05 May 2006
U.S. Seeks Europe's Aid in War on Terror, Justice's Gonzales Says
Attorney general addresses European Union ministers in Vienna, Austria
By Vince Crawley
Washington File Staff Writer
Washington -- The United States, well aware that Europeans have suffered terrorist attacks for decades, seeks strong trans-Atlantic cooperation to defeat terror networks, U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales told European ministers May 5 in Vienna, Austria.
“We are safer today, but we are not yet safe,” Gonzales said of the multinational campaign against terrorism. He addressed a conference of European Union interior ministers in the Austrian capital.
“We turn to the European Union, and to the nations gathered here today, for help and support,” Gonzales said. “We look to your experiences and lessons-learned, and we study what you do.”
Gonzales acknowledged that many Europeans consider terrorism a criminal problem, not a military matter. “Many of you, and your citizens, have suffered at the hands of terrorists far longer than the United States,” Gonzales said. Myriad groups, from al-Qaida and the Red Brigade to the “Continuity IRA” and ETA (the Basque separatist group) all have comparable goals – “perpetual violence designed to undermine democracy and the rule of law.”
Following the terror attacks on September 11, 2001, the United States found itself “faced with a highly dangerous adversary” and “responded by bringing to bear all of our tools to defeat the threat,” Gonzales said, “including, when appropriate, military action.”
He said U.S. and European law differ in many respects and that many European countries have “well-developed legal tools to deal with terrorists.” For example, European countries can use “preventive detention,” which violates the U.S. Constitution. Many European governments also can restrict suspects’ movement and communication to a greater degree than can the United States.
Also, he said, the United States is engaged in an extensive public debate on whether its Terrorist Surveillance Program violated the law, while many European countries long have allowed law-enforcement officers to engage in electronic surveillance without a court order and without public outcry.
Furthermore, he said, many European countries have stricter controls on free speech than does the United States. “In the context of fighting terrorism, this has meant that European countries may go further to punish speech than would be possible in the United States,” Gonzales said. “This has relevance in our discussions about shutting down Websites that recruit jihadists.”
Gonzales said he is “not advocating that Americans adopt a European model, or vice versa, in fighting terrorism.” Instead, he said, democracies on either side of the Atlantic “have developed different governmental structures to fight terrorism.”
U.S. and European governments have worked together closely on information sharing regarding terrorist suspects, Gonzales said. This cooperation should be expanded wherever possible, he said.
“We must be able to share important intelligence information critical to a prosecution in another country,” Gonzales said. “We must develop systems that allow our respective countries to share sensitive information without fear of compromising national security. And we must preserve data and have it available to be shared with another country without compromising legitimate privacy interests.”
The fact that diverse nations on both sides of the Atlantic “have different means of supporting our shared democratic ideals,” Gonzales said, “need not make us - and indeed has not made us - less united in the fight against global terrorism.”
The full text of the attorney general’s remarks is available on the Department of Justice Web site.
For additional information, see Response to Terrorism.
(The Washington File is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
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