Terrorism on rise since Iraq war, Martin says

By CAMPBELL CLARK
From Tuesday's Globe and Mail

(Montreal)  Prime Minister Paul Martin said yesterday that global terrorism
has increased, not declined, since the United States-led coalition toppled
Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Asserting that failed states and nuclear
proliferation will provide a lasting threat of terror for the Western
world, Mr. Martin's answer indicated he believes that the removal of the
Iraqi dictator did not represent the major advance in the ''war against
terror'' claimed by U.S. President George W. Bush.

After a speech on foreign policy to a Montreal audience of academics,
business leaders and political supporters, Mr. Martin was asked whether he
believes there is more or less terrorism in the world since Mr. Hussein's
ouster.

"I think there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein contributed to that
whole problem. But I think that if we look at the situation today in
comparison with even two, three years ago, that the problems of terrorism
are probably even more serious," he said.

Mr. Martin not only answered that there is more terrorism now, but added
that terrorists will find fertile soil in failed states and the possibility
of terrorists gaining access to nuclear and other weapons creates a lasting
spectre of danger.

"The problem is increasingly failed states, or states that are on the
edge of failure, the fact that now we know well that there is proliferation
of nuclear weapons and that many of the weapons that Saddam Hussein had,
for example, we do not know where they are, so that means the terrorists
have access to all that."

Aides to Mr. Martin insisted later that his answer was not an assertion
that Mr. Hussein had nuclear weapons that might now be in the hands of
terrorists. The reference to the "proliferation of nuclear
weapons" and "the weapons that Saddam Hussein had" were
meant to be separate notions, they said. Spokesman Justin Kingsley said Mr.
Martin was referring to caches of conventional, non-nuclear weapons kept by
Mr. Hussein's regime that may now have fallen into the hands of terrorists.

Bloc Qubcois MP Claude Bachand, however, apparently heard it as an
endorsement of the now-discredited U.S. claim that Iraq had stockpiles of
weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear weapons. "He spoke of
weapons of mass destruction that have supposedly disappeared and are
perhaps in the arms of terrorists -- I think that's a major error in global
perspective," Mr. Bachand said.

Mr. Bachand also took issue with Mr. Martin's assertion that terrorism is
not caused by poverty, but by hatred. Mr. Martin, however, argued that
hatred often takes root where there is a disconnect between global
industrial development and the ability of countries to take advantage of
it.

"I think that terrorism will be for our generation what the Cold War
was for the generations that preceded us," Mr. Martin said. "I
think we're not out of it yet, and that's why we need greater co-operation.
And we don't have it yet. We have to admit that there is co-operation
between developed countries but [not] the kind of co-operation we need, and
it's in part because we do not want to share what we have."


--- GoldED/W32 3.0.1