Gary Fitleberg, October 9, 2004

The UN Security Council voted unanimously Friday for a Russian-initiated resolution that seeks to expand the prosecution and extradition of terrorist groups and suspects, but decided against compiling a worldwide list of terror organizations.

Israel's UN ambassador Dan Gillerman said, however, that Arab "Palestinian" groups should be on a terror list.

"These things to a very great extent are an invention of the `Palestinians'," he told reporters, referring to acts the resolution suggests constitute terrorism.

"They have invented it, they have perfected it and they have exported it with great skill and great destruction all over the world."

The resolution calls on nations to punish "criminal acts, including against civilians, committed with intent to cause death or serious bodily injury, or taking of hostages, with the purpose to provoke a state of terror in the general public, intimidate a population or compel a government or international organization to do or abstain from doing any act" that goes against existing treaties.

Such acts, it says, "are under no circumstances justifiable by considerations of a political, philosophical, ideological, racial, ethnic, religious or other similar nature."

After challenges from Islamic nations, Algeria and Pakistan, Russia deleted a call for a global blacklist of terror suspects, now confined to Al-Qaida and the Taliban.

Instead it created a working group to consider measures "to be imposed upon individuals, groups or entities" involved in terrorist activities.

"While we all agree that acts against civilians are terrorist acts, there is no similar consensus on what are the rights of people struggling against foreign occupation," Pakistan's UN ambassador, Munir Akram, told reporters.

But despite the lack of practical measures, Russian Ambassador Andrei Denisov hoped the committee would draw up a black list, controversial for Islamic nations as well as civil libertarians.

The resolution calls on states to "deny safe haven and bring to justice" any person who supports or participates in the "financing, planning, preparation or commission of terrorist acts."

Britain's UN ambassador Emyr Jones Parry said that while cynics may question whether the resolution made a difference, "it will set us off not just after Al-Qaida and the Taliban but after terrorism in general."

The measure was co-sponsored by the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Spain and Romania.

Denisov said all terrorist acts against civilians were a crime "and should be given the harshest punishment" especially in light of blasts on Thursday in three Egyptian resorts.

The anti-terror proposals were first announced by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in a speech to the UN General Assembly last month, after a spate of attacks by Chechen rebels, including the bombing of two airliners and the deadly Beslan school siege.

Pakistan's Akram told the council that a global strategy for combating terrorism must also include a long-term program striking at the roots of the problem.

But U.S. Ambassador John Danforth said root causes in no way justified terrorism. "The resolution which we have adopted states very simply that the deliberate massacre of innocents is never justifiable in any cause - never."

"Some claim that exploding bombs in the midst of children is in the service of God," he told the council. "That is the ultimate blasphemy."

Gary Fitleberg is a Political Analyst specializing in International Relations with emphasis on Middle East affairs.

Copyright © 2004 Gary Fitleberg