Statement About Action To Combat Terrorism

MONDAY, here in New York, Secretary of State Rogers urged prompt action by the United Nations on three measures to combat the inhuman wave of terrorism that has been loosed on the world. I am gratified that the United Nations has agreed to take up the urgent matter of terrorism, and--in the strongest possible terms--I endorse the plea which the Secretary made on behalf of the United States and of human decency.

Also Monday, in Washington, I directed the establishment of a Cabinet Committee to Combat Terrorism--to be chaired by Secretary Rogers--aimed at bringing the full resources of all appropriate United States agencies to bear effectively on the task of eliminating terrorism wherever it occurs. I have charged it to move vigorously and immediately toward this end.

The use of terror is indefensible. It eliminates in one stroke those safeguards of civilization which mankind has painstakingly erected over the centuries.

But terror threatens more than the lives of the innocent. It threatens the very principles upon which nations are founded. In this sense, every nation in the United Nations, whatever its ideological assumptions, whoever its adversaries, wherever its sympathies, is united with every other nation by the common danger to the sovereignty of each. If the world cannot unite in opposition to terror, if we cannot establish some simple ground rules to hold back the perimeters of lawlessness, if, in short, we cannot act to defend the basic principles of national sovereignty in our own individual interests, then upon what foundations can we hope to establish international comity?

There are those who would tell us that terror is the last resort of the weak and the oppressed, a product of despair in an age of indifference, and that it seeks only political justice. This is nonsense. The way to seek justice is through negotiation. We have sought in our own relations to turn from confrontation to negotiation. We believe that this is the only way for grievances to be resolved in a way that will contribute to peace and stability.

In recent months we have seen nations moving to achieve accommodation and the resolution of differences, and we have seen terrorists acting to destroy those efforts. The time has come for civilized people to act in concert to remove the threat of terrorism from the world.

The world is reaching out for peace. The way may be hard and treacherous, but men of reason and decency are determined today, as perhaps never before, to make the effort. Let us not be disrupted or turned away by those who would loose anarchy upon the world; let us seek no accommodations with savagery, but rather act to eliminate it.