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p In 1977, the world witnessed yet another series of terrorist acts in West Germany when terrorists killed the Attorney General of the Federal Republic of Germany Siegfried Bubak, the President of the Board of the Bank of Dresden Jiirgen Ponto, and the West German industrialist Hanns-Martin Schleyer. Closely linked with those acts was the hijacking of a Lufthansa airliner with 91 passengers on board.

p The flight commander radioed back to say that the air pirates, all Arabs, presented the same demands as had the Hausner Commando which had kidnapped Schleyer—-release of 11 convicted members of the underground anarchist group of terrorists, including Andreas Baader, their leader, and a ransom of 15 million dollars. The air pirates called themselves the Organisation of Struggle Against World Imperialism.

p That incident re-emphasised the urgent need for action to suppress terrorism and, at the same time, showed the effect which international cooperation of States might have in such action.

p The air pirates’ leader, who called himself Walter Mohamed, demanded that the imprisoned terrorists be taken out of West Germany into one of three countries—Somalia, South Yemen, or the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, but the governments of those countries categorically refused 282 to accept them. The Soviet Union and the German Democratic Republic said they were willing, if need be, to represent the interest of West Germany before the Government of South Yemen.

p At Larnaka Airport in Cyprus, where the plane landed, n spokesman for the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) suggested that the terrorists let the hostages go. But Walter Mohamed replied with a spate of hysterical abuse through a microphone, which proved again that the PLO had nothing to do with terrorism, contrary to what West German reactionaries had been asserting in an attempt to discredit the PLO. Thereafter, the plane was allowed to take off, this time for Mogadiscio, Somalia, where it was stormed by a special anti-terrorist unit that had arrived from West Germany, with permission from the Somalian Government, and the terrorists were rendered harmless and the hostages set free.

p It was against this backdrop that the Thirty-Second Session of the UN General Assembly once more directed its attention to the imperative necessity of action to suppress terrorism.

p The resolution it adopted did not only condemn the acts of hijacking and other interference with the operation of civil aviation by threat or use of force or by any other acts of violence directed against passengers, crews, and aircraft, whether committed by individuals or States, but also urged all nations lo take both collective and individual measures in accordance with the purposes and principles of the UN Charter and the relevant declarations, conventions and resolutions of the UN and the ICAO and without prejudice to the sovereignty or territorial integrity of any State, to ensure that the passengers, crews, and aircraft 283 engaged in civil air transportation, are not used to obtain advantage of any kind.

p A salient feature of the resolution is that in it, the UN member States ittached special importance to cooperation in the suppressk n of terrorist acts of an international character. It made a point of underscoring that measures directed against such terrorist acts should be carried out in accordance with the purposes and principles of the UN Charter and without prejudice to the sovereignty or territorial integrity of any State. In other words, it means cooperation of equal and sovereign nations equally interested in the suppression and prevention of acts of terrorism.

p Setting out the Soviet line, the Soviet representative Yuri Fokin said the delegation of the USSR believed that control of air piracy could be tightened through bilateral international agreements on cooperation in preventing aircraft hijacking, which would stipulate that the Contracting Parties bind themselves to the extradition of the offenders.

p He declared that terror as a method was alien to the ideology of the Soviet people, and that the Soviet Union wanted effective measures to be taken to prevent the acts of terrorism.

p It is quite obvious that it takes consistent action by all nations to suppress terrorism. So the line the United States follows by co-sponsoring a resolution condemning air piracy, and, on the other hand, taking under its wing the criminals Brazinskas, who killed the stewardess Nadezhda Kurchenko, severely wounded two other members of the crew, and hijacked a Soviet airliner into Turkey, is a serious obstacle in the way of working out and implementing effective measures to control terrorism.

