Giuliani Urges U.N. to Act

The General Assembly kicked off a weeklong discussion of counter-terrorism Monday with a finger-wagging speech by New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani.

Stepping onto the stage of the world body, which his city hosts, Giuliani stressed that the recent attacks against the U.S. violated the United Nations’ founding principals of protecting world peace and that the member states have a moral obligation to act.

“You’re either with civilization or with terrorists,” he said.

Although his remarks echoed many ambassadors’ statements of support for combating international terrorism, the feisty mayor’s words at times lacked their diplomatic finesse.

“This is not a time for further study or vague directives,” he scolded diplomats from more than 150 nations. All the evidence they needed of the terrorists’ brutality and inhumanity, Giuliani said, is lying beneath the rubble of the World Trade Center, less than two miles from the U.N. complex. “We’re right and they’re wrong.”

Giuliani also offered his condolences to the approximately 80 countries that lost citizens in the collapse of the World Trade Center towers, saying that the world, despite its differences, is united in grief.

Secretary-General Kofi Annan joked to Giuliani that he is not the first mayor to have been frustrated by the United Nations, “but shared adversity has brought New York City and the United Nations closer together than ever before.”

Annan reminded the mayor that the body quickly condemned the attacks and that the Security Council on Friday passed a resolution requiring all member nations to crack down on terrorism. That swift and sweeping action, he said, showed the United Nations’ strong support for the U.S. and the world body’s unique role in building an international coalition to combat terrorists.

Monday’s assembly is the first global forum on terrorism since the Sept. 11 attacks, and 150 ambassadors are scheduled to speak during the week. Annan, like Giuliani, urged the diplomats to make action, not words, their focus. He urged them to sign and work to ratify 12 existing U.N. treaties and protocols on international terrorism; only five have been ratified by more than 100 countries. He also asked them to strengthen measures against the spread of nuclear and biological weapons to prevent future tragedies.

Annan also pushed for adoption of a comprehensive convention on international terrorism that has been delayed by disagreements over a crucial definition: One country’s terrorists, some diplomats have said, are another country’s freedom fighters, and the U.N. may not be able to objectively draw the line.

“I understand and accept the need for legal precision,” the secretary-general said. “But let me say frankly that there is also a need for moral clarity.”

Annan pointed out that, as the world was reminded last month, civilians are no longer exempt from war--and in fact are often deliberately targeted. An estimated 75% of war’s casualties today are noncombatants, he said.

At the same time, Annan said, the world must not forget about the people of Afghanistan, who faced starvation and crisis even before the Sept. 11 attacks and now fear U.S. retaliation and the possible breakdown of their government.

Most foreign aid workers have left Afghanistan since Sept. 11, and the Taliban regime has seized their offices and communications equipment, leaving the local staff hard-pressed to distribute food and other aid to the estimated 6 million people in dire need.

“Out of evil can come good,” Annan said. “The task now is to build on that wave of human solidarity, to ensure that the momentum is not lost, to develop a broad, comprehensive and, above all, sustaining strategy to combat terrorism and eradicate it from our world.”