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Arab states unite against Islamist terror campaigns
Copyright ) 1998 Nando.net
Copyright ) 1998 Reuters
TUNIS (January 5, 1998 12:18 p.m. EST http://www.nando.net) - Interior
ministers from 20 Arab countries Monday agreed to increase cooperation
to fight "terrorism," a term they generally use to describe Muslim
fundamentalist violence.
An official statement, issued after a two-day meeting, said the
ministers also urged "foreign states" to cooperate with Arab security
services and legal bodies to help end the violence. This should include
handing over wanted criminals, it said.
"The Arab states reject terrorism in all its forms and from whatever
source ... and there is no room for anarchy and instability," Saudi
Interior Minister Prince Nayef bin Abdul-Aziz, chairman of the Arab
Interior Ministers Council, said at the closing session.
"The ministers have approved the draft for an Arab accord to fight
terrorism," the meeting's final statement said.
The approval concludes a process that started in 1992 when Arab states,
alarmed by the rise of Muslim fundamentalist violence, started
discussing closer cooperation.
They were particularly spurred on by Algeria and Egypt, two of the
countries worst hit by violence.
The text of the draft agreement was not released. But the statement said
it "aims at reinforcing controls to prevent infiltration of terrorist
elements through borders and entry points to the Arab states, and
facilitate procedures for the handing over of those accused of or tried
for crimes of terrorism."
Arab interior and justice ministers will sign the agreement in Cairo,
Egypt, in April, the statement said.
The ministers, in a separate statement proposed by Egyptian Interior
Minister Maj. Gen. Habib el-Adli, condemned what they called
"intensification of terrorist and violent attacks," without naming the
countries where they occurred.
Thirty-five civilians were killed in weekend attacks in Algeria where
government troops were hunting the killers of more than 400 villagers
which Algerian media said were killed in the Relizane region last week.
Algerian Interior Minister Mustapha Benmansour Sunday denied the
Relizane toll, and put it at 78. About 65,000 people have been killed in
Algeria since violence broke out in early 1992 after the authorities
scrapped a general election dominated by Islamic fundamentalists.
Benmansour told his Arab colleagues that the phenomenon would not have
developed without the leniency of unnamed countries which, he charged,
did not wish "to see our Arab world stabilize."
The ministers' meeting took added importance, coming just weeks after
Muslim militants killed 58 foreign tourists in Luxor, Egypt, in
November.
"We affirm that the Arab efforts to fight terrorism will be useless if
terrorism finds a hole through which it can go into some countries," the
Egyptian minister told the meeting.
"The heads of terrorism are abroad where they enjoy security and a clear
protection from the states who harbor them and give them refuge and
freedom of movement to plan and finance," he said.
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