Reuter on P8 Anti-Terrorism

[jya@pipeline.com (John Young)]

   G7, Russia adopt anti-terror pact, avoid sanctions 
   Date: Tue, 30 Jul 1996 10:00:07 PDT 
 
 
   PARIS (Reuter) - The world's major powers closed ranks to  
   combat terrorism Tuesday, urging other nations to join 
   forces with them but sidestepping a dispute over U.S. 
   demands for sanctions against what Washington calls 
   "terrorist states." 
 
 
   Foreign and security ministers from the Group of Seven 
   industrial nations and Russia approved a list of 25 
   measures to defeat terrorists around the globe. 
 
 
   "We will not stop in this united effort until those 
   responsible are brought to justice," U.S. Attorney General 
   Janet Reno told a news conference after the five-hour 
   meeting of the so-called P8 nations -- P being for 
   political. 
 
 
   The package included pledges to reinforce police 
   cooperation and training, share intelligence, ease 
   extradition and legal assistance, dry up sources of funding 
   and weapons and strengthen national anti-terrorism 
   legislation. 
 
 
   The ministers also vowed to prevent extremists from using  
   the Internet computer network to plan attacks and spread  
   bomb-making instructions. 
 
 
   Participants heard Canadian Foreign Minister Lloyd Axworthy  
   recount how his 11-year-old son had shown him where to find 
   such content on the Internet. 
 
 
   French Foreign Minister Herve de Charette said the meeting 
   had achieved its two objectives, "to adopt concrete 
   measures and to send a very clear signal to the 
   international community and to public opinion that the 
   leaders of the P8 are strongly determined to act 
   shoulder-to-shoulder, hand-in-hand." 
 
 
   Under-Secretary of State Peter Tarnoff said the U.S. 
   delegation had not raised President Clinton's contentious 
   call for "strong sanctions" against four states he says 
   support terrorism -- Iran, Iraq, Libya and Sudan. 
 
 
   France, Japan, Britain and Germany all made clear they 
   would not accept U.S. legislation to punish foreign firms 
   that dealt with such countries. 
 
 
   "We did not discuss country-specific cases ... We recognize  
   the fact that some of legislation passed in the United 
   States recently has encountered opposition among our 
   trading partners," Tarnoff said. 
 
 
   French Interior Minister Jean-Louis Debre, who co-chaired  
   the meeting, said before it began: "The American analysis 
   is a bit simplistic and a bit outdated. If we look at the 
   phenomenon of terrorism today, we can see that it's more 
   complex." 
 
 
   He cited the bomb attack that killed two people and wounded  
   110 at the Atlanta Olympic Games last Saturday as evidence 
   of what he called "home-grown terrorism" without outside 
   help. 
 
 
   State-sponsored and extreme-left terrorism were largely a  
   thing of the past, and the international community now 
   faced two virulent new forms -- regionalist extremism and 
   religious militancy -- which did not have state support, 
   Debre said. 
 
 
   The United States offered extra proposals to tighten 
   airport security and mark explosives chemically so bombers 
   can be more easily traced, which the other countries 
   accepted. 
 
 
   Axworthy voiced widely shared alarm at the use of poison 
   gas in recent attacks in Japan, including on the Tokyo 
   subway. 
 
 
   "We are beginning to see terrifying signs of what the 
   future could hold if we don't take strong action. 
   Terrorists are now getting access to weapons of mass 
   destruction, chemical weapons, biological weapons, even 
   nuclear weapons," he said. 
 
 
   "It's (a threat) that really has a doomsday quality unless  
   we act now," he said.  
 
 
   The United States, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan 
   and Russia agreed that solving regional conflicts and 
   stabilizing crisis areas was the best way to tackle the 
   roots of terrorism. 
 
 
   "There must be no safe havens," German Foreign Minister 
   Klaus Kinkel said. 
 
 
   The ministers agreed their experts would hold follow-up 
   meetings to draft a new international convention to prevent 
   the abuse of political asylum to plan, fund or commit 
   terrorist acts and to coordinate security in public 
   transport. 
 
 
   Japan said it would hold an Asia-Pacific counter-terrorism  
   seminar by next June including Asian and Latin American 
   experts. 
 
 
   [End]