By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 31 1996 (IPS)

Spurred by a rash of terrorist bombings the world over, the United Nations is preparing to take a lead role in the global war against terrorism.

Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali met with senior aides Wednesday to discuss ways in which U.N. resources and expertise could be best used to fight terrorism. U.N. spokeswoman Sylvana Foa said an issue high on the agenda was the need for collective action to eliminate the concept of “safe haven” for terrorists.

Foa said the Secretary-General also discussed “how terrorists could be stopped from abusing political asylum to fund and plan their despicable activities.”

Addressing the United Nations’ 50th anniversary summit last year, U.S. President Bill Clinton called for a similar “no sanctuary pledge” so that “we could say together to organised criminals, terrorists, drug traffickers and smugglers, you have no where to run and nowhere to hide.”

Clinton also urged the 185 U.N. member-states to set up “a counter-terrorism pact so that we would together urge more states to ratify existing anti-terrorism treaties, and work with us to shut down the grey markets that outfit terrorists and criminals with firearms and false documents.”

The spate of recent bombings that has jolted the United Nations include terrorist attacks in the United States, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Britain, Egypt, Turkey, and Algeria.

Foa said the United Nations is undertaking a comprehensive review of all conventions related to terrorism to determine their status: how many have been ratified but not implemented, and how many have been signed but not ratified.

The United Nations is to initiate a process to convince countries to sign and ratify conventions gathering dust in the U.N. Office of Legal Affairs.

There are at least 10 U.N. conventions relating to terrorism, including the Convention for the Suppression of Unlawful Seizure of Aircraft, the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Crimes against Internationally Protected Persons, and the Convention Against the Taking of Hostages.

Foa said the United Nations also needs “to determine what new machinery or mechanisms were necessary to implement conventions to stop terrorism at its source.” Perhaps the most important of all would be to figure out how best to coordinate anti-terrorist action on a global scale, she added.

Boutros-Ghali is expected to submit a position paper on terrorism to the 51st session of the General Assembly which opens in September.

“If we are to defeat terrorism, responding to individual acts of terror can never be enough,” the secretary-general said last week. “We need to widen our efforts to combat terrorist organisations at every stage of their fund-raising, planning, and procurement activities.”

Sri Lanka and India, two South Asian nations fighting separatist movements, last year began exploring the possibility of an international convention against terrorism. Strong support for such an exercise had come from the 113-member Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) during its Colombia summit meeting earlier.

Sri Lanka’s Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgarmar told IPS the summit in Colombia was the first NAM meeting which “unequivocally condemned terrorism.” He called it “a step in the right direction.”

Sri Lanka has lost more than 10 political leaders, including a president, to terrorism or to suicide bombers from the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The LTTE has been waging a ruthless, 13-year-old war for a separate state in northern Sri Lanka.

Kadirgamar said the first step towards the creation of a convention was taken in 1994 when the General Assembly, after years of tough negotiations, adopted a ‘Declaration on Measures to Eliminate International Terrorism’.

The final NAM declaration adopted unanimously in Colombia called for “the urgent conclusion and effective implementation of a comprehensive international convention for combating terrorism.”

India and Pakistan, which have traditionally quibbled over definitions of ‘terrorists’ and ‘freedom fighters’, buried their political differences to support the NAM declaration. The declaration also reaffirmed that NAM does not consider the struggle against colonialism an act of terrorism.

“They called once again for the endorsement in principle of the call for the definition of terrorism to differentiate it from the legitimate struggle of peoples under colonial or alien domination and foreign occupation, for self-determination and national liberation,” NAM said.

Former Indian Prime Minister Narasimha Rao told the United Nations’ 50th anniversary summit last year that the international community must resolve to combat terrorism because “it threatens the very basis of peaceful society.”

“The world’s great danger today is the spread of terrorism,” he said, arguing that terrorism becomes another means of waging war when it is sponsored and supported by states.

Sri Lanka’s President Chandrika Kumaratunga told the U.N. summit that unfortunately, action against terrorism “has been frustrated through sterile philosophical debate about the nature of terrorism.”

She said the seven countries of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) — India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, Bhutan and the Maldives — have provided a collective response by signing a ConventioN on the Suppression of Terrorism.

“This centres on a comprehensive legal regime and practical measures to combat terrorism,” she added. “I would urge similar action by the United Nations to give legal effect to the obligations arising from the Declaration on the Elimination of Terrorism.”

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