spiked wheels of justice, I was -- I thought that that was the end of my life.

AMANPOUR: Plus --

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I believe she's alive. She's my blood and I believe she's alive.

AMANPOUR: The story that gripped the world. 10 years since Boko Haram kidnapped almost 300 Nigerian schoolgirls, some have still to return.

And the art of the possible -- 26 years since brokering peace in Northern Ireland. A look back at my interview with the leaders behind this historic peace deal.

BILL CLINTON, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I still believe that people everywhere would prefer to work together than be at war.

AMANPOUR: Also, this hour, staying positive despite the dread plaguing the planet. America's chief climate correspondent, Bill Weir.

BILL WEIR, CNN CHIEF CLIMATE CORRESPONDENT: It's sort of a double- edged coin. You've got to hold sort of fear and hope in your head at the same time.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: Welcome to the program, everyone. I'm Christiane Amanpour in New York this week.

It is an uneasy time here in the United States as the fate of the country, and in fact, much of the world hangs to a great extent in the balance, just months away from yet another Biden-Trump matchup. President Biden hopes that his strong commitment to democracy and his record on the economy, climate, and women's rights will win out. And he hopes to overcome dissent in his own party that's mounting over the war in Gaza.

Every week, more and more Democrats are expressing frustration with American policy. Some heavyweights, including former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, are now even joining the call for U.S. to stop arms transfers to Israel. And of course, protesters continue to mount what is really a growing peace movement.

Senator Bernie Sanders has been one of the loudest voices on this issue. At 82 years old, he manages to be the voice of young liberals and many others. And he warns that if Biden doesn't change tack on the Israel war and doesn't expand his economic policy for working families at home, he could lose in November.

Senator Sanders joined me from Washington. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: Welcome back to our program, Senator.

So we have laid out your criticisms of the current military operation. What is he doing, the president, that he -- what do you want him to do that he hasn't done up until now?

SANDERS): Look, Christiane, we are looking right now in Gaza at one of the worst humanitarian disasters in the modern history of the world.

Hundreds of thousands of people face starvation. Children are dying from malnutrition. Eighty percent of the population has been displaced. Over half the buildings have been damaged or destroyed. And Israel continues to make it difficult to get the kind of humanitarian aid in that desperate people need.

So to my mind, the most important thing the United States government can do is say to Mr. Netanyahu, you know what? You cannot continue this disastrous, horrific war. You cannot allow children by the thousands to face starvation, or you're not getting another nickel.

Now, I think one of the incongruities that a lot of people in America see is, everybody is criticizing Netanyahu and then they're saying in the next word, "Oh, here, Mr. Netanyahu, here's another $14 billion on top of the $3.5 billion you got. You're a terrible guy, you're doing terrible things. But here's your money."

I think our policy has got to be very clear. Not another nickel for Netanyahu's right-wing, extremist government while hundreds of thousands of people in Gaza face starvation -- period.

[11:04:50]

AMANPOUR: And Senator, I want to know what you think about the election coming up in this country that President Biden is rerunning with former President Trump.

Do you believe, given what's happened in some of the primaries, the protest vote, that this war will hurt President Biden at the polls in November?

SANDERS: Yes, I do. The choice is very, very clear. I think Trump will be a disaster, if elected, for this country, a very dangerous person who is undermining American democracy every day.

But to answer your question, I think, in terms of how young people, how people of color feel about the president, this is being negatively impacted by the support for Israel that he has shown. I think that's got to change. And we are doing our best to try to get that to change.

AMANPOUR: So you have mentioned President Trump. He, as you know, seems to be caught between his own rock and his own hard place about abortion. Now, he started the backlash, having nominated very, very conservative judges, who rolled back Roe v. Wade. And now he's saying that the latest decision by the courts, which presumably are independent in Arizona, that go back 160 years, in terms of abortion rights or no abortion rights, he says that's a mistake and we're going to straighten it out.

What is your comment on that?

