THE MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS
OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION
official site

Unfortunately for the international community, 2008 did not become a “breakthrough” year in the sense of overcoming the global terrorist threat common to all nations in an effective and collective manner. The latest and tragic evidence of this: the brazen and cruel terrorist acts in India.

Efforts by states, UN-led competent international organizations and, to an ever greater extent, a responsible civil society and the private sector continued on this front in the waning year – moreover, in a whole array of key aspects of anti-terror what has been achieved through these efforts can indeed be given the highest marks. And it is particularly important in this regard that the Russian Federation continued to play the most active and initiative roles in this intensive and comprehensive work.

But this in no way abrogates my initial and very distressing statement: to speak of any tangible reduction in the universal, many-sided, “network,” as is now customary to assert, danger of terrorism – which ought to be the generally sought-after result of national and international efforts – is impossible so far.

There are both objective explanations for this – our world, in many respects, remains imperfect – and the entirely subjective reasons, depending on the will of concrete people.

The objective problems, “jams” on the road of optimal and more effective international counterterrorism cooperation are well known. Thus, whatever the real political will of nations to fight terrorism “resolutely to the end,” the accomplishment of this task on the practical plane is still being seriously hindered by, for example, the historically established and objectively existing distinctions in national legal systems.

Universal participation by states in the major existing international treaties, concluded under the aegis of the UN and relating to counterterrorism (now totaling 13), could help our cause substantially, and the process of accession to these authoritative legal instruments keeps advancing. I would like to especially underline the fact that Russia since last year ranks among the absolute leaders internationally in this regard – we participate in all global antiterrorist conventions and protocols. However, by and large, the international community on this front, too, has still not being doing enough – the pace of accession by states to the UN antiterrorist treaties is too slow and, anyway, does not meet the vital need for an urgent and effective uniting of efforts by all states in the suppression of terrorism on a firm and agreed international legal basis.

Yet accession to the treaties as such is often merely the start of a journey, to be followed by a respective thorough modification of national legislations, and perhaps most important, an effective pursuit of the norms and procedures therein prescribed in the national practice of each state, including its cooperation with foreign partners, for example, for the arrest on its territory, and extradition to foreign partners, of terrorists and persons justifiably suspected of terrorist activities.

The extradition of terrorists, undoubtedly, remains at this point the most obvious sphere of most frequent and open demonstration by states of the subjective limitedness of their capabilities in terms of a joint fight against terrorism, or, more precisely, of their preparedness to be utterly consistent and honest in this matter. Plainly speaking, the non-extradition of terrorist criminals by states, whatever the pretext, is still the principal territory of notorious “double standards.” And, regrettably, the practice of double standards in the activity of a whole array of our foreign partners is still to a significant extent directed precisely against Russia and its interests. 2008 has not become an exception: terrorist Akhmed Zakayev continues to travel around Europe, as do the less notorious practitioners and propagandists of terrorism, enjoying the impermissible, short-sighted leniency of the authorities in a number of European states. Extremist Kavkaz Center-type internet sites based abroad are practically freely calling for a terrorist war against Russia.

It is another matter that owing to certain circumstances and, most important, due to the now irreversible success of the well-thought-out and systemic antiterrorist work on Russian soil proper, the capabilities of these criminal figures and structures to harm us, Russia and Russians, are now substantially limited if not insignificant. But you will agree the point is also one of principle: it is beyond question that if some states never cease being hostages to double standards in the anti-terror field and continue to engage in politicking detrimental to some one or other of their foreign partners, then in the joint struggle against terrorism we will not get far even if we do manage to overcome the objective problems on this road somehow.

One should also assign the policy of states which, notwithstanding the obvious multipolar trend in contemporary international relations, still bet on unilateral use of force, in circumvention of international law and the UN Charter, to the subjective factors most radically undermining international antiterrorist efforts, particularly in the waning year. Apart from many other extremely negative consequences of such incorrect and irresponsible behavior to say the least, in specific situations, this risks leading to the creation of dangerous new hotbeds of terrorist activity.

