Terrorism On The Increase Worldwide
Despite new anti-terrorism legislation and improved global cooperation in the 1990s, international terrorist attacks increased by 37 percent last year and represent a serious threat to the United States and 50 other countries, according to the U.S. State Department’s annual survey of terrorism released Tuesday.
Acts of international terrorism worldwide rose from 322 in 1994 to 440 in 1995, making it the worst year since 1991. Attacks against American interests were up 50 percent - from 66 in 1994 to 99 last year.
“Terrorists failed to achieve ultimate political goals, as in the past, but they continued to cause major political, psychological and economic damage,” the report concluded.
Some developments are heartening. International collaboration to pressure state sponsors of terrorism, through economic sanctions and other restrictions, has “largely contained” extremism by many countries, including Libya, Iraq, North Korea, Cuba and Syria, according to the survey, “Patterns of Global Terrorism 1995.”
“Today, (terrorists) are most often in the rear guard, rather than the vanguard. They’re predominantly reactionary and anti-democratic. And in the court of world opinion, they and their causes are increasingly on the defensive,” Philip C. Wilcox Jr., coordinator for counterterrorism, said Tuesday at a news conference.
Also in Washington on Tuesday, President Clinton and Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres signed an agreement to cooperate more closely to combat terrorism.
The accord was proposed last month in the wake of a rash of suicide bombings in Israel this past winter which left more than 60 dead. Under the agreement, the United States will provide Israel with $100 million in counterterrorism aid, including bomb-detection technology and new intelligence capabilities.
Meanwhile, the State Department’s terrorism report identified Iran as the “premier state sponsor” of terrorism. Its attacks in Europe decreased last year, but Tehran’s agents and surrogates are “deeply involved” in plotting and carrying out extremist acts, the report said.
Iran also supports radical groups from North Africa to Central Asia and is linked with the murder of seven dissidents around the world, the State Department charged.
xxxx MORE AMERICANS KILLED The number of Americans killed by international terrorists has tripled from four to 12. But most attacks on U.S. interests were not conducted on American soil; the 1993 World Trade Center bombing in New York City remains unusual.