Brev fra Nikolay Kovalev til OSCE PA vedr. Anti-Terrorism

Courtesy translation from Russian
H.E. Mr. Ilkka KANERVA,
President of the OSCE
Parliamentary Assembly
Mr. Roberto MONTELLA
Secretary General of the OSCE PA
Heads of national delegations
to the OSCE PA
Moscow, 4 February, 2016
Dear Mr. President,
Dear Mr. Secretary General,
Dear Heads of Delegations,
We are counting down the days until beginning of the Winter Meeting of the
OSCE Parliamentary Assembly. Before this important event, as a Special
Representative on Anti-Terrorism, I feel obliged to share with you some of my
considerations regarding the steps we can jointly take to counter the threat of
international terrorism.
First of all, on the threshold of our event I would like to urge my colleagues once
again to collectively conduct a serious and objective analysis of key factors shaping the
current political situation that creates a fertile soil for escalation of the terrorist threat.
On my part, I suggest looking into such major factors as:
- the OSCE participating states ignoring legitimate geopolitical and economic
interests of each other;
- violent upheavals resulting in toppling the legitimately elected authorities in the
different parts of the world;
- combat with international terrorism being used as a pretext for achieving short-
term internal and external political objectives;
- applying the so-called "double standards" in combat with international terrorism
(dividing terrorists into "bad" and "good" ones, "us" and "them");
- absence of the common internationally acknowledged definition of terrorism;
- lack of political will when it comes to overcoming current disagreements and
contradictions between the OSCE states in the face of the common enemy, which is
international terrorism;
- insufficient time paid to discussing anti-terror measures in the inter-confession
dialog in the OSCE area of responsibility.
As a person whom you have invested with special authorities not only to
coordinate efforts of OSCE PA members to fight against international terrorism, but
also to prepare specific proposals aimed at countering terrorist threats, I suggest
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initiating an extensive discussion on the following topics (some of them have already
been preliminarily addressed, while some of them are formulated for the first time).
Taking into account an obvious fact that international terrorist structures
successfully “piggy-back” on contradictions and segregation of the OSCE participating
states, including their representatives in the Parliamentary Assembly, in my opinion, it
is the right time for us to make a joint appeal to the parliaments of the participating
states. We can explicitly state our urge, under the circumstances of extreme urgency,
viz. the human civilization facing a new threat, to set aside current disagreements,
temporarily at least, and to immediately start forming a maximally wide anti-terror
coalition.
One of the forms of consolidating our anti-terror efforts would be to preliminarily
look into the issue of setting up an international specialized organization for countering
terrorism authorized to search for terrorists and their accomplices, to accumulate and
exchange information, to assist the initiating country in detecting the suspect or the
established criminal. Successfully functioning analogues are Interpol and the
Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. In connection with this issue it
would be reasonable to come back to the subject of the "uniform international warrant"
for detention and arrest of terrorists like "EUROPEAN ARREST WARRANT."
Additionally, it appears that the situation prompts us to urgently address such
pressing issues as unification of anti-terror legislations and developing the measures
aimed at blocking funding of terrorist organizations.
I am also convinced that intelligence services of our countries, first of all, their
anti-terrorist subdivisions, should interact more closely. This problem becomes
especially acute as refugees flood from the countries of Middle East, Central Asia and
North Africa and terrorist groups take advantage of the situation introducing their
members into growing flows of refugees.
I hope that these suggestions, motivated by sincere desire to facilitate
consolidation of our efforts aimed at countering international terrorism, will resonate
with OSCE PA members, will be given serious thought and will contribute to deeper
mutual understanding between the OSCE states.
Nikolay Kovalev
Special Representative
of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly
on Anti-Terrorism