The most vivid example of this is the invasion of Iraq by the United States and its allies. Without going into political and other aspects of history and the present situation in Iraq, I shall emphasize what is today obvious to all: what is happening in that country is actively and efficiently used by leading international terrorist groups to recruit and train in battle an enormous number of new supporters enrolled for the “Iraq front of the jihad” all over the world. Among other things, no matter what now happens in Iraq and when or how the situation is resolved there, these militants will then move on to other flashpoints or return to their countries, spreading a hugely dangerous potential of violence and grave crimes.

The Iraq adventure, undoubtedly, has become to the ideologists of contemporary terrorism – and the most effective among them are known to be those using the distorted slogans of radical Islam in their recruitment and propagandist work – an opportune, optimal and very convincing example of an alleged systemic “aggression of the West against the Islamic world.” It has turned out that in the contemporary and, I repeat, very imperfect world – a world of a widening rift between rich and poor and between North and South – very many are ready to stand under that flag, particularly among the youth, who have always been susceptible to the “magic” of simplified political and ideological recipes, to the “romance” of revolutionary change and violent behavior models.

Moreover, as apparently most strikingly demonstrated by 2008, the Iraq crisis has also undermined a lot in terms of international antiterrorist efforts in another key point of conflict in the contemporary world, in Afghanistan. The impact of the Iraq events – post factum, so to speak – calls into question, and then also destroys what at the initial period of the international antiterrorist operation in Afghanistan was achieved by truly united efforts of the international community at large, by the then existing “world antiterrorist coalition” on an impeccable legal and political basis of UN resolutions and UN Security Council resolutions.

The situation in Afghanistan, judged by terrorist activity alone, is fast becoming degraded. Moreover, experts point out that the present-day Afghan militant/terrorists even borrow methods their “colleagues” use on the Iraq terrorist front. Take the practice of suicide bomber terrorist attacks, previously unknown in Afghanistan and now evidenced there in a frighteningly regular mode. Nor are international efforts to rectify this situation helped by the new blunders of our western partners – notwithstanding the obvious lessons of history and political common sense, notwithstanding our persistent and seemingly convincing arguments, flirting continues with the Taliban, for example, with a number of their supposedly “repentant” and “reformed” leaders. This is done in the name of what are for the most part illusory, momentary benefits, whereas the consequences may be very sad for stability and (including antiterrorist) security in Afghanistan.

And yet, despite all these difficulties – objective and subjective – of present-day international antiterrorist work, we do not despair utterly: Russia internationally continues its consistent, leadership activity for the sake of bolstering and developing antiterrorist interaction in top priority sectors and with clear objectives, necessary to all states, without double standards and, I would like to note, without excessive national egoism.

Our first consideration, of course, as with everyone else, was and remains to repulse direct or oblique terrorist threats to Russia, but we do understand that, given the global nature of terrorism, this is virtually impossible without combining our capabilities with foreign states and the international community at large.

I shall emphasize the following point: an ever more important and a still sufficiently new element of Russian participation in international antiterrorist cooperation is our duly open action readiness to share our own anti-terror experience. Especially as this experience, undoubtedly, is considerable and unique, largely difficult, but eventually – visibly successful. And interest in our experience is currently really great among foreign partners and in international organizations; they are waiting for information, analytical layouts, cooperation offers and at times just concrete promptings as to possible specific task solutions from us. Our response to such interest is always most constructive and substantive, particularly since in recent years an effective organizational framework has been built up for such information exchanges and other interaction.

In this regard, the mechanisms for bilateral anti-terror cooperation with foreign states that have been established and are being promoted under Russian Foreign Ministry auspices have acquitted themselves well in the elapsed year. We already have about thirty of such mechanisms; a part is given shape by agreements, including written accords, for the creation of bilateral antiterrorist working groups; a part bears an interagency character and also covers interaction in anti-terror-related areas of international anti-crime cooperation; and a part remains in the traditional format of inter-MFA consultations. Thus, in essence, we effectively adapt these mechanisms to specific requirements of bilateral antiterrorist cooperation with each of the state partners. Meetings within the framework of the mechanisms are most often held twice a year – in the elapsed year, for example, such meetings were held with our partners from France, Germany, the United States, Spain, India, Portugal, Sweden, Norway, Australia, Turkey, Egypt, Tunisia and Algeria.

