The UN must act decisively

PRESIDENT Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga's enunciation of some essential tasks facing the UN system comes at a time when the world body is itself engaged in a spell of profound soul-searching.

For instance, terror and bloodshed have reached daunting proportions and are proliferating while the peace-loving sections look on helplessly and are deeply aghast.

What is the UN doing, is a question posed by the so-called man of the street. September 11, 2001 could be said to have marked a new high in the use of terror and mass-scale murder by fanatical and conscience-crippled outfits.

Similar atrocities have followed, such as the July 7 London bombings, although not on the same scale as the September 11 abomination, but the impression cannot be effaced that the perpetrators of these massacres are acting with impunity.

Even in the case of the LTTE, which is continuing to kill with gay abandon, similar questions could be posed. The government of Sri Lanka is stretching itself to the maximum to engage the LTTE and thereby jump-start the peace negotiations, but the LTTE seems to be replying with more and more terror.

Former Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar was the latest VVIP victim of the LTTE, but since his assassination, the Tigers have stalked and killed scores of their political adversaries.

All this has been happening amid the Ceasefire Agreement which is expected to be respected in word, deed and spirit by the parties to the conflict.

Given this bleak backdrop, it is the obligation of the world community - represented by the UN - to pay heed to President Kumaratunga's observations on the ways and means of containing terror.

There is no question that the Ceasefire Agreement should be continued and every effort made to resume the negotiatory process but the international community which has been continually calling for a negotiated settlement in Sri Lanka cannot be seen as standing idly by when the LTTE continues with no hesitation with its murder spree.

Indeed, the UN is morally obliged to use the strongest sanctions on the LTTE to impress on it the need to help in reviving the peace process. This end cannot be met if the LTTE continues to kill and maim.

As suggested by President Kumaratunga, the UN needs to seriously consider helping states such as Sri Lanka, which are genuinely committed to peace, by imposing substantial sanctions on terror groups, the LTTE being chief among them which are undermining these efforts at bringing peace.

A close look should be taken at the proposition put forward by President Kumaratunga that the external sources of support enjoyed by terror groups such as the LTTE, should be ended.

Legal and practical measures should be taken against fund-raising - for instance - by the LTTE and on behalf of it, by its front organisations in the West.

Besides, more and more states need to put the LTTE on their terror lists and crackdown hard on it, through the adoption of law and order measures and other means.

UN Security Council Resolutions 1624 and 1625 adequately indicate that the UN has taken cognizance of the problems at hand. What is left to be done is to implement the resolutions fully and decisively.