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Mr. President,
Let me first express my felicitations to you for the excellent work done under your leadership of the Security Council. I would also like to congratulate Ambassador Claude Heller, Permanent Representative of Mexico and his team for the successful Presidency of the Council during the month of April.
I would like to thank the Chairmen of the Al Qaida and Taliban Sanctions Committee, the Counter-Terrorism Committee and 1540 Committee for their briefings today. We value these briefings as good opportunities for direct interaction between Member States and these Committees.
Mr. President,
The threat of terrorism we face today is complex, multifaceted and pandemic. It is based on manifest intolerance, lack of rule of law and wide spread injustices. Its adherents run away from rational dialogue and hide behind their misperceptions. It is a collective challenge to international community and deserves unequivocal condemnation in all its forms and manifestations.
The Government and People of Pakistan, including our leadership, political parties, troops, law enforcement agencies, civil society, academia, media, and the common person on the street, all are confronting the terrorists with the solemn determination to defeat them.
Roughly three weeks ago, the Government of Pakistan reinvigorated and upgraded its campaign against those who challenged the writ of the Government. So far the outcome of the operation has been good. However, the operation has also brought upon us the biggest internal dislocation in the history of Pakistan. More than two million persons have moved out of the affected areas. Many have been accommodated by their relatives and extended families; in line with their traditional values of hospitality and kindness. A large number of the dislocated have moved to camps established by the Government and local and international humanitarian relief organizations and agencies, including the United Nations. The challenges are daunting. However, given the susceptibility of badly managed camps to the propaganda and recruitment by terrorists, we can not afford laxity.
Mr. President,
In November 2006 a team the Counter-Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate (CTED) visited Pakistan. The Team interacted with the representatives of relevant ministries and departments, law enforcement and security agencies and immigration authorities in Pakistan. The Team, with its focus on capacity building and implementation of the Security Council resolutions, prepared a comprehensive report on the visit. The Mission and the CTED are still interacting on the outcome of the visit.
The Government of Pakistan has achieved a lot since then on countering financing of terrorism. We have an effective Anti Money Laundering Law. A Financial Monitoring Unit has been established in the State Bank of Pakistan (central bank). So far 128 bank accounts and Pak Rupees 747.08 million have been frozen. We are implementing the comprehensive international standards embodied in the 40 recommendations and 9 special recommendations of the Financial Action Task Force. Money Laundering has been made an extraditable offence. We are an active member of the Asia Pacific Group on Money Laundering. We have also decided to become a party to the United Nations Convention on Suppression of Terrorist Financing.
We are also working on other important recommendations of the CTED report, though; some legal recommendations would require further studies to elaborate the CTED point of view.
On the same account the CTED had promised to assist Pakistan in the capacity building area. Our law enforcement agencies are in dire need of basic counter-terrorist equipment including safety vests for the police officers, night vision equipments, communication equipment and wireless interceptors and monitors. So far a little could be done in this regard. We trust the Counter Terrorism Committee and the CTED under its able leadership would soon be able to deliver in this area.
Mr. President,
The Al Qaida and Taliban Sanctions Committee and its Monitoring Team are assigned a difficult job. Some difficulties arise from the exclusive nature of the mandate as there are tendencies to compare success of 1267 Sanctions regime with the failure of Resolution 1566 initiative. We hope one day the Security Council would contemplate combining different initiatives into a comprehensive counter terrorism sanctions regime.
Since the adoption of resolutions 1735 and 1822, a lot has been done to improve the Al Qaida and Taliban Sanctions regime. The Committee has done good job by asking additional identifiers to the listing requirements. It will be helpful to ensure effective implementation of the sanctions. It will also reduce chances of mistaken implementation.
The biggest challenge to the sanctions regime, however, comes from increasing number of court cases. The preventive nature of the sanctions makes the listings very simple and enforcement friendly. However, the legal community is more inclined to verifiable evidence which could be acceptable in a court of law. They also raise the questions of due process and effective remedy. A number of listings have been challenged in Pakistani Courts. The publicly releasable case statements, mainly comprising of the questions raised at the time of listing might not be sufficient to win those cases. We will have to consider exclusive sharing of the verifiable evidence with the Courts and fixation of a time limit for the effectiveness of a listing.
In Pakistan we are doing our best to ensure effective implementation of the sanctions regime. The democratic Government has left no stone unturned to ensure that those on the sanctions list are subjected to the assets freeze, travel ban and other sanctions as elucidated in the relevant resolutions and the domestic law. We have also benefited from the visits of the Al Qaida and Taliban Sanctions Monitoring Team to ensure effective implementations of the sanctions.
Mr. President,
Pakistan was a member of the Security Council when resolution 1540 was adopted. We joined the consensus because we concurred that there was a gap in the international rules relating to acquisition and illicit transfer of WMDs by non-state actors. We also agreed that the matter was important and urgent enough to be addressed in an exceptional manner. However, we hoped that the arrangement would not be perpetuated at the cost of revival and effectiveness of the multilateral disarmament machinery.
Mr. President,
In the end I would once again underscore the evolving nature of the counter-terrorism challenges we are facing and the usefulness of these briefings.
I thank you Mr. President