UNited against terrorism

For India as for a number of other countries terrorism has emerged as one of the major threats to freedom and peace. It was important, th...

For India as for a number of other countries terrorism has emerged as one of the major threats to freedom and peace. It was important, therefore, to focus on ways of defeating terrorism at the end-of-the-millennium session of the United Nations General Assembly. As the world8217;s statesmen look around them during the closing months of this century, they will be relieved that there are no big millennarian visions about to threaten the stability of nations and the global system. All that is dead and buried. What8217;s left is only the practical business of making money and everyone, more or less, is united in the pursuit of it. So the world community ought to be optimistic about a future with fewer wars. The hope is that if there is blood to be spilled it will be around conference tables and during trade negotiations. But peace has not only not broken out generally, it is threatened everywhere by terrorism.

From the powerful to the small, from those with problems left by history to those who have sorted out oldproblems, all kinds of nations are raked by terrorism today. Its forms vary. There are terrorists for hire, political terrorists, terrorist acts by cults and crazies and terrorism for terrorism8217;s sake. US civilians and military and diplomatic personnel and facilities abroad have been targeted over the years by various kinds of terrorists. Against the backdrop of the terrorist bombs which have killed hundreds in Moscow and other cities, Russia8217;s foreign minister Igor Ivanov warned at the UNGA that terrorism knows no borders. No one is safe. Ivanov sees militant nationalism and separatism 8220;increasingly merging with the monster of terrorism8221;. Terrorism in West Asia is the most widely reported and has had a long run but South Asia is not far behind. In Sri Lanka the conflict with the LTTE has been going on for a quarter of a century. India is having to deal with one of the most pernicious forms, state-sponsored or cross-border terrorism. Foreign minister Jaswant Singh, who castigated Pakistan for its8220;compulsive hostility8221; towards India, said that open societies are particularly vulnerable to the menace of terrorists who are armed, financed and protected by governments or their agencies.

Every new flare-up of terrorism in some part of the world results in fresh calls for international cooperation to combat it. Collective action has been difficult to bring about. It has taken an unconscionably long time to draft and get acceptance for an international convention which requires states to prosecute or extradite those accused of terrorist bombings. India has just now ratified that convention but it will only come into force when another dozen or so countries similarly ratify the convention. There is also talk of more anti-terrorist conventions; India would like one on state-sponsored terrorism, Russia one on denying them weapons of mass destruction and France one on denying them access to the international banking system. All worthy causes but when are they going to be drafted and signed and go intoeffect? People around the world want to see tough action follow the denunciation of terrorism.