Annan To Push for Definition of Terror
BY BENNY AVNI - Special to the Sun
March 10, 2005

UNITED NATIONS - Secretary-General Annan plans to promote a universal definition of terrorism on his short tour through Europe and the Middle East and call for a treaty that would turn terrorists into international outlaws.
Several diplomats and U.N. officials told The New York Sun that next week, in Israel and Gaza, Mr. Annan plans to lean on the Palestinian Arab leader, Mahmoud Abbas, to publicly endorse a legal definition of terrorism recommended in a December report by a high-level panel at the U.N. of former foreign ministers and heads of state.
As the Sun reported, Arab League chief and former Egyptian Foreign Minister Amre Moussa threatened to resign from that 16-member panel at one point, clashing with other members who called for a clear-cut definition of terrorism.
The panel finally united and the hope at the U.N., as one adviser to Mr. Annan explained, is that if the panel's definition is publicly backed by Mr. Abbas, objections to the definition, still prevalent in the Arab world, will be diminished.
Arab spokesmen have insisted that resistance to foreign colonial occupation is not terrorism, excluding, in effect, any attack on Israeli civilians from being defined as terrorism. They also wanted any definition to include state terrorism. These demands have held up attempts to define terrorism at the U.N. since the aftermath of September 11, 2001.
Today in Madrid, Mr. Annan will use a four-day international conference on terrorism, convened to commemorate the March 11, 2004, bombing, to call for nations to unite behind the definition of terrorism as recommended by the U.N. panel, and to create a comprehensive convention that would outlaw terrorism in international law, aides told the Sun.
Mr. Annan is expected to say that the use of armed force against civilians by states is already prohibited by international law, and resistance against occupation does not include the right to maim or kill civilians.
The U.N.'s inability to unite behind a clear-cut definition of terrorism has become a source of ridicule among U.N. critics. Rather than clearly defining terrorism and banning it, the U.N. spent decades trying to provide a legal definition for attacks against civilians, Dore Gold, the former Israeli U.N. ambassador, whose latest book Tower of Babble deals with Turtle Bay, told the Sun.
Mr. Annan's panel, which included such international figures as Brent Scowcroft, the former national security adviser, and Yevgeny Primakov, the former Russian prime minister, determined that the inability to unite behind a terrorism definition stained the U.N. image. Finding such a definition, it added, is a political imperative for the U.N.
There is no guarantee however, that Mr. Annan's use of the Madrid bully pulpit today will be able to change minds in the Arab world tomorrow. One Arab diplomat who requested anonymity told the Sun last week that even though Mr. Abbas has publicly declared his opposition to terrorism, he might find it hard to move ahead of the rest of the Arab world on the issue of a definition. He noted that the new foreign minister of the Palestinian Authority, former U.N. ambassador Nasser al Kidwa, has for years led the Arab fight against a definition of terrorism.