September 11, 2001, found me as the Acting
Permanent Representative of Russia to the Council of Europe. At the next meeting of the
Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe, I took the floor to express our country's
solidarity with the people of the U.S. and to declare our readiness to fight shoulder to
shoulder with a common enemy, as we did during the Second World War. It was a clear and
unconditional statement of the Russian position. Two weeks later, after intensive
consultations, which are usual for the EU, representatives of its member states joined it.
Immediately, Moscow, including within the framework of this authoritative international
organization, tried to translate calls for solidarity and the creation of a unified
anti-terrorist front into practice. We proposed the development and adoption of a
multilateral European convention on international cooperation in combating terrorism, open
to other countries, advocated making the legal support of such cooperation one of the
leading areas of the Council's activities, and put forward a number of other practical
initiatives.
The recent events in Afghanistan show how right we were, how true is
the position that insists on honest, broad, inclusive international cooperation in the fight
against international terrorism and any, I emphasize, any forms of its manifestation. After
all, if a united front had really been created, if the leading powers had abandoned
unilateral inconsistent, contradictory and sometimes even criminal actions and joined their
efforts, events everywhere in the world would have followed a different track. There would
not have been 20 lost years in the political, social and economic development of
Afghanistan; there would not have been hundreds of thousands of deaths among the civilian
population; there would not have been an obvious link between drug trafficking, terrorism
and political corruption, which flourished over these years; there would not have been such
poverty, hunger and fear that has engulfed today's Afghanistan and spills far beyond its
borders.
History will still give an assessment of how, why and through whose fault
everything happened in Afghanistan. What is important now is to draw the main practical
conclusion from what happened: a united front and unity of action are necessary; it is time
to stop making such mistakes and make them impossible in the future; to do this, stop
pursuing an absurd policy of confrontation, deterrence, mutual demonization and start
normalizing the entire system of international relations. Before it's too late...