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p There is enough evidence on hand to show that it is the United States and its officials that have been the organisers, accessories or executors of terrorist acts of an international character. As to the UN itself, this organisation has done and can yet do much towards working out a system of international acts promoting and ensuring the cooperation of States in the suppression of international terrorism.

p There were more flare-ups of terrorism in various capitalist countries in 1980 and 1981, and everywhere right and “left” terrorism could be seen overlapping and, as a matter of fact, uniting against democracy and social progress. In Italy and Turkey, for instance, terrorism has become commonplace in their domestic political life.

p With the wave of terrorist acts sweeping across the world, reactionary elements in Western countries are seeking to put the blame for it on the Communists, going as far as to accuse the communist movement of organising terrorism. The masterminds of this campaign are not deterred by the perfectly clear attitude of Marxism-Leninism to terrorism, nor by the consistent struggle of Communists for democracy and human rights and freedoms; they are trying to slander Communists so as to detach the working people in the capitalist countries from the Communists, and bar them from socialist ideas.

p In an NBC interview on January 13, 1978, Henry Kissinger, the former US Secretary of State, blamed Communists for terrorist acts in West Germany, Italy, and other countries.

p “Discoveries” of this kind have also been made in Turkey by certain individuals whose irresponsible pronouncements have been echoed by official propaganda which is 285 trying to scare the public with a “communist threat from the North”. Giving a picture of three carabinieri killed in 1980 by terrorists from the Red Brigades the Italian Panorama weekly commented that the blame for that lay with the Russians who, they claimed, did not want Italian communists in the government, and egged on the terrorists to help establish a military dictatorship in the Apennines. As one can see, the arguments may vary, but not the object —to defame and slander the international communist movement.

p The reactionary press of different countries is conducting a campaign of intimidation by telling its readership all kinds of stories about the wars and guerrilla actions which Marxist-Leninists are supposedly carrying on everywhere throughout the world, the implication being that there is a certain global conspiracy under way to “impose” Marxist-Leninist ideology “by means of terror".

p In an attempt to trade on the feeling of the people, and on the fact that acts of terrorism and violence are committed not only by rightist and pro-fascist groups, but also by leftists, reactionary elements are trying to channel the working people’s indignation against the left forces in general and against the Communists, first and foremost. Lies, however, have never served as proof. Communists have all along proceeded from the assumption that violence occurs only where reaction and imperialism shore up a regime of oppression, exploitation and repression, for, as Engels wrote in his day, “when there is no reactionary violence to fight against, there can be no question of any revolutionary violence either".  [285•1 

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p Communist authors have a perfect reason to refer to the immortal writings of Lenin to vindicate this approach. Lenin wrote, in particular: ”. . .violence is, of course, alien to our ideals".  [286•1  Whenever there are “volcanoes of revolutionary indignation amongst the working people, all speculation about artificial stimulation, agitation and disorganisation through shooting is infinitely ridiculous and absurdly ambitious".  [286•2  Lenin traced acts of terrorism to the absence of mass support, despair and lack of confidence.

p O. Gioldi, one of the Communist leaders and a prominent public figure of Argentina, also wrote that “ultraleftist terrorism is not a method of revolutionary struggle and, as the facts indicate, it does nothing but brings grist to the mill of right terrorism".

p It is the neofascists who are to blame for the current spread of violence and terrorism. They are employed by monopoly capital to stem by terror the mounting class struggles, demoralise the working people and check the process of the abolition of colonialism. Another political force using terrorism is anarchist and anarchist-minded leftist groups which play into the hands of reaction and have, of course, nothing in common either with Communists or with the working-class movement in general. Even the capitalist press has admitted that the outrages of Italian and Portuguese terrorists posing as “ultralefts” have, in fact, been masterminded and financed by extreme right groups.

p John Marks, a former associate of the US Center for 287 National Security Studies, whote: “For the last 35 years, the U.S. government has made regular use of terrorism as an instrument of foreign policy".  [287•1 

p Such are the facts, and so whatever some capitalist ideologists or politicians may write or say, they will never succocd in discrediting the thoroughly humane position of the Communists who consistently oppose terrorism and just as consistently promote a policy of cooperation of nations in the fight against international terrorism in keeping with the generally recognised principles and standards of international law.

While fully realising that any sensible anti-terrorist policy has to go together with appropriate measures to resolve the acute economic and political problems that make people suffer, the USSR attaches great importance to the cooperation of nations in the struggle for the prevention of international terrorist acts, and suppression, prosecution, and punishment of persons guilty of having committed such acts, regarding this as cooperation in the interest of all peoples, which would serve to expose and isolate the aggressive and reactionary forces. Evidently, possible legal measures against terrorism must cover, above all, the areas still outside the framework of control through international law, and, under all circumstances, preclude the possibility of such interpretation of international terrorism as could be applied to the national liberation movements or resistance to the aggressor in occupied territories, or the activities of the working people against their exploiters.