Moscow View: Unilateral Use of Force Without UN Sanctions May Add to Terrorist Threat

Unilateral actions involving the use of force, taken outside the framework of international law, that is, without UN Security Council sanctions, may lead only to instability on the regional, or even on a global, level and increase still more the terrorist threat, Alexander Yakovenko, official spokesman of Russia's Foreign Ministry, said in an interview with RIA Novosti.

Even a militarily superstrong power, he said, cannot get better of "Terrorist International" single-handed. That such an International exists is evident, in the opinion of Moscow, from a series of terrorist acts that rolled across various regions in the world last year.

Those terrorist acts, Yakovenko said, "have clearly confirmed that the terrorist threat is of a truly global character and has no geographic frontiers." Precisely the urgency of the terrorism issue in international relations today, according to the Foreign Ministry spokesman, explains why an official UN Security Council meeting on antiterrorism on the level of foreign ministers is to be on November 20 in New York. Russia's Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov will also take part in the meeting.

"There is an obvious spread of methods used in committing terrorist acts with a large number of victims, in training of suicide terrorists, in development of new technologies of taking people hostage for political blackmail purposes, and in creating of an atmosphere of fear and social disorganization," Yakovenko pointed out.

"The explosions at the government buildings of the Chechen capital, Grozny, on December 27, 2002, and abortive terrorist acts in France before that, which had been prepared by Islamists with Chechen experience, as it is believed in Moscow, should dispel the remaining doubts that Chechen extremists are active members of the international terrorist camp." "The world community has been given one more powerful signal pointing to the need for a strong consolidation of efforts in combating terrorism," the Foreign Ministry spokesman stressed.