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:

            1.     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.

            2.     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.

            3.     To reaffirm our solidarity with the people and government of the United States of America in the rescue and reconstruction efforts.

            4.     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.

            5.     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.

            6.     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.

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