Syrian Arab News Agency S A N A
Geneva, SANA – Syria supports every real effort aims at combating the extremist ideologies which form the intellectual carrier for terrorism which risks are growing internationally and countering it became a global priority, Syria’s Permanent Representative at the United Nations in Geneva Hussam Eddin Ala said.
In his statement to the Geneva Conference on Preventing Violent Extremism Ala said that violent extremism is a multi-dimensional phenomenon so the strategies to combat it should not be based on the selective identification or ignoring the causative factors such as foreign occupation, discrimination, xenophobia or adopting false and artificial concepts.
Ambassador Ala added that the absence of an internationally agreed definitions of the concepts of terrorism and violent extremism raise a lot of dilemmas and lead to confusion and the lack of distinction between the two concepts.
The ambassador stressed that the serious and firm confrontation of the dangers of terrorism and extremism requires respecting the international law and the UN Charter and ensuring the compliance with the implementation of a series of international conventions and resolutions adopted by the UN Security Council on combating terrorism and its financers.
He added that the right approach to combat terrorism and extremism requires first of all to stop adopting double standards and abandon attempts to take advantage of supporting terrorism as a mean to achieve political goals, target national systems and interfere in the countries’ internal affairs , noting that these policies led to destabilization of many countries, emergence of humanitarian suffering, exacerbation of the risk of terrorism spreading and the escalation of asylum and migration.
Ala said terrorism that hit Paris, Brussels, Nigeria, Egypt, Mali, Lahore and Lebanon is the same one which has been claiming the lives of innocent people in Damascus, Aleppo, Homs and other Syrian cities for more than five years.
Manar / Ghossoun
