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Time to get tough on terrorism, UN warned
Ohmygod. Someone's asking the UN to be a moral organisation. Run for the hills, Kofi!After decades of argument over whether one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter, a group of international "wise men" will this week tell the United Nations to outlaw all terror attacks on civilians or risk losing its moral authority. In a report to be unveiled on Thursday, seen in part by The Telegraph, a panel appointed to reform the UN said it must send "an unequivocal message that terrorism is never an acceptable tactic, even for the most defensible of causes". This is a slap in the face for Palestinians, Iraqi insurgents, Kashmiri rebels, al-Qa'eda militants and other groups that claim to be fighting foreign domination. It is also a rebuke to Muslim states that have for years blocked agreement on an all-embracing UN convention on terrorism on the grounds that it should exclude groups fighting "occupation" or "colonialism". On the question of "resistance" to occupation, the report declares that "there is nothing in the fact of occupation that justifies the targeting and killing of civilians". The report is from the High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change which was set up to propose the most far-reaching reforms of the UN since its founding in 1945, It carries added weight because one of its 16 authors is Amr Mousa, the secretary general of the Arab League, which includes all Arab states and the Palestine Liberation Organisation. The panel was appointed by Kofi Annan, the UN secretary general, to find ways of healing the divisions over Iraq and fending off Washington's threats to treat the UN as "irrelevant" in dealing with modern dangers. Other luminaries include Brent Scowcroft, a national security adviser to President Gerald Ford and the first President George Bush; Lord Hannay, Britain's ex-ambassador to the UN; and Yevgeny Primakov, a former Russian premier. Posted by: Bulldog 2004-11-29 |
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