The Daily Telegraph (req. reg.) reports that a UN panel will issue a report recommending that the UN ban terror attacks on civilians or risk losing its moral authority:
In a report to be unveiled on Thursday, seen in part by The Telegraph, a panel appointed to reform the UN said it must send “an unequivocal message that terrorism is never an acceptable tactic, even for the most defensible of causes”.
This is a slap in the face for Palestinians, Iraqi insurgents, Kashmiri rebels, al-Qa’eda militants and other groups that claim to be fighting foreign domination. It is also a rebuke to Muslim states that have for years blocked agreement on an all-embracing UN convention on terrorism on the grounds that it should exclude groups fighting “occupation” or “colonialism”.
On the question of “resistance” to occupation, the report declares that “there is nothing in the fact of occupation that justifies the targeting and killing of civilians”.
The panel’s report also offered its own definition of terror:
“any action that is intended to cause death or serious bodily harm to civilians or non-combatants, when the purpose of such act, by its nature or context, is to intimidate a population, or compel a government or an international organisation to do or to abstain from doing any act”.
Will the UN adopt the findings? Stay tuned…