SANDERS: Christiane, the difficulty we have in trying to respond to Trump -- and I say this, in a sense, with all due respect -- he's a pathological liar. So, what he says today is not what he will say tomorrow. He will lie about virtually everything.

Look, Trump boasts. He boasts, that he appointed three right-wing Supreme Court justices, who overturned Roe v. Wade. He may -- I think he is catching on to the reality that that is backfiring within the general population.

The American people do not want to go back 50 years. Women of this country have fought to be able to control their own body, fought for women's rights. And, overwhelmingly, not only virtually all Democrats, but many Republicans, are saying, this is absurd to take away basic rights that women have won.

AMANPOUR: As we all know, President Biden was the first sitting president to go to a picket line, the UAW.

His former chief of staff is saying, though, that, instead of his campaign looking back and trying to, you know, boast or whatever, get credit for their -- you know, things that they have done already, they have got to look forward and look at the economy going forward.

Do you agree with that?

SANDERS: 100 percent.

Look, Biden has the right to take credit for a number of important initiatives, and he should. Should be proud of what he's accomplished. But at the end of the day, in America today -- and this has been the case for a long, long time.

You have got a working class which is really hurting, 60 percent of our people living paycheck to paycheck.

You have got people all over America who cannot afford the rising costs of housing. You have a health care system which is broken and dysfunctional.

We pay twice as much per capita for health care as people of any other country, and yet 85 million Americans are uninsured or underinsured. Our childcare system is a disaster. People don't have pensions.

So we have enormous problems.

Bottom line is, you have got a country and an economy today that is working really, really, really good for billionaires and the 1 percent, not working for the middle class or the working class of this country.

And the president understands that. But he's got to get out in front and say, look, this is my agenda. We're going to raise the minimum wage to a living wage. We're going to make it easier for workers to support unions. We're going to do away with college -- with student debt. And he's making some progress on that.

But you need an agenda that speaks to the pain of working families, who too often have felt neglected, which is why Trump is gaining support from them.

AMANPOUR: Senator Bernie Sanders, thank you very much, indeed, for joining us.

SANDERS: Thank you.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: Coming up later on the show. When America waged peace, my conversation from the archives with Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, and Bertie Ahern in Northern Ireland.

But first, the incredible journey of Yusef Salaam, falsely convicted at 15, from the Central Park Five to New York City councilman.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SALAAM: We were hoping that a person who became the future president of these United States would equally say, you know what, I took out a full-page ad in 1989, calling for your death. I'm sorry.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[11:09:42]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

AMANPOUR: Welcome back to the program.

And now we turn to the unbelievable life story of the newly-elected New York City Council Member Yusef Salaam. He was just 15 when along with four other teens, they were falsely accused of raping a jogger but in Central Park in 1989.

The media went all out, assuming their guilt, introducing the dehumanizing word "wilding", and the group became known as the Central Park Five.

[11:14:50]

AMANPOUR: Salaam spent nearly seven years in prison for a crime that he didn't commit. He and the others were exonerated after the real perpetrator confessed and submitted DNA to prove it.

A religious man to his core, Yusef Salaam refused to be beaten by bitterness and began this year being sworn in as the elected councilor for Harlem.

And we talked about all of this when we sat down together here in Manhattan.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: Yusef Salaam, Councilor Salaam, welcome to the program.

SALAAM: My pleasure. And thank you for having me.

AMANPOUR: I was a journalist based here in New York when all of this happened, and I covered some of what happened to you.

And I want to know whether you ever thought that you would get from that point of the worst time in your life to being an elected city council member in New York?

SALAAM: I think that that perhaps was the furthest thing from my mind. You know, as a young 15-year-old child, having been run over by the spiked wheels of justice, I was -- I thought that that was the end of my life. I thought that my life would never be the same.

And of course, it has never been the same, but to be an elected official, wow. Never imagined.

AMANPOUR: And there's just so much power, elected power, power from the people that you have right now to, I'm going to just use this word, avenge yourself of what was done to you.

