*EPF304 06/05/2002
Text: U.N. Symposium on Combating Terrorism Called Useful
(Global coordination vital to war on terrorism, official says) (520)

Stopping future acts of terrorism and the terrorists who may commit them requires global coordination or terrorists will simply migrate to safe havens, says the chairman of the U.N. Security Council's Counter-Terrorism Committee (CTC).

CTC Chairman Ambassador Jeremy Greenstock of the United Kingdom said June 4 that the role of his committee is to help raise the capacity of U.N. member-nations to defeat terrorism.

Greenstock spoke at a briefing following a two-day U.N.-sponsored symposium on combating international terrorism that was held in Vienna.

Following is a text of the U.N. news announcement:

(begin text)

U.N. OFFICIALS HAIL PROGRESS ACHIEVED
AT VIENNA SYMPOSIUM ON FIGHTING TERRORISM

New York
June 4, 2002

As a United Nations symposium on combating international terrorism wrapped up today, U.N. officials said the ideas generated at the meeting would serve to increase the momentum in the fight against the scourge.

"I want to report a sense of accomplishment -- an unusual sense of accomplishment," said Antonio Maria Costa, who heads the U.N. Office of Drug Control and Crime Prevention (ODCCP). "I have attended a large number of academic and other symposia and conferences but I have never had the feeling I had here [in terms of] political accomplishment," he told reporters at a press conference held in connection with the two-day event.

A large number of participants had called attention to the potential role of ODCCP in fighting terrorism, he noted, and pledged that "we will be carefully examining what they have suggested."

Mr. Costa, who is also the Director-General of the U.N. Office at Vienna, hailed the achievements of the Security Council's Counter-Terrorism Committee (CTC) and stressed the "complementarity" between its work and that of ODCCP.

CTC Chairman Ambassador Jeremy Greenstock of the United Kingdom agreed and underscored the central role to be played by the U.N. in the global fight against terrorism.

"The reaction to stop the potential of future terrorism, or actual terrorists who may do future acts, has to be globally coordinated or else terrorism migrates to where it is safer for [the terrorists] to be," he observed.

The job of the CTC -- which was set up to implement Council resolution 1373, a landmark text adopted in the wake of the 11 September attacks against the United States -- was to "raise the capacity of every Member of the U.N. to defeat terrorism," he stressed.

Shashi Tharoor, the U.N. Under-Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information, stressed that the world body's contribution to the fight against the menace could not be viewed statically.

"When we talk about the U.N.'s efforts to combat terrorism, we are really taking a picture of a moving train, and as the train is moving, the tracks in front of it are still being laid," he said. "So you may have to wait a little longer to [see] the final picture of the destination, but we know that our objectives are one and the same -- and that is, of course, to defeat the scourge of terrorism."

(end text)

(Distributed by the Office of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)

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