The strongest and most developed such mechanisms – for example, with the United States, France, Algeria, Germany, Spain – have their own longstanding history and essentially serve as models for our antiterrorist cooperation with new partners in the case of their interest in this. Moreover, it is noteworthy that despite all the twists and turns of the recent period in Russian-US relations, the bilateral anti-terror mechanism – the Russia-US working group – has been working during this period almost without interruptions (with allowance for the August “freezes”), performing as well as previously in terms of the exchange of information, analytical layouts, and the national experience in improving anti-terror, fulfilling the appropriate interagency coordination and so on. That is, it turns out that in contemporary conditions antiterrorist cooperation can and does act as a kind of “safety net” and as an untouchable “territory of mutual understanding and trust,” which can well assist the restoration of mutual understanding and trust in other fields as needed. Further, by the way, the “salutary” function of joint anti-terror will additionally be dealt with in the context of the OSCE and Russia-NATO relations.

Against this background, perhaps the British alone still remain an unpleasant exception, as they continue unjustifiably, I would say, obstinately keep the bilateral antiterrorist group at a standstill, and boycott contacts with the Federal Security Service of Russia, without which discussions of antiterrorist tasks lose all practical sense. I am certain that this “infantile disease” of the British will eventually pass, but some time is already lost, along with some mutually useful results already missed or unachieved. And perhaps it was London that needed these results to a greater degree.

For Russia, the UN undoubtedly remains a key forum for discussing, agreeing and realizing international antiterrorist cooperation. In this regard, the priority event of the waning year was early-September’s special meeting of the UN General Assembly to review the United Nations Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy (GCTS), adopted two years ago, in September 2006. The review constituted an opportunity for a comprehensive and in-depth analysis of national and international antiterrorist efforts. It is particularly important to us that the review reconfirmed the principal international antiterrorist instrument in its entirety, and preserved states’ universal consent in favor of implementing the Strategy as a package. It will be recalled that the strength and significance of the Strategy have lain in its being the unified stand of all UN member states on a very wide range of antiterrorist tasks. In the absence of a comprehensive convention on international terrorism – problems with negotiating the draft of this major international antiterrorist treaty in the UN, including the problem with elaborating a generally acceptable definition of terrorism, still remain – the availability of such a global and all-round instrument effectively serves to unite and mobilize the international community in the face of terrorist threats.

On the fringes of the GCTS review, the Russian side successfully held a remarkable special event that once more underlined our country’s leading role both within the UN and on the international antiterrorist platform as such. We dedicated the event to the promotion of an important provision of the Strategy – to the development of antiterrorist interaction by states with civil society and the private sector, with the emphasis laid on the initiative previously advanced by the Russian G8 Presidency for strengthening the antiterrorist partnership of states and the business community. It will be recalled that the initiative currently continues to be developed with the active role of interested Russian agencies, the National Antiterrorist Committee, and private companies, principally as part of specific international projects of public-private cooperation to combat terrorism. It is beyond question that the New York event effectively and usefully called the additional attention of the UN audience, the United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute (UNICRI) in particular, to Russia’s international initiative.

The G8, which in its time launched the Russian international initiative for an antiterrorist partnership with the business community, is basically a major format of development and realization of proposals and projects across all major areas of antiterrorist cooperation and by no means within the boundaries of the eight member states only. Thus, an authoritative political and strategic guideline for the international community was again the antiterrorist decisions of this year’s G8 summit in Japan. On a more practical plane, but as seriously and attentively the world community responds to the expert anti-terror suggestions and ideas from the specialized Rome/Lyons Group (RLG), which did quite a bit of work this year too. As an illustration and example: Russia’s antiterrorist partnership initiative, now being realized in numerous international formats and projects, is a remarkable, but only one of the advanced ideas prepared and released under the aegis of the RLG.