So, when you think about the police, for instance, and police reform, what do you think? Cut off their funding, put them in an accountability box? What do you think?

SALAAM: Being a servant of the people and being a person who's not just been close to the pain, but has been in pain, a lot of the experiences that our community experiences, I've experienced firsthand, you know.

And so, being a spokesman for the people as an elected official is different for me because I get the opportunity to really use that in a really powerful way, right?

I never say things like defund the police, because I feel like the police are necessary. But when I think about all of the things that police departments do and police officers do, I know that there's ways that we can right-size budgets.

We can allow for the right person to respond to the right situation, and oftentimes that's not the police.

AMANPOUR: You asked, in your first hearing as chairman of the Public Safety Committee, you pressed the NYPD to explain how it prevents wrongful convictions. Now, you were obviously wrongfully-convicted along with the other four. Did you get an answer?

SALAAM: What I know about the detectives that that interrogated us, they knew that they were getting inconsistent and incorrect stories. They knew that what they were hearing as false statements just to save the lives of us who were trying to figure out how to get out of the nightmare that we were now in.

AMANPOUR: You were trying to just tell them anything to get them to stop whatever harsh treatment and get yourself out?

SALAAM: Well, so I didn't make a false confession, but four of my comrades did. But I'm saying that when you listen to those confessions, every single one of them were different. I never forget, you know, in the Central Park Five documentary, Raymond Santana reads his false confession.

And he stops midway through, looks up at the camera. And I remember being in the audience, watching with the audience.

And he asked the question what 14-year-old boy talks like this.

SALAAM: And it was -- you could hear the audible gasp in the room. It was almost as if everyone had realized that they'd been tricked too.

AMANPOUR: Was there shame? Was there shock? Was there regret for what they'd done to you?

SALAAM: You know, for me, my experience in what I call the womb of America, I know oftentimes in our community they call it the belly of the beast, was different.

There was a knowing of sorts from many of the officers. They knew that I wasn't supposed to be there. And they gave me grace and mercy. They allowed me to read books and draw.

AMANPOUR: And you read a lot of Mandela, I understand.

SALAAM: Oh, my goodness. You know, he said to be angry and bitter is like drinking poison and expecting your enemy to die.

AMANPOUR: It's brilliant.

SALAAM: I had to digest that because I was angry, I was upset. I did not understand how could the system run over us with the spiked wheels of justice and then run over us again and lay us out flat. I couldn't understand it.

I wanted to have someone -- even when we were found innocent, we were hoping for an apology.

[11:19:41]

SALAAM: We were hoping that a person who became the future president of these United States would equally say, you know what, I took out a full-page ad in 1989 calling for your death. I'm sorry.

AMANPOUR: Instead --

SALAAM: I'm going to take out a full-page ad and call for an apology for you all. Instead, he doubled down.

AMANPOUR: This is Donald Trump. And again, we all remember these ads in the newspapers in New York calling for a reinstatement of the death penalty. He doubled down. They admitted their guilt.

SALAAM: Yes.

AMANPOUR: And now, I don't know what you think, whether it's karma, fate, or whatever. But this is a twice indicted fellow -- impeached rather. He's got four indictments, 91 charges. What do you think?

SALAAM: This is a very crafty individual. I say that because there's been a love affair of sorts with Donald Trump. His name was everywhere and on everything.

You know, but I think that for him to craft what's going on with him by saying hey, I'm just like you. I'm indicted.

AMANPOUR: That's what he's saying now --

SALAAM: That's a slap in the face when you think about all of the things that happens with the injustice that we experience.

And I think when I think about all of this, all of it, we have to say to ourselves, what we deserve as a country is a United States of America and not a divided states of America.

AMANPOUR: And you obviously got the fire in the belly. Yusef Salaam, thank you so much indeed.

SALAAM: My pleasure. Thank you.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: And on that point, he tells me that one of his main priorities is affordable housing for his constituents.

Coming up on the program, life lessons from penguins. What climate correspondent Bill Weir has learned traveling the world.

