Guyana will work with the international community to find consensus on how to deal with the September 11 attacks on the USA in a climate that would allow for more deliberate actions by peaceful means, Foreign Affairs Minister, Rudy Insanally, said.

And Guyana's Ambassador to the USA, Dr Odeen Ishmael, said on Thursday in a statement to the United Nations General Assembly on Measures for the Elimination of International Terrorism that Guyana wished the US Government "every success in its efforts to marshal the forces of humanity in a coalition to conquer international terrorism, which affects us all, and which violates the ideals that we both profess and support." Dr Ishmael said that were the September 11 atrocities to go unchallenged, it would have the effect of negating all that has been struggled for in the UN since its founding in 1945. He pledged that Guyana would fulfil the obligations set by the latest UN Security Council Resolution 1373.

At the first of his proposed monthly press briefings held at the Foreign Service Institute on Thursday, Insanally noted that a Special CARICOM Heads of Government Summit and meetings of foreign affairs, national security and economic development ministers in the Bahamas next week would examine the political and economic impact of September 11 and formulate a joint policy on how to deal with threats of terrorism.

Noting that tourism and travel, the economic mainstay of most Caribbean countries, had been hard hit, Insanally said it was clear that terrorism had no frontier and there might be need to sharpen security. Guyana like other regional governments would work with the Caribbean diaspora in helping victims of the attacks in the US and some would be eligible for compensation. The idea, he said, was to deal with the issue regionally.

Meanwhile, restating Guyana's position at the UN, Ishmael said that Guyana, as a country with a substantial Muslim population, and a member of the Organisation of Islamic Conference was anxious for the efforts to eradicate terrorism to succeed. "It is imperative," he said "... that we guard against the bigotry that has driven some to blame Muslims and Arabs for the events of September 11."

Guyana, he reiterated, subscribed to the Organisation of American States' Declaration of Lima to Prevent, Combat and Eliminate Terrorism with its Plan of Action on Hemispheric Co-operation and supported the resolution adopted at the OAS meeting of foreign ministers invoking the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance (the Rio Treaty). This resolution established a programme of solidarity and mutual assistance in the American hemisphere to deal with terrorism.

For the success of these treaties, Ishmael said, there was need to pay heed to the injustices that abound in the contemporary world. "Where injustice is manifest," he said, "it can become a politically destablising force and breed hatred - conditions that might be exploited by the unscrupulous for the furtherance of their own evil ends."

He noted that Guyana was concerned with the fashioning of a legal structure that would facilitate the attainment of a purpose all UN members would endorse.

Stating Guyana's support for Security Council Resolution 1373, Ishmael said that the present period was different from 1945 when the framers of the charter contemplated threats to the maintenance of international peace and security that were often radically at variance with the kinds of threats the world faced today.

As international terrorism constituted a threat to the maintenance of international peace and security, he added, it was appropriate that the decision-making machinery vested in chapter seven of the charter was enlisted with a view to eradicating this malady. (Miranda La Rose)