Another important platform for antiterrorist cooperation with the leading participation of Russia in the waning year was, naturally, the OSCE, and the key event in this regard – the convened on our proposal in particular Second OSCE Conference on “Partnership of State Authorities, Civil Society and the Business Community in Combating Terrorism” (Vienna, September 15-16; the first such forum had been held on the joint proposal of Russia and the United States in May 2007). As conceived by us, the Conference became a further development in the pan-European area of our G8 initiative for antiterrorist partnership with the significant engagement in it of a new category of partners – civil society institutions, in particular NGOs, media, and religious and scientific establishments – and with the positioning of new appropriate tasks, particularly in terms of the organization by joint efforts of state and nonstate structures of energetic counteraction against the spread of the ideology and propaganda of terrorism. It appears that from now on the public-private partnership to combat terrorism is firmly intertwined into the regular work fabric of OSCE, and will lead to a series of new authoritative events oriented, in the good tradition of the Organization, towards practical achievements in the first place.

Based on the year’s results and despite the well-known discreet assessments by the Russian side of many aspects in OSCE activities, we remain of the view that this Organization is a very suitable format for continuing intensive international cooperation in combating terrorism, because, inter alia, by acting in this sector constructively and jointly, states visibly demonstrate the considerable practical capabilities of the Organization as such. If there is effective cooperation in the sphere of anti-terror, cooperation can also succeed in other spheres, but does not because narrowly selfish political approaches often prevail among our partners.

At this year’s final, December OSCE Ministerial Council meeting in Helsinki, this contrast was particularly clearly visible – the antiterrorist decisions were being adopted calmly, in a business-like manner, and this differed strikingly from the bitter debates around virtually all the other agenda items. In a word, also here, in the OSCE, anti-terror can apparently play the role of a tool for constructing mutual understanding and restoring trust if, of course, our partners have enough political will for that.

Another European, almost pan-European format, the Council of Europe, is on the most important positions in Russia’s international activities in the sphere of anti-terror cooperation. The principal task here is to continue the construction of an effective anticrime and, accordingly, antiterrorist space on the scale of the continent. And the chief recent achievement on this front, which we never cease reiterating, was the elaboration under CoE auspices of the innovative 2005 Convention on the Prevention of Terrorism. In 2007 the treaty entered into force, and 2008 can probably be considered as the year of first, if preliminary, assessments of the real significance and effectiveness of the Convention. Such analytical work was conducted in the Council of Europe with active participation by Russian representatives and experts and will be continued later on – with an eye to an intensive and maximal broadening of the number of states parties to the Convention, including outside Europe (the treaty permits this).

It will be remembered that Russia was among the ideologists for, and the most active developers of the Convention and the first to ratify it. We regard the treaty, which for the first time criminalizes such offenses as public incitement to terrorism, terrorist recruitment and training, as the first and strong move in favor of fostering, on an adequate international legal basis, international cooperation in suppressing terrorist ideology and propaganda.

I want to stress that effective and, moreover, aggressive counteraction against the ideological and information war still being waged quite successfully by terrorist groups has firmly moved in contemporary conditions into priority positions as part of the overall fight against terrorism, nationally and internationally, and one may say, now ranks among the respective law enforcement tasks and antiterrorist endeavors of special services and military, if need be. The Russian side, by the way, was among the first to realize precisely this, especial significance of the information and ideological struggle against terrorism, and has long since been explaining this to our partners. The adoption of the Convention on the Prevention of Terrorism and the practical realization of its truly rich potentialities is testimony to the fact that our related arguments are a contributive factor to this international effort.

