11 October 2001
The UN Helped Galvanize Action Against the Terrorists, Powell Says
(Secretary of State, UN Secretary General talk to Americans) (890)
By Judy Aita
Washington File United Nations Correspondent
United Nations -- Praising the United Nations for its "swift and
steadfast response" to the terrorist attacks in the United States,
Secretary of State Colin Powell said October 11 that the United
Nations has helped galvanize international action for world peace and
security and against terrorism.
Participating in a town meeting one month to the day after the
terrorist attacks on New York, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania, the
Secretary of State said that the resolution passed by the UN Security
Council on September 28 freezing assets of terrorists and those who
help them "gave even more concrete expression to the international
community's condemnation and resolve."
The resolution "obligates all 189 member states, countries of every
continent, culture and creed to deny financing and other forms of
support and safe haven to terrorists and to cooperate in bringing them
to justice," Powell said.
"We cannot overestimate the importance of that trailblazing
resolution," he said.
"No resources plus no refuge ultimately equals no escape," the
Secretary said.
Americans across the United States had a chance to question UN
Secretary General Kofi Annan at the National Town Meeting held via
satellite in ten major cities across the country. The event was
designed to enable Annan to engage the American people in a
conversation, to reach them in their communities and communicate with
them directly, according to The Better World Campaign which produced
the event. The program began with Powell's introduction.
Referring to the UN's help in galvanizing international action to free
Kuwait after Iraq's invasion, the Secretary said that "we're also
going to win the war against terrorism. It's a different kind of war
and it is going to take sustained commitment on the part of the
international community."
The UN is also "helping to send the message that while the world
condemns Usama bin Laden and its vicious network and the Taliban
regime that harbors them, it has great compassion for the suffering
people of Afghanistan," Powell said. "The international community --
with the United States at the forefront as the largest single donor --
is working through the UN to feed and shelter the millions of starving
and displaced Afghans. This massive humanitarian effort already has
saved thousands of innocent lives and it will save countless more."
The Secretary General said that immediately after the September 11
attacks, the United Nation's 189 member states "rallied in a manner
that we have not seen in this house before" through both the Security
Council and the General Assembly with condemnations of the attacks.
"What the UN is able to do is to provide a basis for that broad
international coalition that we are putting together to fight
terrorism," the Secretary General said.
Security Council resolution 1373 (passed on September 28) provides one
basis by requiring governments to undertake certain sanctions to
ensure that terrorists do not prosper and are not able to continue
their evil work in our midst, Annan said.
However, he pointed out that the UN has adopted 12 conventions and
protocols to fight terrorism with the last one meant to suppress
financing of terrorism. Now, Annan said, the 189 member states are
working on a 13th convention that would be "a comprehensive one that
is intended to make the lives of terrorists more difficult than the 12
earlier conventions."
The UN Security Council is "satisfied" with the way the United States
and the United Kingdom are responding through military attacks, the
Secretary General said.
"The Security Council was very clear in their resolution 1373," he
said. "I indicated that the attack on the World Trade Center, the
Pentagon and in Pennsylvania were threats to international peace and
security and that it was prepared to take all necessary means to fight
these attacks. It also reaffirmed the right for self-defense
individually and collectively."
"As soon as the attacks began in Afghanistan both the United States
and the United Kingdom wrote to the council explaining their action in
the context of the right to self-defense as defined in the (UN)
Charter. They gave the Council a full briefing on this and the council
seems satisfied," the Secretary General said.
Asked about the UN position on the Taliban, Anna pointed out that "the
United Nations does not recognize the Taliban" and actions by states
within the United Nations "have provided a basis for international
action" against the Taliban
The Afghan seat at the UN is filled by a representative of the
northern alliance.
"We have had our own problems with the Taliban in the past because the
Security Council urged the Taliban to release (al-Qaeda leader Usama)
bin Laden following the attacks in Kenya and Tanzania," he said. "They
did not do it, so the Council imposed sanctions on them and those
sanctions did not compel them to release the leader of the al-Qaeda
organization."
"Now, of course, we are in a major confrontation with the Taliban,"
Annan said. "The international community and (the UN) have also come
up with resolution on how to fight terrorism which will affect both
al-Qaeda and the Taliban in the sense that it is protecting and
harboring terrorists."
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