Tuesday, May 21, 2002
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The Singaporean Home Affairs Minister, Wong Kan Seng, said such a definition should be left to the United Nations, rather than Ministers of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations who were meeting in Kuala Lumpur to discuss regional counter-terrorism measures. Malaysia, a predominantly Muslim country, has been pushing for delegates at international meetings to officially define terrorism. ``I think the job of doing this should be left to esteemed organisations such as the United Nations, or we can leave it to the linguists or the lexicon,'' Mr. Wong said at a news conference. ``Even without a definition, I think we all know who are the ones who commit terrorist acts,'' he said. Mr. Wong said no definition was needed when Singapore recently passed on information to Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines that led to the arrest of suspected members of Jemaah Islamiya, an Al Qaeda-linked terrorist network. The Malaysian Deputy Prime Minister, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, had opened the two-day meeting on counter-terrorism earlier in the day, by telling the Ministers it was a ``great irony'' that the world cannot define terrorism. ``We all know it exists and we are all engaged in a fight against it,'' Mr. Abdullah said. ``But we will not commit to a definition of what it is.'' The Malaysian Prime Minister, Mahathir Mohamad, first offered his definition of terrorism — any attack on civilians — earlier this year at a meeting of the 57-member Organisation of the Islamic Conference. It was rejected because Arab countries resisted condemning Palestinian suicide bombers. Malaysian media has said that the United States or its allies would block any proposal that could brand Israel a terrorist state. Jose D. Lena, the Philippines' Secretary for Interior Government, noted that even the United Nations had not defined terrorism, although his Government supported Mr. Mahathir's definition ``in principle.'' He said ``grey areas'' of the definition need to be discussed. — AP
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