Also ahead ten years on nearly 100 Chibok school girls are still missing. Their stories next.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

STEPHANIE BUSARI, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Do you believe in your heart?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.

BUSARI: That's she's alive.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Of course, I believe she's alive. She's my blood and I believe she's alive.

[11:21:53]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

AMANPOUR: Welcome back.

Tomorrow marks a decade since terror became reality in Chibok, Nigeria sparking a global cry to "bring back our girls" when nearly 300 innocent students were kidnapped by Boko Haram militants. Many of those who were taken have yet to return home and kidnapping has become a recurring horror in the country.

Now CNN's Stephanie Busari takes us to where tragedy unfolded as part of CNN's ongoing series on gender inequality called "As Equals."

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

STEPHANIE BUSARI, CNN SENIOR EDITOR OF AFRICA: The road to Chibok, northeastern Nigeria. 10 years on from the kidnapping of nearly 300 schoolgirls.

We've come to meet some of the girls who were taken that night in April 2014 and see how the threat of abduction still shapes children's lives here.

HAUWA ISHAYA, FORMER CHIBOK SCHOOLGIRL KIDNAPPED BY BOKO HARAM: They come from this way, this road.

BUSARI: And there were many cars, many trucks.

ISHAYA: Yes, they had plenty --

BUSARI: Hauwa was just 16 when she was snatched from her boarding school late at night by Boko Haram militants.

ISHAYA: They burned the hall for writing exams.

BUSARI: So, they burned the hall where you were supposed to write your exams?

ISHAYA: Yes. They burned --

BUSARI: They were really against education that much.

ISHAYA: Yes.

BUSARI: The Islamist group took more than 270 girls into the vast Sambisa Forest, though some managed to escape.

Amina, now 27, was also abducted that night, told by Boko Haram leaders that marriage was the only way to avoid repeated abuse by fighters in the camp.

AMINA ALI, FORMER CHIBOK SCHOOLGIRL KIDNAPPED BY BOKO HARAM: They just say they will take us as a slave and then any time he wants to sleep with you, he will sleep with you. And then when he is tired of you, he will hand you over to someone else. And so, I just think, I better agree to get married to one person. BUSARI: She was the first of the Chibok girls to escape after being held in a forest, emerging with her Boko Haram husband, who also fled the group and their young baby after two years.

Now, eight years old, Amina's daughter has faced stigma for being the child of a Boko Haram fighter.

School kidnappings are a shadow that hang over the education system in Northern Nigeria, with an estimated 1,700 children abducted from school in the past decade, according to Amnesty International.

Just last month, more than 100 students, some as young as eight, were taken by armed men who stormed their school in Kuriga, Kaduna Province.

In recent years, criminal gangs have created a kidnapping for ransom industry, spanning across the northwest of the country, which successive governments have struggled to grapple with.

OBY EZEKWESILI, CO-CONVENER, BRING BACK OUR GIRLS CAMPAIGN AND FOUNDER, NIGERIA'S SCHOOL OF POLITICS, POLICY AND GOVERNANCE: The failure of governance around the Chibok girls' issue has led to an industry of abduction, a society that has scant regard for human life.

BUSARI: Many Nigerian mothers are now too scared to send them to school.

[11:29:49]

EZEKWESILI: Guess what Chibok girls tragedy did? It made the mothers feel guilty in their mind that what they did by arguing for education for their daughter was to say, pay with your life in order to be educated.

BUSARI: Fewer than 50 percent of Nigerian girls attend school at a basic education level, according to a UNICEF report, in a country with 5 percent of the world's children by 2030.

The United Nations has said, "What happens to children in Nigeria matters significantly to regional and global development."

Back in Chibok, for many mothers the pain continues a decade on. Yana's (ph) daughter, Rifkatu (ph), was among the Chibok girls stolen from school and remains missing along with 81 others.

BUSARI: Do you believe in your heart that she's alive?

YANA (ph): I believe she's alive. She is my blood and I believe she's alive.

