NATO Parlamenter Asamblesi

Akdeniz Özel Komitesi Başkanı ve

NATO Parlamenter Asamblesi Türk Grubu Başkanı

DSP İstanbul Milletvekili

Tahir KÖSE ‘nin Ottawa Genel Kurulu

Savunma Komitesi’nde yaptığı konuşma

At the out set I should like to express my deep sorrow for the loss of enormous number of innocent civilians as a result of the heinous terrorist attacks committed on 11 September in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.

As a member of parliament from a NATO Allied country which have lost some 40 thousands of its people as a result of this scourge. I totally understand the feelings of our American friends.

These terrorist attacks have not only demonstrated the fact that terrorism threatens the territorial integrity and security of states and destabilizes legitimately constituted governments but also undermines basic rights and freedoms in particular right to life.

The scale of the attacks perpetrated against the United States also showed us the dimension international terrorism have reached and thus have constituted a warning to all allied countries on the requirement for collective and decisive fight against it.

In this context, we should both in NATO and in the United Nations spare all efforts to combat this menace. We welcome the 12 September decision of NATO in this regard and consider it as the first step of our future collaborative efforts and fully support the implementation of its provisions.

We also welcome the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1373 on terrorism.

Taking decisions as I have stated earlier constitutes the firs step. These decisions should be backed with concrete action should we really want to succeed in our fight to prevent the occurrence of similar attacks to those of the 11 September in the future.

You will recall that we have been among the few countries which requested the fight against terrorism be included in the priorities of NATO. It has been due to our decisive efforts that terrorism could be included in the strategic concept of the Alliance as a threat against NATO.

We should avoid bringing artificial distinctions among terrorist organizations. We should fight with the same level of determination with all terrorist organizations regardless of their motivations, aims and targets.

We should not shy away from defining a terrorist as a terrorist and a terrorist organization as a terrorist organization and fighting decisively against them.