UNITED NATIONS, September 20 (Itar-Tass) — The fight against terrorism remains not only one of Russia’s key foreign policy tasks, but it also discussed in the wider context of ensuring national security, Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov said.
Speaking at the Symposium on International Counter-Terrorism Cooperation at the UN headquarters in New York on Monday he underlined that Moscow plans “to further take a hard line to implement the UN Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy in the country and on the international scene through a stronger dialogue among experts and practitioners.”
Russia also plans “to share its accumulated experience with partners” adjusting its efforts “to new tasks and changing realities,” Gatilov said.
The Russian diplomat noted that the UN efforts helped to create a wide-ranging infrastructure of counter-terrorism interaction that brings together dozens of regional organizations and institutions, to strengthen the international legal basis to fight terrorism and to adopt and promote new norms and standards in this sphere.
Al-Qaeda’s military and organization potential was significantly damaged and many terrorism financing chancels were eradicated, he said.
However, despite joint efforts the threat of terrorism has not subsided, Gatilov stated. “Activities of autonomous terrorist groups that take advantage of escalation in the Libyan crisis, sharp destabilization in North Africa and the Middle East in general and the situation in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region are on the rise. They effectively act beyond border barriers, recruit and train new extremists,” he said.
In this respect the Russian diplomat stressed importance of holding regular counter-terrorism meetings of security service chiefs and law enforcers. He recalled that St. Petersburg hosted such a meeting on July 6-7.
“The international format launched at Russia’s initiative several years ago proved importance of cooperation among those services that are in the forefront of the war on terrorism,” Gatilov said.
He focused attention on the regional aspect of international anti-terrorism cooperation. “With Russia’s active support the SCO Counter-Terrorism Convention and the agreement on the CSTO rapid reaction force were drafted and signed and a model law on counter-terrorism operations within the CIS was adopted,” he said.
The Russian diplomat expressed the hope that the signing of a declaration on cooperation among the Collective Security Treaty Organization, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and the UN “will open new opportunities for increasing these organizations’ contribution to the implementation of the UN Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy.”
Gatilov confirmed Moscow’s intention to further take joint actions within the Strategy’s framework, in particular to prevent the spread of radical attitudes, violent extremism and the use of the information space and the Internet for terrorist purposes.