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Time to Get Tough on Terrorism, UN Warned
(Telegraph-UK) Anton La Guardia - After decades of argument over whether one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter, a group of international "wise men" will this week tell the UN to outlaw all terror attacks on civilians or risk losing its moral authority. In a report to be unveiled on Thursday, the High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change, 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-Qaeda 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 was appointed by UN secretary general Kofi Annan to find ways of healing the divisions over Iraq and fending off Washington's threats to treat the UN as "irrelevant" in dealing with modern dangers. The report proposes a definition of terrorism which refers to "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 organization to do or to abstain from doing any act."