U.S. Campaign Against Terrorism Begins to Show Results : Crime: Anti-American attacks have dramatically decreased since 1992. Global cooperation, geopolitical shifts have helped, experts say.

After a long series of failures in arresting terrorist suspects abroad, the United States finally has begun to see the results of a counterterrorism campaign launched more than a decade ago, most visibly with the capture this week of Ramzi Ahmed Yousef in Pakistan, according to U.S. counterterrorism officials.

The tide has begun to turn against foreign terrorists because of legislation adopted in the mid-1980s and an unprecedented level of international cooperation built up during the 1990-91 Persian Gulf crisis to thwart an Iraqi terrorist campaign.

“The good news is that acts of international terrorism in 1994 were at their lowest point in 23 years,’ said Philip V. Wilcox Jr., the State Department’s coordinator for counterterrorism.

The majority of suspects still get away, evident in the long FBI list of alleged terrorists, particularly those sought in the Middle East, dating back to the early 1980s. International terrorism hit American shores for the first time in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. But the targeting of Americans and American installations is now being contained, U.S. officials said.

In its annual terrorism review to be released this spring, the State Department will report that anti-American attacks have been more than halved over the last two years, down to 66 incidents in 1994 from 142 in 1992.

Over the last year, the number of international terrorist acts has dropped from 427 to 321. The high point was 665 incidents in 1987. Of the 314 deaths worldwide in 1994 attributable to terrorism, only four were Americans. Five other Americans were injured.

In a move designed to increase U.S. power in fighting terrorism, President Clinton on Friday called on Congress to enact a new law to close the “deficiencies and gaps” in current legislation.

The Omnibus Counter-Terrorism Act of 1995 would make acts of international terrorism--including murder, kidnaping, maiming, assault or destruction of property--committed anywhere in the United States a federal offense.

If passed, as anticipated, the bill would aid prosecution of terrorist offenses by establishing a special new court to deal with deportations stemming from terrorist activities. It calls for an international treaty requiring manufacturers to add chemicals to make plastic explosives detectable and new prohibitions on selling materials that could be used to make nuclear weapons. It would empower the President to ban fund raising in the United States by suspected terrorist organizations.

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In a message to Congress, the President called the bill “an effort to strengthen the ability of the United States to deter terrorist acts and punish those who aid and abet any international terrorist activity in the United States.”

The bill already is getting bipartisan support. It was introduced in the Senate on Friday by Sens. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) and Herbert Kohl (D-Wis.).

Recent successes are attributable to a variety of factors, according to Wilcox. High on the list is the U.S.-led effort to identify state sponsors of terrorism and isolate them through sanctions. Libya is now under the stiffest sanctions for its alleged role in the 1988 bombing of Pan American Airlines Flight 103, in which 270 people died.

Congress also passed two landmark anti-terrorism laws in the mid-1980s after a wave of hijackings, hostage abductions and suicide bombings of U.S. diplomatic and military installations in the Middle East. Those laws empower the United States to claim extraterritorial rights to prosecute extremists responsible for acts in which Americans are the victims, even if coincidentally.

The critical component of international cooperation, which was evident in Yousef’s arrest, emerged from the Persian Gulf War. As part of the U.S.-led coalition’s campaign to contain Iraq, a network of cooperation among the allies was extended to a host of countries not participating militarily in Operation Desert Storm.

Four years after the war’s end, that cooperation and the intelligence machinery it established is still largely intact. Most countries still have at least periodic consultations with the United States.

The dramatic geopolitical shifts over the last six years also have contributed. The demise of communism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe eliminated important sources of financial and logistics aid, training and political support, as well as the means of travel for terrorists.

Several security services in former East Bloc countries now cooperate closely with the United States on terrorism issues.

The breakthrough in peace efforts between Israel and the Arab world also has curtailed some of the traditional sources of violence, while promoting a climate of reconciliation.

“The overall impact has been to raise the price of engaging in terrorism both for states and for individuals. The incentive to try has to be pretty high to be willing to endure the growing risks of getting caught and being punished,” said a U.S. counterterrorism official.

The number of terrorists caught and prosecuted in the United States can still be counted on one hand. But before the Yousef case, they had been small potatoes.

The first extremist nabbed abroad by U.S. officials under provisions of 1980s anti-terrorism legislation was Fawaz Younis, a Lebanese who was convicted in 1989 of the 1985 hijacking of a Royal Jordanian passenger plane in Beirut. The United States claimed jurisdiction over the case because two Americans had been on board.

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Yu Kikumura, a Japanese Red Army member, was convicted in 1989 of planning to kill and injure scores of people in New York City. But the plot was uncovered accidentally when Kikumura was arrested for a traffic offense on a New Jersey turnpike and bombs were discovered in his car.

But the United States still has a long way to go to catch up with other terrorists tied to acts against American interests. In sharp contrast to the success with Yousef, Washington has made no major progress in tracking down Mir Aimal Kansi, who is being sought in a 1993 shooting outside CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., that killed two CIA employees and wounded three others.

In a familiar pattern, Kansi, like Yousef, managed to flee the United States, also reportedly to Pakistan, where he disappeared.

Yousef was captured Tuesday by Pakistani agents at Islamabad’s Su-Casa guest house and turned over to American authorities. He is now in custody in New York awaiting trial. The Times had been told Thursday that he was captured at Islamabad’s Holiday Inn.