Unofficial transcript 
Ad Hoc Committee on Measures to Eliminate International Terrorism, June 29, 2009 – Trusteeship Council
UNITED STATES:  Thank you Mr. Chairman.  And at the outset, I would like to join many other delegations that have noted how effectively and for how many years you have led this effort.  The United States thinks your steadfast leadership in this effort has been critical to whatever progress we have been able to make over the years and appreciates those efforts and those of the bureau as well.
The United States continues to support a comprehensive convention on international terrorism that would strengthen the existing international counterterrorism legal regime and reinforce the critical principle that no cause or grievance justifies terrorism in any form.  And in this respect and reflecting on some of the statements that were made before ours, I think it is worth emphasizing, perhaps, that what we have been setting out to do with this convention, as with the ones that predated it, is to create a law enforcement instrument.  
I believe our collective effort here is to find a practical means to foster the kind of cooperation among states to prevent, to cooperate in combating and to bring to punishment individuals that commit acts of terror.  It’s not to create an instrument that can be used to advance the political issues of one state against another state, but it has a very practical objective of being law enforcement focused.
In this respect, the United States appreciates the efforts of those who advanced new proposals in an attempt to come to an agreement on a final text.  We firmly believe that any successful resolution of these outstanding issues though must be predicated on a shared and clear understanding of certain fundamental principles.  We believe the first of these is that a comprehensive convention cannot provide a pretext for terrorist groups or individuals to claim that their criminal acts are excluded from the scope of the convention in the name of national liberation, resistance to foreign occupation or any other justification or motivation.  
As with other conventions, the focus here is defining the acts that come within the scope, not to add a label or characterization to them.  And secondly, as with prior counterterrorism conventions, a comprehensive convention should not reach state military action which is subject to other international regimes.
Now the international community has come to consensus on these fundamental principles repeatedly in the past.  These are not new issues for us.  In the terrorist bombings convention, and more recently in four other counterterrorism instruments, we were able to come to agreement on the very language under consideration of article 18 that has held up conclusion of this important instrument for too long.
The text found in these universal treaties, which was proposed in the coordinator’s 2002 draft text was the subject of much discussion, reflection and careful compromise.  None of the issues raised with respect to this language in the past number of years in the context of the present convention are new.  They were [SOUND DROPS OUT] to the same debate in the past and they were resolved in the same way.
We’ve not been persuaded that there are deficiencies here that need to be remedied that the standard language does not already address and that the international community has adopted five times before.  For these reasons, we continue to believe that the only realistic way ahead is to adopt the text that has been previously agreed on multiple occasions in the prior counterterrorism instruments.  Such an approach is consistent with our past practice in [SOUND DROPS OUT] introducing ambiguity with respect to issues that are basic and fundamental to the scope of the convention.  
Now turning briefly to the issue of the international conference, our sense is that a high-level conference on terrorism will only be valuable if it built upon a shared understanding of the fundamental issues that are being discussed with respect to this convention.  And as a number of states have previously acknowledged, consideration of such a conference would only seem appropriate to us after we have completed our work on this convention and come to agreement on these outstanding issues.
In concluding, Mr. Chairman, I would also like to go back on the very eloquent comments made by the distinguished ambassador of India describing the Bombay terrorist attacks.  I think that kind of description has the effect, certainly for my delegation, focusing us on what this instrument is intended to do and the kinds of international operation and hope that this kind of instrument can create a legal framework for so that we can cooperate in preventing and combating such attacks.  Thank you.