Building up the authority and practical potential of the Convention on the Prevention of Terrorism, naturally, was not the sole thrust of our antiterrorist work in the Council of Europe in 2008. We give all-out support to efforts by the Council, primarily under the auspices of its chief working body in the area of antiterrorist cooperation – the Committee of Experts on Terrorism (CODEXTER) – in identifying lacunae in international antiterrorist law and practice. The Committee’s agenda includes very important points in line with our interests: generalizing the national experience of states in suppressing recruitment for terrorist groups; studying the possibilities of preventing terrorist abuse of political asylum and refugee status; and overcoming the threats of cyber terrorism and terrorists’ use of the Internet.

In the waning year, anti-terror continued to hold a weighty position in Russian-EU interaction and was discussed in many relevant formats of cooperation with the European Union on so called “domestic” and “external security” themes. 2008 also saw very useful and intensive rounds of Russia-EU antiterrorist expert consultations.

Despite certain stresses adversely affecting most areas of relations between Russia and NATO, antiterrorist measures were not removed, nor are being removed from the Russia-NATO Council’s work agenda. Even in the most difficult periods, a systemic and sufficiently thorough exchange of views essentially continued, primarily between highly qualified specialists, on priority, often innovative, little developed tasks in the fight against terrorism. The next event in this framework, incidentally, is already scheduled for late January of the incoming year. Again, this is indicative and, moreover, instructive in terms of the demonstration of the possibilities of an optimal repulsion of common threats given the partners’ proper disposition toward this end.

Countering terrorism is a major component of international cooperation in our “near abroad” area, primarily in the formats of the CIS, CSTO and SCO. It could not be otherwise, taking into account our absolute priority – an effective repulsion of terrorist threats aimed directly against Russia and, accordingly, the region surrounding us.

Thus, the current long-term counterterrorism cooperation program 2008-2010 was implemented in the waning year under the auspices of the Commonwealth of Independent States along with preparing the CIS treaty on countering the legalization (laundering) of criminal proceeds and the financing of terrorism for ratification. The necessary level of coordination was maintained for the activities of the foreign affairs agencies of the Commonwealth member states as part of regular inter-MFA consultations on the themes of suppressing the new challenges and threats at the CIS Executive Committee in Minsk. Priority attention was paid to ensuring that all antiterrorist instruments adopted within the framework of the Commonwealth become actually operative instruments with the broadest participation of the CIS states. The toolbox of the CIS Antiterrorist Center was effectively used in these efforts, particularly in such a traditional format of cooperation as joint antiterrorist training exercises.

Countering terrorism in 2008 held a priority position in the activities of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. The agenda for the August meeting of the CIS Council of Heads of State in Dushanbe was shaped accordingly: the highly important Dushanbe Declaration was adopted at it, along with signing some key documents on counterterrorist themes – the agreement on the procedure for organizing and conducting joint antiterrorist exercises and the agreement on cooperation in combating the illicit trafficking in arms, ammunition and explosives. There were regular and, we believe, very productive meetings of the Council of the SCO’s main anti-terror working and coordination body – the Regional Antiterrorist Structure (RATS) – and meetings of member states’ experts at the RATS Executive Committee in Tashkent. A significant phase of cooperation among member states was the regular joint exercise of their antiterrorist units, ‘Volgograd-Anti-Terror-2008,’ held in the Volgograd Region on September 2-5.

I must say that with the Russian Federation taking over the SCO chairmanship in 2008-2009 new opportunities are opening up for intensifying the Organization’s activities in preventing new challenges and threats, including terrorism, and fleshing out this effort with ever more weighty practical content, inter alia – in the context of developing cooperation among the SCO member states with respect to international information security, jointly responding to situations that may jeopardize peace, stability, and security in the region, enlisting the potential of observer states in antiterrorist efforts, expanding the practice of holding joint antiterrorist exercises and launching specialized programs of antiterrorist interaction.

This year Russia has comprehensively facilitated the building-up of antiterrorist cooperation under the auspices of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), primarily with a view to curbing terrorist and drug threats coming from the territory of Afghanistan – as key challenges to the national security of Russia. By and large, one can say that we strove to concentrate our participation in CSTO, SCO and CIS, first and foremost, on the tasks in carrying out the well-known initiative to establish antiterrorist, anti-drug, and financial security belts around Afghanistan. We engaged capabilities of the CSTO-Afghanistan Working Group and the SCO-Afghanistan Contact Group in the solution of these tasks.

