| JRL HOME | SUPPORT | SUBSCRIBE | RESEARCH & ANALYTICAL SUPPLEMENT | |
Old Saint Basil's Cathedral in MoscowJohnson's Russia List title and scenes of Saint Petersburg
Excerpts from the JRL E-Mail Community :: Founded and Edited by David Johnson

#3 - JRL 7171
Russia calls on UN to complete work on anti-terrorist conventions.
May 7, 2003
ITAR-TASS

Russia is disenchanted by the stymied work on the drafts of a Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism and an International Convention for the Suppression of Acts of Nuclear Terrorism and calls on all states to compete agreeing these documents at the earliest.

This statement at the U. N. Security Committee was made by Russian chief delegate to the U. N. Sergei Lavrov.

On Tuesday, the Security Council held an open meeting on threats to international peace and security, stemming from terrorist acts.

Moscow is convinced that struggle against terrorism "can be conducted only by a search for ways of stopping other negative evils of our times, including transnational organised crime, drug trafficking, the spread of weapons of mass destruction and various social and economic ailments," Lavrov emphasised.

Adoption by the present session of the U. N. General Assembly of Russia-brokered resolution "Response to global threats and challenges" should contribute to forming such an approach, he stressed.

The Russian representative noted that "experience has proven strategic reliability of building the global system of countering terrorism precisely under the U. N. aegis". The Security Council plays worthily the key role in protecting international peace and security from terrorism," he continued, "while the counter-terrorist committee, set up in the wake of the tragic events of September 11, 2001, remains the centrepiece of the world anti-terrorist architecture. "

Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar who also spoke at the session, warned against complacency in and indifference to struggle against terrorism. Last April 4, Spain headed the U. N. Counter-Terrorist Committee which was set up after the tragic events of September 11, 2001.

"Terrorism acquired a global scale on September 11, but it appeared not on that day, but much earlier," the Spanish premier underlined. "We have been living over the past few years under the influence of changing paradigms in determining a new world order.

"However, we do not witness a clash of civilisations. In actual fact, we witness a clash between a new type of barbarity and civilisation which should be protected from destruction. "

Aznar offered several practical measures which, from Spain's point of view, could help to raise efficiency of international struggle against terrorism. He called, among such measures, consolidation of the Counter-Terrorist Committee, improvement of its mechanism of restraining the spread of weapons of mass destruction as well as measures on stopping financial aid to terrorists, a broader scale of international cooperation in struggle against terrorism, depriving terrorists of a possibility to formalise their actions as well as new initiatives, aimed at consolidating the dialogue between civilisations, religions and cultures.

Top   Next