BUSARI: She's kept her daughter's clothes ready for when she returns.

YANA: This is how we keep it. We always wash the clothes, fold it and then keep it for almost 10 years now.

BUSARI: Never giving up hope, despite the agony she and so many parents in Nigeria have to endure.

Stephanie Busari, CNN -- Chibok, Nigeria.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: It is heart-breaking and this ten-year horror of kidnapping has left a terrible mark on so many of those girls on their families and of course, on the education system in that country, which is the future.

Coming up jazz legend Terence Blanchard's historic return to the Metropolitan Opera.

But first --

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WEIR: You know, some days are more fun to get out of bed than others kind of like the morning when you in Antarctica.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: Celebrating the wonders of our planet with Bill Weir, How CNN's very own chief climate correspondent remains hopeful for the future

[11:31:54]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

AMANPOUR: Welcome back to the program.

Now from the torrential floods in Libya to the deadly fires that set Hawaii and Chile ablaze, climate catastrophes are on the rise. And following the hottest year and ocean heat-breaking records temperatures, scientists say the world is not prepared for what's to come.

But despite all the despair there is still room for hope. That is, according to Bill Weir, CNN's chief climate correspondent, who spent years covering our warming planet and looking at the solutions.

His book, "Life as We Know It (Can Be), goes on sale on April 16 and he's joining me now from New York.

Bill Weir, welcome to the program.

WEIR: Great to be with you.

AMANPOUR: And I just want to ask you because it's so important to give people hope and to focus on things that actually go right. So just as I said, you've been covering it for so long. What now gives you hope?

WEIR: Well, what gives me hope Christiane is that we are really just made of stories, everything in our lives are stories we agree on in the moment. And those stories are under constant revision. We are going through sort of an invisible industrial revolution right now as the world electrifies.

Texas, maybe the reddest state United States, leads the country in green energy way more than California and Florida. They're putting more solar online because the economics just make sense.

For the first time in human history, our cheapest fuels are not the ones we have to burn. The cheapest fuels are now solar plus battery and onshore wind. And the economics trumping the ideology and sort of political resistance in places like Texas right now.

And so in this book, I'm trying to impart to my kids both a warning about the world we built for them by mistake, but all these amazing doers and dreamers and helpers who are trying to find a better -- a better future for everybody.

AMANPOUR: You know, you talk about your kids and dedicating this book to them and even in the book apologizing for our generation's failure. Nonetheless, we're trying to do what we can.

But you also say that none of this that you've just said, the successes the movement would have happened without young people.

WEIR: Exactly, exactly that, you know, it wouldn't have happened without Greta Thunberg, one young person who decided to start skipping school and have this lonely climate strike. And that caught the imagination of her peers around the world and one of the plus sides of social media.

I also read about the very severe downsides of social media is that it can connect you to people around a shared cause bigger than yourself. It can create communities that then when they went out into the streets and camped out into the halls of the Senate on Congress and shattered down the corridors of power absolutely helped move the needle on the most ambitious climate legislation not only here, but around the world.

And we can argue over the strength or weaknesses of that policy. But those kids deserve some credit, I think.

AMANPOUR: And not just young people, but old people, elderly people. I don't know what you thought this week about the success in Europe in a Swiss court. The Swiss grannies basically taking their human rights not to be overheated to court and winning.

[11:39:47]

WEIR: Exactly.

That is sort of the other end of the age spectrum from the kids in Montana who won a climate case there, the first constitutional right to a healthful environment.

Other states not trying to try to add that in. There are dozens of cases in American courts where municipalities, states, tribes are suing big oil companies for essentially lying to the public for generations about the harm their -- they knew that their product would cause.

It is those grannies turning their anxiety into action in a peaceful systematic way. And we'll see if that catches -- catches fire anyway.

Ultimately though, Christiane, they're up against the richest companies in human history who not only are enjoying the most -- the biggest profits in human history, but are still getting billions and direct and indirect subsidies.

