POLITICS: U.N. Divided Over Definition of Terrorism

By Thalif Deen Reprint | | Print |

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Nov 19 1997 (IPS) - The United Nations once again is embroiled in the Middle East conflict and is being asked to decide how the world body should distinguish a “terrorist” from a “freedom fighter.”

“We insist that resistance to the Israeli-occupation of Lebanese territory is never an act of terrorism,” Hicham Hamdan of Lebanon told the U.N.’s Legal Committee which is formulating a new convention on terrorism. “They were acts of self- determination of the Lebanese people,” he says.

But Daniel Taub of Israel points out that since the U.N. General Assembly adopted its 1994 Declaration on Measures to Eliminate International Terrorism, Israel has witnessed more than 170 men, women and children die in “terrorist attacks” within its borders.

Every time Israelis are killed in the occupied territories of Gaza, the West Bank or southern Lebanon, the Israeli government has not only condemned them as acts of pure terrorism but also retaliated violently.

Hamdan counters by arguing that Israeli retaliation is nothing short of “state terrorism,” as evident when its forces bombed a United Nations safe haven in Qana, southern Lebanon, he said. The Israeli bombing in April 1996 killed about 102 Lebanese men, women and children – all civilians.

“The most dangerous form of terrorism is state terrorism, and the draft convention should consider that with all other forms of terrorism,” Hamdan said.

The 17 articles in the proposed convention cover definitions; the obligation of member states to implement the convention; extradition or prosecution; detention and cooperation to prevent actions that would be proscribed by the convention.

Ambassador Ahmad Kamal of Pakistan said the convention should make no exceptions for any form of terrorism, including state terrorism. “That was the most ignoble form, particularly when it was perpetrated against liberation movements,” he said.

Kamal said he strongly condemned the use of state power for such suppression and the use of violence against innocent civilians. “The struggle of liberation movements has to be recognised as a legitimate right,” he added.

Yamira Cueto Milian of Cuba said the people of her country had endured for more than 30 years “terrorist acts of the most deplorable kind.”

She said there was no parallel between the legitimate right of peoples to oppose colonial domination and occupation, and the terrorist acts organised, instigated, directed and financed by one state against the political, economic and social order of another sovereign state. The international community was well aware of the terrorist acts against Cuba, “such as those carried out by the Florida-based Cuban National Foundation, which had been acting with impunity from U.S. territory,” she added.

Mikhail Wehbe of Syria told delegates that the actions of the Palestinian people driven out of their land could not be deemed terrorism, when they were struggling against occupation.

“That also applies to those struggling against occupation in the Syrian Golan Heights,” he said. “Israel had exercised many forms of violence and terrorism against the people living there in violation of international law and U.N. resolutions. One cannot describe resistance to occupation as terrorism. Such descriptions meant only to mislead public opinion.”

B.B. Tiwari of India argued that the convention should be wider in scope with more direct provisions on the obligations of states not to provide safe haven to terrorists and to strictly adhere to the principle of extradite and prosecute. “There should not be any conditionalities such as subjecting extradition requests to the domestic law of the requested state,” he said.

Tiwari said that it was important that every accused person should enjoy protection of human rights, in particular the procedural guarantees of due process and the rule of law.

“However, human rights should not act as a ground for refusal of extradition of the offender or to refuse mutual legal assistance and judicial cooperation to the requesting states,” he said.

Terrorism has been on the agenda of the General Assembly since 1972, but the move to establish a convention was prodded only after a rash of bombings in the United States, France and Britain.

Addressing the U.N.’s 50th anniversary in 1995, U.S. President Bill Clinton called for a “no sanctuary pledge” so that “we could say together to organized 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 counterterrorism pact so that we would together urge more states to ratify existing antiterrorism treaties, and work with us to shut down the grey markets that outfit terrorists and criminals with firearms and false documents.”

The U.S. has blacklisted seven U.N. members as “terrorist states”: Libya, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, North Korea and Cuba. All seven countries, however, will be parties to the convention when it is finally adopted by the General Assembly before the end of this year.