11 October 2001

UN Helped Galvanize Action Against Terrorists, Powell Says

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."