So the social license of our fossil fuel lives very few people pick at gas stations, they go after pipelines, but until the consumption piece of this is sorted out but ultimately the decision makers who could shift their business model to a much more sustainable direction has some, as some in Europe have done, you could fit these guys the c- suite or is in a few big buses.

So while it's important, I think for our kids and our families to understand each decision has a cost. The decision-makers now more than ever, are the ones that are going to move the needle.

AMANPOUR: I wonder what you think about the messaging and the storytelling. I remember Christiana Figueres, who was the wonderful U.N. climate rep. Who basically shepherded through the 2015 climate treaty back in Paris.

She was always telling us, don't just focus on the doom and gloom. You must give people hope. You must tell them about the successes. Do you think we do that enough?

WEIR: No, I don't. And I've learned this on the job, you know, as the first sort of chief climate correspondent of any network. We're sort of making it about as we go and it's tempting to lean on the fear and warning button because there's plenty of reason for that.

But we resonate with stories because there's an ark and there's always a hopeful arc. What the -- the person who taught me the best tip for covering climate was Mr. Rogers, who said when he saw something scary on TV, his mother would say, look for the helpers, there's always helpers rushing into disasters.

And so now I get to go meet helpers who are building thermal battery plants or are figuring out ways to use nature-based solutions to pull carbon out of the sea and sky and they are imagining a better world for their kids.

And I think the more we share that its sort of a double-edged coin. You got to hold sort of fear and hope in your head at the same time.

AMANPOUR: Bill Weir, our correspondent and author of "Life As We Know It (Can Be), thank you so much.

WEIR: Thank you, Christiane.

AMANPOUR: And coming up next from the archives. When the peacemakers reunited, what we can learn from the Good Friday Agreement and its blueprint for peace in Northern Ireland. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CLINTON: I still believe that people everywhere would prefer to work together than be at war.

[11:42:44]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

AMANPOUR: Welcome back.

Continuing our conversation on hope and the art of the possible. With war raging in Gaza, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict may feel more intractable than ever. Peace may feel like a really, really distant possibility, but there was a time when Northern Ireland felt like that as well. After decades of brutal sectarian conflict and terrorist violence, its leaders and its people bravely chose peace.

And this week, they celebrated 26 years since the Good Friday Agreement that secured it. It remains one of the United States' greatest diplomatic triumphs as President Bill Clinton and Senator George Mitchell helped broker those talks along with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, and the Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern. And of course, Northern Irish leaders themselves. They got the deal over the line.

And last year on its 25th anniversary, I traveled to Belfast to speak to Clinton, Blair, and Ahern -- a peacemakers' reunion. And here's some of that conversation.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: Tell us the origin story. So President Clinton, even in your campaign, you know, before the '92 election, you talked about this to Irish-Americans. You said you would put all your abilities behind trying to get peace. Why, why did it matter so much?

CLINTON: I always felt when I started talking to Irish-Americans, when I was running for president that we can make a positive difference if we were fair to both sides.

And I knew that to do that, we'd have to do something that the side that was then prevailing would think was unfair, which was to get involved because our whole diplomacy was built around our special relationship with the U.K., which included staying away from Ireland.

AMANPOUR: Prime Minister Ahern, wasn't that mostly the alignment of the stars, so to speak, in terms of leadership? Was it also about the people on the ground?

BERTIE AHERN, FORMER IRISH TAOISEACH: Yes. The parties have people on the ground but I think from our point of view and to have the president United States being genuinely interested and Bill to give time and to stay up at night. I mean, we are a small country and I think you don't expect. I was just so lucky that Tony and I got on so well. [11:49:52]

AMANPOUR: George Mitchell has said, I can't remember the figures, but it was hundreds and hundreds of hours and days of negotiations that finally led to yes. But it may have gone the other way.

Can you recount and reflect on how difficult actually. I mean it sounds like, you know, everybody is ready to do it, but it actually was very difficult to get the Good Friday Agreement.

