Call for a conference on terror

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In the same week as Egypt's top diplomat in Baghdad, Ambassador Ihab El-Sherif, was murdered by terrorists, London was hit by lethal bombings. In both cases, Al-Qaeda claimed responsibility through its Iraqi and European branches. The terrorists' rhetoric was the same; distorted and demented, remorseless and indifferent to the lives of innocent civilians.

Irrespective of the ramifications of the attacks, the shock waves of horror that ripped through Egypt and the UK, there is an important fact that we have to keep in mind. There is a groundswell of human outrage against terror, against this kind of unbridled violence that wants to destroy our legal legacy, our humanitarian norms that prohibit attacks on civilians even in situations of war and occupation. The international community needs to find the resolve to confront terror regardless of its motives and causes. Terrorists may claim to be religious warriors or freedom fighters, but their choice of target says it all. Their victims are invariably civilians who are distant from the battle they claim to be fighting.

Differences may still persist on the definition of terror, but it is time the international community agrees that civilians distant from the field of political and military conflict should not be harmed, regardless of their nationality, religion or colour. The international community needs a legal framework for criminalising attacks on civilians and creating mechanisms to halt such attacks. In doing so, the international community would be drawing the line between resistance and terror.

National resistance chooses its targets with care, principally the soldiers of occupations or foreign aggression. The Egyptian ambassador and the victims of the London blasts were not military targets. Those who lost their lives in Madrid, Washington and New York, civilians who continue to die in Iraq and the occupied territories, civilians who are attacked inside Israel, none of these are legitimate military targets.

This is the right moment for the world to act in unison to eradicate this phenomenon. Egypt and the UK, the most recent victims of terror, should come up with a joint diplomatic initiative. They should call for an international conference on terror. Egypt has a clear view of international terror: it has definite views on how to eliminate terror in the region, by resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict and ending the occupation in Iraq; and in the world, through holding an international conference on terror. President Mubarak outlined Egypt's view in his speech at a meeting of European parliamentarians in Strasbourg in 1986, when he called for treaties to be signed on judicial cooperation in matters concerning terrorism, corruption and organised crime.