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U.S. and China Ask U.N. to List Separatists as Terror
Group
Karen DeYoung
Wednesday, September 11, 2002
The United States and China have asked the U.N.
Security Council to add an obscure group of
separatists fighting Chinese rule in the far
northwestern Chinese region of Xinjiang to a list of
terrorist organizations. The listing obliges all
United Nations members to freeze the group's assets
and deny entry to its members.
The U.S. and Chinese request, submitted last Friday
with the support of Kyrgyzstan and Afghanistan, could
be accepted without objection as early as today.
Two weeks ago, the Bush administration ordered that
any U.S. assets associated with the East Turkestan
Islamic Movement (ETIM) be frozen under an executive
order, signed by President Bush after the Sept. 11
attacks, that singles out groups deemed to pose a
terrorist threat to Americans or U.S. interests.
Since then, several Western European governments have
raised questions about U.S. motives and asked
Washington for more evidence of the group's terrorist
connections, according to diplomats.
"We are concerned that the Americans are doing the
Chinese a favor" at the same time the Bush
administration is seeking China's support in the
Security Council for tougher action against Iraq, said
one Western diplomat who asked not to be identified.
Administration officials anticipate that China and
Russia, both with Security Council vetoes and strong
economic relations with Iraq, will be the most
reluctant to agree to any strong new international
disarmament action against Baghdad.
Administration officials yesterday denied any ulterior
motive in either listing. While acknowledging that "certainly,
governments do ask for information" to back up charges
of terrorist involvement, one official familiar with
the issue declined to say whether such queries had
been raised or responded to in this case.
But, he said, "we've got lots of information" on the
ETIM. "You can rest assured it is sufficient." The
United States had been reluctant to categorize the
group as terrorist, and ETIM is not on the State
Department's formal list of foreign terrorist
organizations.
European diplomats in Beijing who expressed concern
said their governments would not formally object to
the new U.N. designation. But they said their
governments were worried that the listing would be
used by China to legitimize crackdowns in Xinjiang.
China has been criticized, by governments including
the United States and by human rights organizations,
for supression of ethnic groups, including in Xinjiang,
an oil-rich region in the northwest that borders eight
countries. The Chinese government has particularly
targeted the 8 million Uighurs, a Turkic ethnic group
that is primarily Muslim and comprises less than half
the Xinjiang population. An assortment of Uighur
groups, some violent and some religious, but others
not, have fought Chinese rule with scant success.
Before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, China sought to
play down Uighur links to foreign movements, including
al Qaeda and the Taliban. Since Sept. 11, however,
China has sought to link its struggle against the
separatist movement with the U.S. fight on terrorism.
The day after the U.S. designation, announced by
Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage on Aug.
26 during an official visit to Beijing, the U.S.
Embassy cited more than 200 acts of ETIM terrorism in
China, including bombings, assassinations and arson,
resulting in at least 162 deaths and 440 injuries.
Identical figures had been cited in a Chinese
government report issued last Jan. 21, although that
report attributed the attacks to a number of Uighur
separatist groups.
An embassy official also accused ETIM of working with
Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network and "planning
attacks against U.S. interests abroad, including the
U.S. Embassy in Bishkek," the capital of neighboring
Kyrgyzstan. Kyrgyz Foreign Minister Askar Aitmatov
said recently "there were some suspicions" that two
men who were deported this year to China "might have
been planning an attack against the U.S. Embassy." He
said one suspect was found with a map showing
embassies in Bishkek.
Last week, however, a Kyrgyz security official said
his government seriously doubted the United States was
a target. "The maps were of Bishkek and the diplomatic
districts," he said. "But we had no indication that
the United States was a target."
Unlike the U.S. terrorist designation, the U.N. list
applies only to those with al Qaeda and Taliban
associations, ties that the Chinese government accused
ETIM of having early this year. State Department
counterterrorism spokesman Joe Reap said the Uighur
group "has more recently become al Qaeda linked and
now operates outside of China," and he and other
officials referred to the alleged Bishkek plot. Reap
said the United States had its own sources of
information for that assessment and had not relied on
China.
Another administration official emphasized that the
United States was "not referring to the Uighurs
collectively" in the terrorist designations. "This is
one group of terrorists," the official said, noting
that Bush, in a speech he gave in Shanghai last
October, had warned against using the war against
terrorism as an excuse for cracking down on political
opposition.
© 2002 The Washington Post Company
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