OSCE, Alm.del - 2015-16 - Bilag 16: Brev fra Nikolay Kovalev til OSCE PA vedr. Anti-Terrorism

OSCEs Parlamentariske Forsamling 2015-16
OSCE Alm.del Bilag 16
Offentligt

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

OSCE, Alm.del - 2015-16 - Bilag 16: Brev fra Nikolay Kovalev til OSCE PA vedr. Anti-Terrorism

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