The Inter-American Convention Against Terrorism is the product of our collective determination not to allow terrorists and their supporters to threaten our construction of democratic societies. We can be proud that the OAS was the first regional organization to condemn the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and the first whose members negotiated, signed, and brought into force a comprehensive counter-terrorism convention. Through the work of the Inter-American Committee Against Terrorism, CICTE, the OAS is playing a leadership role among regional organizations, a development that has been explicitly recognized by the Counter-terrorism Committee of the United Nations.

The Inter-American Convention draws on the twelve UN Counter-terrorism treaties, conventions, and protocols cited in UN Security Council Resolution 1373. Adapted to our own regional context that recognizes and indeed requires the maximal development of freedom without exclusions, and without unnecessary interruptions to the free movement of peoples and the goods they produce, the Convention provides a common legal framework for hemispheric cooperation and serves as the essential “transmission belt" or "engranaje” linking the global strategy against terrorism to our own regional strategy in the Western Hemisphere.

Several countries in this hemisphere have suffered terrorist violence. A few suffer from it today. We can and must do more to cooperate regionally, drawing on our special experiences to forge common practices and to play our part in world-wide efforts against threats to the peace. We can be proud of Argentine peace-keepers in the Middle East; of Uruguayans in Georgia; of Central American leadership in regional de-mining, of Brazilian and US mediators in Africa and South-East Asia, of our Caribbean brothers and sisters, working together to fight drug dealers, illegal arms traffickers and others who threaten the peaceful aspirations of all our peoples.

We have, of course, a particular responsibility at home, in this hemisphere. Bilateral and multilateral efforts to assist each other to deal with violence professionally, humanely, and effectively are vital to all our countries. The Convention and CICTE provide the framework to do just that.

I urge you, the representatives assembled here in the OAS for the First Meeting of the CICTE National Points of Contact, to take this message back to your capitals: Ratify the Inter-American Convention Against Terrorism. Antigua and Barbuda, Canada, El Salvador, Mexico, Nicaragua and Peru have already done so. Surely the spectrum of legal systems, geographic location and national interests represented by these six leaders conveys a message of extraordinary unity and common purpose.

I call on all present to join these six hemispheric leaders in making it clear to the world that we of the Americas will not allow those who would abuse our democratic institutions and the good will of our people to use them against us and against the progress to which we are uniquely dedicated.

Thank you.