ANNAN: Military Force Cannot End Terror

Monday, September 22, 2003

Islam Online

& News Agencies

"Increased repression and coercion are likely to feed terrorism, rather than reducing it. Extremist ideologies that promote hatred and terrorism should be confronted on ideological grounds by investing more effort into challenging them politically, and not only by the use of coercive force.” [ ... ] "The political goals for which terrorists wage conflict may be legitimate in some cases and unjust in others -- but deliberate and indiscriminate targeting of civilians as a tactic to achieve these goals is never acceptable."

New York -- IOL
Opening a summit on terrorism attended by world leaders, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan warned Monday, September 22, that the war on terrorism could not be won by military force alone.

"To fight terrorism, we must not only fight terrorists. We have to win hearts and minds. Terrorism will only be defeated if we act to solve the political disputes or long-standing conflicts that generate support for it," Agence France-Presse (AFP) quoted Annan as addressing 18 heads of state and government meeting in New York to discuss the root causes of terrorism.

"We also delude ourselves if we think military force alone can defeat terrorism. It may sometimes be necessary ... but we need to do much more than that.

"If we do not, we should find ourselves acting as recruiting sergeants for the very terrorists we seek to suppress," Annan said in his speech before the Fighting Terrorism for Humanity conference.

In his speech, Annan stressed that it was just as mistaken to believe terrorism was unrelated to political and social factors, as it was to assume that terrorists were mere products of their environment.

The one-day conference was the joint brainchild of Norwegian Prime Minister Kjell Bondevik and Nobel peace laureate Elie Wiesel.

Among the 18 heads of state or government attending the meeting were French President Jacques Chirac, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf and Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov was also present. The United States, which has spearheaded the global war on terrorism since the September 11, 2001 attacks, was not represented.

After the opening speeches, the summit heard testimony from survivors of the September 11 attacks and other terrorist strikes.

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Dan