OEA/Ser.G
CP/RES. 796 (1293/01)
19 September 2001
Original: Spanish/English
CP/RES. 796 (1293/01)
CONVOCATION OF THE TWENTY-THIRD MEETING OF
CONSULTATION
OF MINISTERS OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS
THE PERMANENT COUNCIL OF THE ORGANIZATION OF
AMERICAN STATES,
CONCERNED by the terrorist attacks perpetrated
against innocent civilians from many nations that took place on September 11, 2001 in the
territory of the United States of America;
RECOGNIZING the statement approved on September
11, 2001 by the twenty-eighth special session of the General Assembly of the Organization
of American States, held in Lima, Peru, which condemned in the strongest terms the
terrorist acts visited upon several cities, and reiterated the need to strengthen
hemispheric cooperation to combat this scourge;
CONSIDERING the statement of the Secretary General
of the OAS on September 11, in which he condemned the cowardly acts of terrorism
perpetrated on the United States of America and stressed that these actions are an attack
not only on the United States but also on all the democratic and free states of the world;
RECALLING the inherent right of the United States
and each of the other Member States to act in the exercise of the right of individual and
collective self-defense recognized by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations;
AWARE that Article 2 of the OAS Charter proclaims
that one of the essential purposes of the Organization is to provide for common action on
the part of those States in the event of aggression;
CONSIDERING that the conduct of terrorist acts, as
well as the direct and indirect support for such acts, is not compatible with the
effective exercise of representative democracy, and that representative democracy is
indispensable for the stability, peace, and development of the Americas;
CONVINCED that the perpetrators of these terrorist
acts rely upon an international support network that may have branches within our own
Hemisphere, and those that aid, abet or harbor terrorist organizations are responsible for
the acts of those terrorists; and
CONSIDERING the report of the Government of the
United States of America that was provided to the Permanent Council on this date,
RESOLVES:
- To condemn, as an attack against all the States of the Americas,
the acts of terrorism perpetrated within the territory of the United States of America on
September 11, 2001, that resulted in the murder of thousands of citizens from many member
states and other nations.
- To repudiate these acts of terrorism as an affront to human dignity
and the rule of law and as a danger to the peace and security of the Americas, and to
express the conviction that this threat against democracy requires united and concerted
action to protect and defend the free exercise of democracy.
- To reaffirm our solidarity with the people and government of the
United States of America in the rescue and reconstruction efforts.
- To call upon the government of the member states and all other
governments to use all necessary and available means to pursue, capture, and punish those
responsible for these attacks, and to prevent additional attacks.
- To urge all member states to support international efforts to bring
those responsible for these terrorist attacks to justice and to promote inter-American
cooperation, especially through information sharing, for that purpose.
- To convene on September 21, 2001, at the headquarters of the
Organization of American States, a Meeting of Consultation of Ministers of Foreign
Affairs, pursuant to articles 61 to 65 of the OAS Charter, to consider the threat to
hemispheric security posed by international terrorism.