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From: B-Haile (eritrea.lave@comhem.se)
Date: Thu Jan 06 2011 - 07:13:20 EST
"Puri will also head the Security Council panel on sanctions related to Somalia and Eritrea. This committee's direct importance for India has grown in recent years with efforts by its Navy to fight piracy and the risk to its citizens working in merchant ships that are frequently captured by pirates off the Somali coast."
The Telegraph
Thursday , January 6 , 2011
India takes anti-terrorism seat at UN
Delhi focus a shift from peacekeeping
K.P.NAYAR
New York, Jan. 5: When India was an amalgam of princely states, some maharajahs enhanced their power by matrimonial alliances with royal families that shared common interests vital to their survival.
Hundreds of years later, Indian diplomats at the UN, with the explicit approval of New Delhi, have repeated those lessons of history in their first week as Security Council members after a gap of 19 years.
When the Security Council yesterday approved the election of Hardeep Singh Puri, India's permanent representative to the UN, as chairman of what is commonly known here as the Counter-Terrorism Committee (CTC), India succeeded in aligning its key national priority of fighting terrorism with one of the biggest global concerns of all Security Council members today, namely, counter-terrorism.
India will now be in the driving seat for one year in the ongoing international effort to "bolster the ability of UN member states to prevent terrorist acts both within their borders and across regions," according to the official mandate of the committee.
This will be done through a wide range of tools, including country visits to monitor progress in counter-terrorism, country reports providing snapshots of the situation in countries of concern, best practices such as criminalisation of the financing of terrorism and freezing of terrorist funds as well as efforts to bring terrorists and their perpetrators to justice.
Understandably, Indian diplomats here are keen to take a high road and underplay the notion that they sought the important chairmanship of this committee to expand New Delhi's efforts to check the scourge of Pakistan-aided cross-border terrorism against India, but it is undeniable that the CTC can be a powerful diplomatic tool in coaxing Islamabad to rein in elements within its borders which plot violence against India.
For that reason, Pakistan persuaded at least one of its influential supporters at the UN to create stumbling blocks against India's assumption of the CTC's chairmanship, but timely intervention in New Delhi by national security adviser Shivshankar Menon, including some calculated diplomatic chess moves resolved the problem.
Like the UN's many esoteric ways, chairmanship of Security Council committees is decided through what is known here as "silent procedure". This implies that the Council's 15 members remain silent as countries bargain with each other on chairmanships even as the fiction is maintained that chairmen are elected by the members.
The "silent procedure" about Puri's incoming chairmanship was lifted yesterday after unanimity was reached following Menon's intervention on India heading UN efforts towards counter-terrorism. A formal announcement of the "election" is expected later today when the Council meets officially for the first time after India joined in on January 1.
New Delhi's interest in the CTC was a reflection of how much India had changed: in the old days, New Delhi's obsession would have been the committee that deals with peacekeeping. Although India still has extensive interest -including participation - in UN peacekeeping missions, it was quite willing to let Nigeria head that panel this year.
In another significant decision, the Security Council handed Puri the chairmanship of a working group to examine "practical measures to be imposed upon individuals, groups or entities involved in or associated with terrorist activities, other than those designated by al Qaida/Taliban Sanctions Committee (and) the possibility of establishing an international fund to compensate victims of terrorist acts and their families".
This working group was set up through the Council's resolution 1566 passed in 2004. Puri will work very closely with the "al Qaida/Taliban Sanctions Committee" to be headed by Germany this year.
The committee's mandate is to secure the freezing of assets of entities and individuals associated with al Qaida and the Taliban, ensure a travel ban on them and prevent the transfer "from their territories or by their nationals outside their territories, or using their flag vessels or aircraft, of arms and related material... or training related to military activities to designated individuals and entities".
The last element could make Pakistan liable to international sanctions for acts such as the terrorist attack on Mumbai in November 2008.
Puri will also head the Security Council panel on sanctions related to Somalia and Eritrea. This committee's direct importance for India has grown in recent years with efforts by its Navy to fight piracy and the risk to its citizens working in merchant ships that are frequently captured by pirates off the Somali coast.
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1110106/jsp/nation/story_13399059.jsp
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