UNITED NATIONS, Sept 14: Leaders attending a special UN Security Council session here on Wednesday issued a formal appeal to world governments to adopt laws prohibiting the incitement of terrorism.
US President George Bush, Chinese President Hu Jintao, Russian President Vladimir Putin and British Prime Minister Tony Blair were among those voting unanimously for the resolution at a rare high-level meeting of the 15-nation UN Security Council.
“We have a solemn obligation to stop terrorism at its early stages,” Mr Bush said. “We must do all we can to disrupt each stage of planning and support for terrorist acts.”
The meeting coincided with the UN gathering in New York of some 150 world leaders.
The leaders also adopted a second resolution calling on the Security Council to become more involved in Preventing conflicts in Africa and elsewhere.
“The council should listen more attentively to African nations’ concerns and proposals and take into account their wishes for peace and development,” China’s Hu said.
The global terrorism initiative was proposed by Mr Blair, who is pursuing a similar crackdown in Britain following bombings that killed 52 people in London in July. Saying the attacks had altered the British landscape, Mr Blair put forward plans last month to ban two Islamist groups and empower authorities to expel or exclude foreign nationals who incited violence or glorified terrorism.
‘THEY USE IRAQ TO DIVIDE US’: The British leader told the council he found it obscene that terrorism could be portrayed as a response to US and British aggression against Muslims in Iraq.
In Iraq ‘the obstacle is terrorism, the victims are largely Muslim’, Mr Blair said. “They use Iraq to divide us — just as they use Afghanistan, where again their terror is the obstacle to Afghan democracy, just as they use Palestine, where terrorism does not create progress but destroys it.” Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo said her country had ‘fought back’ when it came under attack, killing or capturing 4,000 terrorism suspects.—Reuters
