Andrew Card Leaving Chief of Staff Post; Israeli Elections
JONATHAN MANN, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Protests in Paris. Tens of thousands clash with police in the largest demonstrations against a new law the government says will make France more competitive.</s>ANDREW CARD, WHITE HOUSE CHIEF OF STAFF: Mr. President, as the chief of staff, I know I was a staffer. And now...</s>ZAIN VERJEE, CNN INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Shakeup at the White House. The departing chief of staff has fond words for his former boss.</s>MANN: And Israeli elections. The turnout is low in an election billed as a referendum on the future of the West Bank. Hello. It's 7:00 p.m. in Paris, noon in Washington. I'm Jonathan Mann.</s>VERJEE: And I'm Zain Verjee. A warm welcome to our viewers throughout the world and in the United States. This is YOUR WORLD TODAY on CNN International. Hundreds of thousands of French workers and students have followed through on a threatened nationwide strike. They're protesting a new jobs law that the government says is essential for France to compete in a global economy. But unions and young people are saying that the law guts job protections. Chris Burns is in our Paris bureau and he joins us now live. Chris, describe to us what's been happening over the past few hours.</s>CHRIS BURNS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, hi, Zain. Hundreds of thousands have been taking to the streets across France in many, many cities. There are more than 130 demonstrations across the country, and the strike was in so many sectors in the private and public sector, mainly transport, reducing transport by half or so. Now you're looking at pictures now of this demonstration. Actually, it's at the end of demonstration in Paris, the Place de la Republique. And this, as in so many demonstrations here in France in past years and this year as well, is that there are clashes between namely rowdies and the police. And this is something that the organizers were trying so desperately to avoid and knew that there would be some degree of violence. In fact, they mobilized their own security people. You -- we saw a lot of youth students with arm bands tied around them, with -- they were also locking arms to try to prevent the rowdies from -- the rowdies, really -- they're not members of the demonstration, for the most part -- from entering the protest. But at the end it's very difficult. It all falls apart. And this is what we're seeing right now. The police were also deployed in riot gear, as well as in plain clothes, working with those students with the arm bands trying to keep things under control. We marched for a great while in this demonstration to see how things worked. It generally worked well. Things got hot now and then, but now we're seeing at the end, of course, this -- these clashes that are almost inevitable in major demonstrations like these in France -- Zain.</s>VERJEE: How is the government going to solve this?</s>BURNS: Well, Zain, this is all over this -- this contract for first employment, the CPE. Dominique de Villepin, the conservative prime minister, is sticking to his guns, refusing to scrap it, but says he'll move a little bit on how to execute it, how to carry it out. There could be some modifications. He's been busy trying to persuade the unions and the student unions, student groups to come to the table and talk. Now, he has met with a few of them, but not -- most of them have decided they don't want to talk until he scraps this whole measure. It is a test of will, a test of force between this conservative government trying to stick it out. As so many other conservative governments have failed to do in the past, to push through reform, he's trying to do it himself. He's got the respect of the conservative voters, but overall, voters would like him to at least withdraw this measure and to modify it. So they -- perhaps, if De Villepin offers some other modifications -- that's possible -- but at this point, especially with this big demonstration today, the unions may be emboldened and empowered not to back down and to insist that this measure be scrapped. We'll have to see in the coming days. Keep in mind, though, that the strike, however, the strike across the country, was not -- did not paralyze the country. It did, of course, cut air traffic by about 30 percent, but it didn't shut everything down. It didn't shut transport down. One out of two trains here -- metro trains -- were running in Paris. So I'm sure the government's going to be weighing this, how much the strike was -- affected the country, how much these demonstration were followed. That's the big question. The ball now is in De Villepin's court, definitely.</s>VERJEE: Chris Burns reporting form Paris. Thanks, Chris -- Jonathan.</s>MANN: After more than five years on the job, a top White House aide is calling it quits. Andrew Card stepping down as President George Bush's chief of staff. For more, we go to Ed Henry in Washington. Ed, the president is obviously having his problems. Is Andy Card the fall guy?</s>ED HENRY, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: He could be. I think the question basically is, is this the beginning of the shakeup or the end? You know? And whether there are going to be more changes. There's been rumors, speculation about this for weeks, Republican pressure from the outside, saying the president needs to shake things up with his staff, needs to turn around these low poll ratings. But let's face it, this is a back-breaking job as White House chief of staff. It's not totally unexpected that Andy Card would be leaving at some point. The average tenure for this job is two years. He'd been on the job since day one of this administration, some five and a half years. Republican Senator John McCain just came out of a White House meeting and noted that this job -- basically, as chief of staff, you start out at 4:00 a.m. and work right until midnight dealing with virtually everything the president has to deal with. And the president now turns to his budget chief, Josh Bolten. He's going to be the new chief of staff starting officially on April 14. And the president tried to sell Bolten as the perfect man for the job.</s>GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: No person is better prepared for this important position, and I'm honored that Josh has agreed to serve. The next three years will demand much of those who serve our country. We have a global war to fight and win. We have great opportunities to expand the prosperity and compassion of America. We've come far as a nation, yet there's a lot on the road ahead. I'm honored to have served with Andrew Card. I've got great confidence in my next chief of staff. Congratulations, Josh.