Terrorism is Terrorism, UN Reform Panel Says

Hamas actually loses one at the UN. From CNSNews.com, with thanks to Nicolei:

(CNSNews.com) - An international panel of experts studying ways to reform the United Nations apparently has taken a stance on terrorism that has long been resisted by the Arab-Muslim world.

A report written by the panel reportedly states that terrorism against civilians "is never an acceptable tactic, even for the most defensible of causes."

The 60-page document was drawn up by the 16-member High-Level Panel for Threats, Challenges and Change -- a panel appointed by U.N. secretary-general Kofi Annan. The report is due for release on Thursday, but leaks have started to appear in some Western media....

Attempts over many years to define terrorism have been elusive -- stymied by the Arab-Muslim bloc and non-aligned governments, which say that exceptions should be made in the case of those who are fighting "occupation," usually a reference to the Palestinians.

According to published reports, the U.N. panel's report tackles that argument head-on, saying "there is nothing in the fact of occupation that justifies the targeting and killing of civilians."

It reportedly proposes a definition of terrorism as "any action that is intended to cause death or serious bodily harm to civilians or non-combatants, when the purpose of such act, by its nature or context, is to intimidate a population, or compel a government or an international organization to do or to abstain from doing any act."

One of the panel's members is Amr Moussa, the Egyptian chairman of the Arab League.

In 2002, Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) foreign ministers met in Malaysia for the stated purpose of defining terrorism and dissociating it from Islam in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks seven months earlier.

But despite a call from the chair in an opening speech for the meeting to include Palestinian suicide bombings in its definition of terrorism, the representatives of the world's Islamic states disagreed.

Iranian foreign minister Kamal Kharrazi declared that "fighting foreign occupation should not be condemned as terrorism," while OIC's secretary-general Abdelouahed Belkeziz in his address decried "disturbing statements portraying the liberation struggle in Palestine as terrorist action."

"We must take extreme caution in international forums to ward off this threat to our brotherly Muslim fighters who are giving the most magnificent example of altruism and self-sacrifice," Belkeziz added.

In the end, the meeting ended with a statement that said, in part: "We reject any attempt to link terrorism to the struggle of the Palestinian people in the exercise of their inalienable right to establish their independent state with Al-Quds Al-Sharif [Jerusalem] as its capital."

There has been similar equivocation from some governments with regard to campaigns by other violent groups, for example the Islamic extremists fighting to end Indian rule over part of disputed Kashmir.

Some media organizations, notably the Reuters wire agency, avoid using the term "terrorism" outside of quotation marks.

Some UK media are prepared to use the word with reference to bombings by Irish extremists fighting British rule in Northern Ireland, but not in the context of Palestinian suicide bombings in Israeli cities.