Arab Ministers OK Greater Anti-Terrorism Cooperation

Interior ministers from 20 Arab countries agreed Monday 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 Nayif ibn Abdulaziz, chairman of the Arab Interior Ministers Council, said at the closing session.

The council’s approval of a draft accord concludes a process that started in 1992, when Arab states, alarmed by the rise of Muslim fundamentalist violence, started discussing closer cooperation.

The text of the draft agreement was not released.

Arab interior and justice ministers will sign the agreement in Cairo in April, the statement said.

Meanwhile, 35 civilians were slain in weekend attacks in Algeria, where government troops were hunting the killers of more than 400 villagers that Algerian media said were killed last week in the Relizane region in the west.

In a policy reversal, former colonial power France on Monday criticized the Algiers government, urging it to do more to prevent the massacres, and supported a German proposal that the European Union try to end the killings.

But at the Tunis meeting, Algerian Interior Minister Mustafa Benmansour pointedly asked for cooperation only from the Arab world in tackling the violence.