UN/COUNTERTERRORISM: 1267, CTC, AND 1540 COMMITTEE

UNCLAS USUN NEW YORK 001137 SIPDIS SIPDIS FOR IO/PSC: BFITZGERALD E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: PREL UNSC ETTC PGOV PTER SUBJECT: UN/COUNTERTERRORISM: 1267, CTC, AND 1540 COMMITTEE CHAIRS BRIEF SECURITY COUNCIL IN PUBLIC SESSION REF: 2006 USUN 375 ¶1. SUMMARY: The Chairs of the UN Security Council's three subsidiary counterterrorism committees (the Counter-Terrorism Committee (CTC),the 1267 or Al-Qaida/ Taliban Sanctions Committee, and the 1540 Committee on nonproliferation) briefed the Council for the fifth time on their committees' accomplishments, challenges, priorities, and future plans on May 30, 2006. Support for enhancing cross-committee cooperation, protecting individuals' "due process" in listing and de-listing and human rights more generally in countering terrorism, alleviating reporting fatigue, and concluding work on a UN counterterrorism strategy were common themes. ¶2. All Council members spoke, after which nine non-Council Member States intervened. Non-Council members' statements were marked by a clash among Israel, Iran, and Syria in which the three states exchanged recriminations. As they have done in previous counterterrorism briefings, Cuba and Venezuela accused the United States of committing acts of state terrorism, including by failing to extradite Luis Posada Carriles. Each Chair's briefing and the individual country statements, as available, have been sent electronically to IO/PSC. END SUMMARY. ¶3. The 1267, Counter-Terrorism, and 1540 Committee Chairs briefed the Security Council in a public meeting on May 30, ¶2006. The 1267 Chair, Argentinean PermRep Cesar Mayoral, highlighted 1267 Committee's achievements by reflecting on the Committee's recent state visits, including the April 28 - May 8 visits to Qatar, Yemen, and Saudi Arabia. Mayoral also said the Committee benefited from efforts of Sweden, Switzerland, and Germany on how to improve targeted sanctions, including the Brown University Watson Institute's study on the legal and political challenges facing persons the Committee designates, and would continue to focus on revising its procedures for adding and removing individuals and entities from its Consolidated List. The Committee also would focus on issues such as further improving the completeness and accuracy of the Consolidated List, completing its review of the Monitoring Team's fourth report and submitting its views on the report to the Council, and reviewing the Monitoring Team's report on the effectiveness of its checklist for assessing states' implementation of the sanctions regime. ¶4. CTC Chair and Danish PermRep Ellen Margrethe Loj said the CTC concentrated recently on revising its reporting regime, enhancing dialogue with Member States needing technical assistance, and deepening its relations with international, regional, and sub-regional organizations. Among other things, Loj highlighted the importance of continued CTC state visits, such as the recent visit to the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. She also emphasized that the Committee has begun strengthening its relationship with several African organizations and CARICOM, and is preparing its fifth Special Meeting with international, regional and sub-regional organizations. ¶5. Slovak PermRep and 1540 Committee Chairman Peter Burian discussed the Council's unanimous adoption of resolution 1673, extending the Committee's mandate, and the Council's April 27 review of the Committee's report to the Council. During its new mandate, Burian said the Committee's top priorities would include facilitating reporting and conducting outreach to promote states' reporting and implementation of resolution 1540. Burian announced that the Committee would help states that had not yet done so to prepare their first reports to the Committee. He also highlighted the Committee's intention to hold regional seminars in the second half of the year in China, Ghana, and Peru. Burian also announced that the Committee published an legislative database on its website to provide information on states' laws, regulations, and other measures relating to the implementation of 1540 implementation. -------------- Cooperation among the Committees -------------- ¶6. All three Chairmen stressed the need for the Committees to continue to work together to maximize synergies and avoiding duplication of efforts. In particular, all three Chairs said they would continue cooperating in to identify ways to facilitate reporting of non- and late-submitting states. ¶7. Many delegations, including China, Japan, the Russian Federation, Congo-Brazzaville, and the United States, as well as non-Council members Austria, speaking on behalf of the European Union, and Ukraine, speaking on behalf of Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Moldova, stressed the need to strengthen cooperation among the three committees. Japan and the EU, like the United States, called for the CTC and 1267 Committee to conduct joint visits. Japan and China also both advocated consolidating the three committees' reporting requests to ease burdens on states and make the committees more efficient. Japan specifically encouraged the three committees' experts to consolidate into a single questionnaire the questions states must answer to provide information to the committees. Finally, the Russian delegation supported the 1540 Committee's efforts to use CTED and the 1267 Monitoring Team's state visits to explain the importance of timely reporting to states. -------------- 1267 Committee - "Due Process" -------------- ¶8. In commenting on the 1267 Committee's work, most delegations focused on the Committee's listing and delisting procedures. CTC Chair Loj took the unusual step of speaking in her national capacity to underscore the importance Denmark placed on the issue of ensuring "due process" guarantees in those procedures. She then reiterated Denmark's call for the Committee to establish an independent review mechanism to which listed individuals and entities would have direct access. Several other countries (Greece, Qatar, France, and Peru, as well as non-Council members Austria, Liechtenstein, and Switzerland) also called for the Committee to revise its procedures to protect individual rights and provide greater transparency. France stressed that "sanctions are an essential instrument" and urged that a focal point be set up within the Secretariat to receive listed individuals' requests for delisting or exemption from the sanctions. That focal point would transmit requests to the Committee and inform individuals of the response to their requests, France said. The UK called on the Committee to "maintain progress" in listing and delisting