KL push to define terrorism gets cool reaction
KL push to define terrorism gets cool reaction
Agencies, Kuala Lumpur
Southeast Asian security ministers reacted coolly on Monday to Malaysia's latest call for a formal definition of terrorism.
Singaporean Home Affairs Minister Wong Kan Seng said such a definition should be left to the United Nations, rather than ministers of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) who were meeting in Kuala Lumpur to discuss regional counterterrorism measures.
Malaysia, a predominantly Muslim country, has been pushing for delegates at international meetings to officially define terrorism.
"I think the job of doing this should be left to esteemed organizations such as the United Nations, or we can leave it to the linguists or the lexicon," Wong said at a news conference.
"Even without a definition, I think we all know who are the ones who commit terrorist acts," he said.
Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines, the three countries with the region's largest Muslim populations, signed an accord this month to fight terrorism and crush a militant network they say is bent on turning all three into a single Islamic state.
Thailand, and possibly Myanmar, may join the pact later while the mostly ethnic Chinese island state of Singapore, wedged between Malaysia and Indonesia, has pledged to increase cooperation with its neighbors.
Malaysian Deputy Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi had opened the two-day meeting on counterterrorism on earlier Monday by telling the ministers it was a "great irony" that the world cannot define terrorism.
"We all know it exists and we are all engaged in a fight against it," Abdullah said. "But we will not commit to a definition of what it is."
Abdullah said it was tough to get a common definition as ASEAN was "not in one mind on certain issues."
"I did bring up the subject of legislation. What to one country is terrorism may not be to another. This may present some difficulties, even obstacles to bringing about an ASEAN-wide cooperation that we would like to have," he told reporters.
But Abdullah, who is also home minister, said this was not a major impediment as all 10 ASEAN members were committed to fighting terrorism.
"I don't think at the moment it is completely prohibitive to effective ASEAN cooperation," he said.
"We should not be distracted by the need to have a common definition but we should be focused on the need to have a common program of action.
"As we begin to expand our areas of cooperation, our areas of concern, and begin to realize what are the forms of terrorism, maybe we will get closer to defining terrorism."
Malaysia's Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad first offered his definition of terrorism - any attack on civilians - earlier this year at a meeting of the 57-member Organization of the Islamic Conference. It was rejected because Arab countries resisted condemning Palestinian suicide bombers.
Abdullah blamed a "politics of language" for the global stalemate in defining terrorism, saying some countries disagreed on including freedom fighters and state terrorism which would implicate Israel.
He reiterated Malaysia's stand that "armed and other forms of attacks against civilians" by any individual, group or state should be regarded as terrorism, including those by Palestinian suicide bombers.
Abdullah said there were Islamic groups out to create a "regional cellular structure with franchised terror operatives and groups stationed in different countries" within ASEAN.
Bomb attacks in the Philippines, Thailand and Indonesia, and the discovery of militants in Singapore and Malaysia believed linked to Osama bin Laden, have raised fears that the region may become the new battleground in the international war on terror.
U.S. forces are already helping the Philippine military to fight the Abu Sayyaf, a militant group linked to Saudi-born dissident bin Laden, and have joined war games in Thailand with Thai and Singapore forces.
In the past 12 months, Malaysia has detained dozens of militant suspects, while Singapore arrested in December members of a cell it said planned to attack U.S. targets on the island. Indonesia has drawn flak for its lack of arrests as neighbors, notably Singapore, say ringleaders of a suspected regional network are based there.
Apart from developing a modus operandi to fight terrorism, he said ASEAN must seek to debilitate terror support structures, resolve discontentment among its people and promote better cooperation in early detection.
He urged ASEAN to step up efforts to cripple terrorists' financial networks by freezing assets, condemning countries that sponsor terror and implementing laws to halt the proliferation of cybercrimes and bioterrorism.