Introduction
Page 2
United States government
Page 4
European Union
Page 5
Islamic states
Page 6
Terrorist statements
Page 7
State terrorism
Page 8
Aerial bombardment
Page 9
Commercial mass media
Page 10
The contradictions
Page 11
Culture of war
Page 12
Following the bombing of the World Trade Center the European Commission adopted a Framework on Combating Terrorism with the following definition of terrorism: violent acts (listed individually) intentionally committed by an individual or a group against one or more countries, their institutions or people with the aim of intimidating them and seriously altering or destroying the political, economic or social structures of those countries. Here, once again, the definition excludes state terrorism.
At the recent Euro-Med summit in Barcelona in November 2005, terrorism was the main topic. According to the official Euro-Med Report, "The Euro-Mediterranean Summit to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Barcelona Process reached agreement on a Five-Year Work Programme for the further development of the partnership as well as on a Code of Conduct on Countering Terrorism." The Code of Conduct lists 21 specific actions that participating States are expected to take in order to protect against terrorist attacks. Although the code of conduct does not mention culture of peace, it does at one point refer to the United Nations new project of Alliance of Civilizations in the context of intercultural dialogue to promote understanding. And the term "dialogue" is used more than a dozen times.
What is not clear from this summary of the summit is whether this emphasis on countering terrorism was shared by the Arab States who are parties to the Barcelona Process. According to the Reuters account of the recent meeting, "A mass stay-away by Arab leaders from the first Euro-Mediterranean summit on Sunday highlighted the difficulties of strengthening the European Union's decade-old partnership with its southern neighbours." According to this account, there was disagreement around the issue of terrorism: "Syria and other Arab partners want the EU to distinguish between terrorism and the right to resist occupation, while the Europeans and Israel opposed any qualification of terrorism.
 |
 |
 |