In conclusion, to provide a complete picture of Russia’s antiterrorist work on international platforms, I will touch on the principal facts of antiterrorist cooperation under the auspices of a number of other international regional organizations, so to speak, in the “very far abroad.”

Based on the Russia-ASEAN Comprehensive Program of Action to Promote Cooperation 2005-2015, adopted in December 2005, a mandate for the Russia-ASEAN Joint Working Group on Counterterrorism and Transnational Crime was agreed upon in the waning year. The preparation of a Draft Plan of Concrete Measures in this area of cooperation is nearing completion.

In the format of the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), Russian representatives took an active part in finalizing a number of key antiterrorist documents. Preparations are under way for the Russian chairmanship in important regional thematic events – the ARF intersessional meetings on counterterrorism and transnational crime in 2010. Another substantial goal of our efforts in this regard is to ensure the proper filling of the agenda of new ARF antiterrorist platforms – nonproliferation, in the field of maritime security and in the struggle against cyber terrorism.

Under the auspices of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Forum, Russia did everything to consolidate interaction with the partners within the Forum’s main working body in the area of anti-terror, the Counterterrorism Task Force; in particular, work was successfully completed on Russia’s initiative to upgrade the counterterrorism protection of critically important energy infrastructure in the APEC region. We are preparing new Russian proposals for advancement, particularly in assuring transportation security and fighting cyber terrorism. Work on implementing these steps assumes special significance in the light of the preparation of the counterterrorism component of the Russian APEC chairmanship in 2012.

Interaction was developed successfully in the Black Sea Economic Cooperation Organization (BSECO). We strove to ensure the preservation of its autonomous identity in international antiterrorist efforts; devoted heightened attention to the work in the Group for combating organized crime, which operates in execution of the BSEC Intergovernmental Agreement on Cooperation in Combating Organized Crime, especially in its organizational forms, and of the additional protocols thereto. We worked on the insertion in its agenda of questions of counterterrorism follow-up to priority infrastructure and energy projects in the Organization’s zone of responsibility for us.

Russia pursued a very active line within the Eurasian Group on Combating Legalization of Proceeds from Crime and Terrorist Financing (EAG) and the Financial Action Task Force (FATF). With reliance upon our EAG chairmanship effective cooperation with the EAG states at regional level was ensured, primarily in Central Asia. The Russian side rendered all-out assistance to the integration of member states into the international system of countering the legalization of criminal proceeds and financing of terrorism. In this regard, our aim is further vigorous enhancement of the authority of the EAG, the expansion of its range of participants, and augmentation of our practical contribution to the suppression of terrorism financing on the Asian and Far Eastern boundaries of the Russian Federation.

There continued to grow in the waning year the significance of Russian antiterrorist cooperation with foreign partners via channels of interaction with the Inter-American Committee against Terrorism (CICTE), the RIO Group, and the Southern Common Market (MERCOSUR). Priority attention in this case was paid to launching specialized dialogue mechanisms with the participation of representatives of competent agencies and to preparing target programs of antiterrorist and also generally anticrime cooperation.

By way of conclusion, I will limit myself to the following observation. The initiative-driven and leading participation of Russia in international antiterrorist cooperation has long since become not only an important Russian foreign policy thrust, but also an indispensable, widely needed element of a balance of forces – constructive and on the other part, regrettably, not always constructive. The future of that balance apparently is hard to tell; it depends on the further development of a large number of equally significant processes in international relations. All the more in this situation the Russian side has no alternative but to continue energetically, creatively, with an eye to concrete, practical results, its leadership functions in international counterterrorism cooperation in all the respective current and new formats.

For this purpose there is the requisite human, expert and ideological potential in the Foreign Ministry and, no less importantly, in Russian competent agencies, as well as in civil society and private sector institutions cooperating with us.