and said the study prepared by Brown University's Watson Institute for Germany, Switzerland, and Sweden "should inform the Committee's decisions." ¶9. In their interventions, the United States, Russia, and Japan all stressed the need to enhance states' implementation of the sanctions regime. Calling the 1267 Committee "one of the Security Council's most effective bodies," Russia stressed the need to enhance national procedures for placing new names on the Committee's Consolidated List. Improving national processes is "essential to the success of common efforts to counter a true and changing threat," Russia argued. Amb. Sanders announced that the United States had provided a comprehensive package of recommendations concerning listing and delisting, reflecting the U.S. commitment to fairness and transparency in the Committee's work. -------------- Counter-Terrorism Committee -------------- ¶10. Many Council members welcomed the CTC's work to facilitate the delivery of technical assistance to states that need it. The UK said the CTC has an "essential role" in promoting bilateral and multilateral assistance that ultimately will steer all states to full implementation of resolution 1373. Japan announced that it has established a new funding facility to provide approximately $70 million in assistance for counterterrorism and security. As it does frequently in the CTC and elsewhere, Japan said it expects closer cooperation between the Counter-Terrorism Committee's Executive Directorate (CTED) and the G8's Counter-Terrorism Action Group. ¶11. The U.S. and France both stressed the need for states to comply with their obligations under resolution 1373. If states have received technical assistance but still have not met their obligations, Ambassador Sanders said, the CTC must take action to ensure that they do so. French PermRep de La Sabliere said the CTC must consider new ways of responding to states that do not implement resolution 1373, echoing the Secretary-General's recommendation that the Council must SIPDIS define parameters for distinguishing between states that lack capacity and states that have the means but lack the will. The Council must be firm with the latter, he said. ¶12. Congo-Brazzaville, the United States, and China also referred to the CTC's work relating to best practices. Notably, China said the CTC should disseminate the "relevant" Financial Action Task Force (FATF) standards and called for increasing developing countries' representation in FATF to enable those countries to play a greater counterterrorism role. (Comment: China's comments might not represent a policy shift; it has always supported the CTC's adoption of the FATF's nine special recommendations on terrorism but not the FATF's 40 recommendations on anti-money laundering. End comment.) ¶13. The UK, Qatar, and China also urged the CTC to focus on states' implementation of resolution 1624 (2005). The UK announced it had recently submitted its 1624 report to the CTC and called upon other states to do so soon. China pointed to the CTC's September 2006 deadline for reporting to the Council on states' implementation of resolution 1624 and said the CTC should "speed up" its work relating to resolution 1624. Arguing that "radicalism must be combated by creating societies free from hatred and extremism," Qatar called upon the CTC to focus on the continuing need for international dialogue and cooperation, as resolution 1624 stresses. ¶14. Moving beyond the discussion of "due process" in connection with the 1267 sanctions regime, Peru, Greece, Austria, and Qatar all stressed the need for respecting human rights in fighting terrorism. As it did at the Council's previous public briefing on counterterrorism, Austria again called for the CTC to intensify its efforts to mainstream human rights throughout all of its work. Qatar called safeguarding human rights "the most important aspect of combating terrorism," and Greece welcomed the CTC's adoption of a policy on human rights. -------------- 1540 Committee -------------- ¶15. Many members expressed support for the recent adoption of resolution 1673 (2006),extending the 1540 Committee's mandate for two years. France called resolution 1540 (2004) "the only multilateral tool for comprehensively dealing with the triple threat of the proliferation of WMD, their means of delivery, and related materials." Most members called for the Committee to enhance states' implementation of resolution 1540 through multiple means, including facilitation of technical assistance and outreach activities. Greece expressed hope that the upcoming SIPRI donors' conference in Geneva would achieve results, and Austria announced that the EU would support the China, Ghana, and Peru seminars. -------------- -------------- UN Counter-Terrorism Strategy and Terrorism Generally -------------- -------------- ¶16. The UK, Austria, Qatar, Israel, and Greece also urged the United Nations to adopt a counterterrorism strategy, and various delegations made general comments on terrorism. The UK supported the operational focus of the Secretary-General's recommendations on a counterterrorism strategy and hoped all UN members could agree upon a strategy. Qatar also said the UN should have a comprehensive strategy for combating terrorism. Austria said the UN's counterterrorism strategy should be operational and action-oriented and involve states, civil society, and all other relevant actors. China cautioned that the UN and states should avoid "double standards" in fighting terrorism and argued that states must not respond only to terrorist acts that threaten themselves. China also announced it had ratified the International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism (1999). -------------- Israel, Iran, and Syria Trade Accusations -------------- ¶17. At the end of the session, Israel sparred with Iran and Syria, with the three states trading recriminations. Israel called terrorism "the Third World War" and said the world is divided between those who join the fight against terror and those who do not, including some members of the Council who E do not condemn terrorism unequivocally. It also described the "dark cloud hanging over the Middle East and the world," calling Iran "the largest threat to international security" and accusing Syria of hosting terrorist organizations. Syria and Iran both defended their efforts to counter terrorism, with Syria citing FATF's satisfaction with Syria's work to implement the FATF guidelines. Iran pointed to the terrorist attacks it has suffered and accused the allied forces in Iraq of harboring Mujahideen-e-Khalq. Iran also called on the international community to pay closer attention to the nexus between drug trafficking and terrorism. BOLTON