</s>HENRY: Now, basically, this may not satisfy the Republican critics who have been calling for new blood, fresh faces. Just like Andy Card, Josh Bolten has been with this president from the beginning of the administration, first as a deputy to Andy Card, then as the White House budget chief starting in June of 2003. That's why we heard some Democrats saying that this is basically like reshuffling the deck chairs on the Titanic. That kind of criticism from the Democrats may lead some Republicans to say, wait a second, this is not really a shakeup, this is just one person. Maybe it needs to go beyond this. That's why we've heard some speculation about possibly the president going further, maybe bringing in some sort of an unofficial ambassador to Capitol Hill, some sort of senior statesman who can maybe right this ship a bit, especially coming out of the Dubai ports controversy. The president has really been under fire not just from Democrats, but some of his fellow Republicans who had been staunch allies on Capitol Hill -- Jonathan.</s>MANN: OK. More to be watching for. Ed Henry at the White House. Thanks very much -- Zain.</s>VERJEE: Jonathan, for more on what this resignation means or doesn't mean, we turn to CNN senior analyst Jeff Greenfield. He joins us now from New York. Jeff, what are the political implications, if any? How significant is this?</s>JEFF GREENFIELD, CNN SR. ANALYST: None. Nada. Zip. This is a -- this is a case where sometimes, as Freud said, a cigar is just a cigar. There are changes in White Houses in the past that have meant a lot. When Reagan got into trouble over Iran-Contra,</s>VERJEE: And if that's the case, do you think it would satisfy the Republican critics that have been saying we want new blood and we want a real shakeup?</s>GREENFIELD: No, not at all. You know, Ed Henry noted the working hours of Andrew Card. You know, he's been getting to work -- I guess he gets up at 4:00, gets to work around 5:30 in the morning, leaves about 9:00 or 10:00. Now, the idea that you couldn't -- that you have to impose some great political meaning on the fact that someone doing this for five and a half years really might be burned out not because of policy differences, but because he's burned out, people don't think that way in Washington. But as I said, I can -- I can think of times in the past and I can certainly think of possible changes in the future where the White House would be signaling, hey, we're on a different track for the midterms, for the next two and a half years of our -- of the presidency. This just, I think, isn't that case.</s>VERJEE: CNN senior analyst Jeff Greenfield from New York. Thanks a lot, Jeff, for your perspective.</s>GREENFIELD: Thank you.</s>VERJEE: Always good to have you.</s>MANN: OK. If a cigar is just a cigar, who else ought to get smoked? That's our inbox question for the day.</s>VERJEE: Well, not exactly. We're asking you this: Should anyone else in the Bush administration resign? YWT@CNN.com. And a quick programming note. A little bit later on Tuesday, the U.S. president sits down with an exclusive interview with CNN Espanol's Juan Carlos Lopez.</s>MANN: You can see that interview at 21:00</s>GMT. VERJEE: His rise and fall from power is legendary. Warlord Liberian president is one of the world's most wanted men, and Charles Taylor is now missing. Liberia's one-time political strongman has vanished just days after Nigeria told Liberia that it could come take custody of him. Taylor had been living in exile in a villa in Nigeria for the past three years, where he was being monitored but wasn't under house arrest. He's wanted for war crimes by a U.N.-backed special court in Sierra Leone for his alleged role supporting rebels in that country.</s>MANN: Nigeria's president, Olusegun Obasanjo, has set up a five- member panel to investigate Taylor's disappearance. He's also ordered the arrest of the security detail that was supposed to be watching him. But this isn't the first time that Taylor has pulled a disappearing act. Jeff Koinange has some background.</s>JEFF KOINANGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): There's no doubting Charles Taylor was the warlord of warlords. His rise to power is the stuff of movies, and it was only a matter of time before a Tayloresque character made its way to Hollywood, seen here in the recent box office hit "Lord of War" starring Nicholas Cage.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE, "LORD OF WAR": You know, they call me lord of war, but perhaps it is you.</s>NICHOLAS CAGE, ACTOR, "LORD OF WAR": It's warlord.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE, "LORD OF WAR": Thank you, but I prefer it my way.</s>KOINANGE: But before the lord of war went on to become Liberia's 21st president since independence in 1847, he first had to make a daring escape from a Massachusetts prison where he'd been held on charges of embezzlement awaiting extradition to his native Liberia. He ended up in the jungles of West Africa, commanding a ragtag rebel arm they hacked and shot its way into Liberia's capital, Monrovia, forcing a cease-fire in a civil war that had been raging for most of the 1990s. Elections were eventually held which Taylor won, many say, more out of fear than favor.</s>CHARLES TAYLOR, FMR. LIBERIAN PRESIDENT: Long live the republic of Liberia! Long live our freedom! Long live our independence! Let no man take it from us. God bless you.</s>KOINANGE: This was vintage Taylor, driving himself and accompanied by a balance of bodyguards down the streets of the capital. UNIDENTIFIED GROUP</s>KOINANGE: And this was how Taylor would probably have wanted to be remembered, where some here still consider him their leader. But many, no doubt, have this image etched into their memory: Charles Taylor waving a white handkerchief as he boarded a plane into exile. Less than three years later, he's heading back, having fallen from grace from president, to exile, to accused war criminal, something he once claimed would send the wrong message to African leaders across the continent.</s>TAYLOR: This poor thing of using some little follow to run around to disgrace African leaders and make a mess of us because we're supposed to be monkeys in the trees I think is something that African leaders have to look at very seriously. It is not just about Charles Taylor.</s>TAYLOR: This is not about Charles Taylor. It's about how Africa can be free and how African leaders can be respected.</s>KOINANGE: Now the warlord-turned-president-turned-exile is about to have his day in court, the first African leader ever to be charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity.</s>TAYLOR: I feel so sad. I'm saddened by all of this, but I know that god is in control.</s>KOINANGE: Jeff Koinange, CNN, Johannesburg.</s>MANN: From Africa, we move on in a moment to the Middle East and what's ahead for Israel.</s>VERJEE: Coming up here on YOUR WORLD TODAY, we're going to be taking a closer look at what's at stake in today's elections and how Israel might deal with the Hamas-led government on its border. Stay with us.