#5
Moscow News
April 3-9, 2002
Europe's and CIS MPs Disagree on Terrorism
St. Petersburg's four-day international forum revealed nothing new in the fight against terrorism
By Borislav Mikhailichenko

The leading Russian television channels either purposely pushed their footage of the St. Petersburg antiterrorist forum to the end of their reviews of the week's major events, or did not mention the forum at all.

If the forum was meant to be a publicity stunt to draw attention to the upcoming 300th anniversary of the northern capital, it evidently succeeded, for it drew to the city over 700 parliamentarians from more than 50 nations. But as a "generator of practical recommendations on one of the most acute global problems" (which State Duma Speaker Gennady Seleznev, among others, was hoping to hear), the forum was a flop.

It couldn't have been otherwise in the cradle of Russian anti-state (remember the assassination of Alexander II) and state (recall the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution) terrorism. Besides, the forum's sponsors made a mess of its program too. What would eventually be called the Interparliamentary Forum on Combating Terrorism actually looked like jigsaw pieces that did not fit together to form an integral picture.

First, the heads and representatives of 39 of the 49 special services officially invited to the forum conferred behind closed doors at the Baltic Hotel for a couple of days. Then the forum sponsors held their own sessions in Tavrichesky Palace: The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) held a special session of its Standing Commission, while the Interparliamenary Assembly of the CIS Countries (IA CIS) held a jubilee session in honor of its 10th anniversary. (The true reason why St. Petersburg had been chosen as the forum's venue was revealed when the IA CIS and the PACE Council issued a joint statement officially inviting the European delegates to attend the city's 300th anniversary celebrations).

Only after these important functions were over did the forum attend to its antiterrorist work, on which it spent a total of two days.

Though disappointing to Seleznev, the forum lived up to the expectations of PACE President Peter Schieder. Two of Schieder's theses, i.e. that parliaments must give governments political backing in their drive against terrorism, and that they must ensure conformity of the laws they adopt to international human rights and rule-of-law state standards, were later variously cited by the debaters, and set the tone for the forum's 37-point Final Declaration. But the "joint work" that Schieder called for was conspicuously absent.

The antiterrorist zeal that united the delegates diminished during the PACE Commission's sessions, when the Georgian parliament's spokesperson, Nino Burzhanadze, and Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov clashed over the Pankisi Gorge and Georgia's invitation of American military instructors. Then the representatives of Armenia and Azerbaijan had words over Nagorny Karabakh. Finally, the Chechnya issue brought the debates to boiling point.

Commander of Russia's Combined Group of Forces in Chechnya Lt.Gen. Moltenskoy ordered his soldiers to ease up on the mop-up operations just when the St. Pete forum was in progress. But his order did not deter the European delegates from saying some unpleasant things about Russia.

Thus, the Council of Europe Secretary General Walter Schwimmer expressed hope that Russia would demonstrate that, rather than feeling free to act as it pleased after September 11, it was increasingly determined to behave in accordance with generally accepted standards, pave the way for a political settlement, and start the essential process of healing and reconciliation.

After that pronouncement, it was strange to hear some Russian politicians assert that the West's attitude toward Chechnya had radically changed after the September 11 terrorist attacks in New York.

One got the impression that every orator spoke about his own feelings, paying little heed to what others said. That's probably because different speakers attached different meanings to the word "terrorism," which had not been defined prior to the debates.

In its Final Declaration, the forum merely called on the United Nations to work out and adopt without delay a comprehensive convention that would contain a universally accepted definition of "international terrorism." Incidentally, lack of an agreed definition of the phrase also prevented the special services' heads from doing a better job at the forum. All they did was to agree on the creation of a permanent working group to be headed by Alexei Kuzyura, chief of the international relations department of Russia's Federal Security Service.

Another speaker to complain about the lack of unambiguous definitions of essential terms was Dick Marty, PACE's chief expert on economic affairs. He spoke on a specific subject - how to prevent the funding of organized crime and terrorism. He said that before taking counter measures, everyone present should first agree that illegal mechanisms for funding terrorism do exist; only after that would it be logical to declare the funding of terrorists to be a criminal act.

The same snags also constrained participants in other round tables organized within the forum's framework - Enhancement and Harmonization of Existing Legislation Relevant to the Fight against Terrorism, and Observance of Human Rights, Russia and NATO: Common Interests in Combating Terrorism, to mention but two of the round table topics.

Nor was there consensus on the concept of "double standards," whose impermissibility is emphasized in a separate clause in the forum's Final Declaration.

PACE President Schieder called on Russia to abandon its "double standards." But when, at the final press conference, he was asked why the United States had not included the Chechen terrorist groups in its official list of terrorist organizations, he retorted: "That clause is our amicable and clear answer."

On the morning of the forum's last day, the speaker of Russia's Federation Council Sergei Mironov, who is also head of the Interparliamentary Assembly of the CIS Countries, took the floor out of turn.

He asked the forum's permission to send in its behalf a telegram of condolence to France and Israel, where acts of terrorism had been perpetrated the day before. The forum gave its consent, after which the discussion on the nature and essence of the "plague of the 20th century" resumed its normal course.

The Council of Europe's Secretary General Walter Schwimmer said that convening the forum in Russia was "a timely and encouraging event." No one claimed the forum was anything more than that.

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