Panel Urges Tough Stance on Terrorism

Political threats from the barrel of a gun should be met by punishing governments that help terrorists, a panel on how democracies should deal with terrorism was told Thursday.

The advice came from former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and David Trimble, Protestant first minister of Northern Ireland’s new power-sharing government, members of a panel on Capitol Hill sponsored by a conservative think tank and Sen. Fred Thompson (R-Tenn). Panel members discussed challenges facing the Bush administration and the United States.

Netanyahu said the principal requirement for dealing with terrorism is punishment of nations involved. He mentioned Russia and China as examples of countries that provide weapons to terrorists and terrorist states and said other countries that provide terrorist havens are equally guilty.

Iran and Iraq “will soon have” nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, which will make “what we’ve experienced for the last few decades child’s play,” Netanyahu said.

Describing Russia as one of the world’s worst sellers of weapons through technology, advisors and materials, Netanyahu said: “The most important thing the United States can do is . . . try to stop this flow of the technology of death,” principally by exerting economic and political pressure.

The same goes for China, Thompson said.

“I don’t think we can continue to reach out a hand of friendship, reach out with trade, while ignoring the thing that really poses a direct threat to our country, and that is their massive proliferation of weapons of mass destruction,” Thompson said.

The panel noted others who abet terrorists by harboring them or providing false identity documents.

“It’s been a long time since we punished terrorists, and an even longer time since we punished the territories from which they operate,” said Richard Perle, assistant secretary of Defense in the Reagan administration and a fellow of the Washington-based American Enterprise Institute, the forum’s sponsor.

“I would rather see us devote less attention to tracking down terrorists and bringing them to justice and more attention to clobbering the territory from which they operate,” Perle said.

“In fighting terrorism, it is important to hit not only the terrorists themselves but also those who give them the wherewithal to operate,” Netanyahu agreed.

Asked how one deals with a terrorist, Netanyahu said he took a hard line with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat when he was prime minister, insisting that Arafat’s Palestinian Authority jail terrorists and collect weapons in occupied areas.

“I insisted that Arafat take action to curb violence. You simply do not accept it,” he said.

Trimble said people must be prepared for a long process of reconciliation, such as his current extended effort to pressure the Irish Republican Army into negotiations to give up its stockpile of arms.

The transition period from violence to peace, he said, “may be a long time.”