TONY BLAIR, FORMER BRITISH PRIME MINISTER I don't think we could have got this off the ground if we hadn't been prepared to talk to everyone. And then there really is this thing about the people being prepared to act in a way that isn't politically conventional.

So 30 years, the Irish taoiseach, I mean he could have stuck in a fairly traditional Irish position on everything, but he didn't and that we each kind of liberated each other.

So it became easier for him to intervene constructively when it looked like everyone was being involved. And there was a seat at the table well, for everyone. The whole point about a peace process. You're never going to get anywhere unless everyone's prepared to take risks for peace. And you either spend your political capital or you hoard it.

And for all sorts of various reasons people decided to spend it. And I think for those politicians in Northern Ireland, who after all, were the ones that had today take the most difficult decisions. Those are the people here.

AMANPOUR: I read that David Trimble, the obviously the unionist leader at the time. His deputy, said that he took this Good Friday Agreement to Ramallah, showed it to Yasser Arafat, who was the head of the Palestinian authority and so this is your blueprint for success.

President Clinton, right now, the people who cheered on the death of the peacemaker, Yitzhak Rabin are in government and there's nowhere to, it seems like there's nowhere to go and what do you think? I mean, when you look at this blueprint why do you think it hasn't worked elsewhere. For instance, let's just take the Middle East.

CLINTON: Well the differences is, and let's start with the Middle East. Tony spent years working on it, but they started with a different model. I mean, when we signed the Middle East Peace Agreement in '93 --

AMANPOUR: The Oslo Accord.

CLINTON: -- on the south lawn of the White House, everyone's assumption was that they had to work for a two-state solution and they would argue for a few years about what to do with the unresolved issues and what to do with the line drawing.

But that the Israelis wish to remain a majority Jewish state. But to be at peace with their Palestinian neighbors who would have their own state if we could work out the myriad questions that had to be worked out.

So we started with a different model. They started with a model here that they could share the future and that they had not enough land to fight over. And they had to work together.

So I think the real question is the Middle East is now waiting for somebody to answer the "now what" question? Because I still believe that people everywhere would prefer to work together than be at war.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: Now, that was one year ago before the full-blown Israel- Hamas war in Gaza. And President Clinton's words couldn't be more prescient. His question "now what" still holds.

Without bold peacemaking that ended the conflict in Northern Ireland, this sad corner of the Middle East will be condemned to more of the same as we're seeing now.

When we come back Grammy Award-winning composer Terence Blanchard lights up the stage with his hit opera.

[11:53:57]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

AMANPOUR: And before we go, a little opera and music for the soul. And a history-making show at the Met here in New York. "Fire Shut Up in My Bones" by the Grammy Award-winning trumpeter Terence Blanchard, made history as the first work by a black composer at the Metropolitan Opera in 138 years.

And now it is back. I went to the Met to meet him.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: Most people frankly do not think of black operas, right? African-Americans creating opera.

TERENCE BLANCHARD, MUSICIAN: No. Right. Right.

AMANPOUR: It's usually the old white guys of Europe --

BLANCHARD: Yes, yes.

AMANPOUR: -- who are the, you know, the canon and have remained so for, you know, several hundred years.

BLANCHARD: Yes.

AMANPOUR: What would you say to people who are just surprised? I mean, it's different, opera.

BLANCHARD: Right?

Well, the thing is it's not just the composers but the performers as well. As one journalist asked me, he said that you think your opera is going to inspire young people to sing opera. And I'm like bro, I mean people of color have been singing opera for generations. You know what I mean.

There are people out there who have stories to tell. And the thing the thing that I've been saying too and I really mean this. I don't want to be a token. I want to be a turnkey.

[11:59:47]

BLANCHARD: There needs to be women. There needs to be people of other backgrounds, ethnic backgrounds telling stories because that's what the public, I really feel, wants to see.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: Don't forget. You can find all of our shows online as podcasts at CNN.com/podcast and on all other major platforms.

I'm Christiane Amanpour in New York. Thank you for watching. And we'll see you again next week.

We want to leave you with a little more of this wonderful opera.