Antalya, 16/11/2015 (Agence Europe) - Expressing concern at the “growing” flow of foreign terrorist fighters, the countries of the G20 made a commitment, in Antalya on Monday 16 November, to step up their cooperation to tackle the threat which terrorism represents for the “countries of origin, transit and destination”.
“As I've been saying since 2008, a strong economy is impossible if there is not global peace”, said the Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, after the G20 summit of Antalya (Turkey). Calling for “sincere” cooperation in the fight against terrorism, he described any link between terrorism and religion as a “huge insult”, as “in any religion, the right to life is something sacred”. “As leaders of Muslim countries, we have stressed the fight against Daesh, which has nothing to do with Islam”, he added.
On the initiative of the Turkish Presidency, this summit adopted a specific declaration on terrorism, which the recent attacks in Paris carried out by the Islamic state in Iraq and Levant (Daesh) threw into sharp relief. What is clear to all is that due to its “deliberately blind” modus operandi, “what happened in France could happen anywhere”, said the French Foreign Minister, Laurent Fabius. He was standing in for the French President, François Hollande, who had remained in France, where he promised before the representatives of the people to destroy Daesh (see other article). “When we come under attack, we have to be able to respond. We have said that we are in a situation of self defence”, Fabius replied to a question about the reasons behind the intensification of French strikes on Syria.
In the specific statement they adopted, the G20 leaders undertake to tackle the terrorist threat in the framework of the law and international agreements. This will be done in particular through increased cooperation and measures to improve the “exchange of information, border management in order to detect movements” and by beefing up the legal response to criminal acts. Action in the field of air security was also referred to, possibly a reference to the Russian aircraft shot down in Egypt, allegedly by fighters affiliated to Daesh.
The leaders of the countries involved recognise that the only possible way to resolve the Syrian issue is political. Erdogan described the political process identified in Vienna on Saturday by all of the countries affected by the Syrian crisis (see other article) as a “hopeful step forward“. He called for the integrity of the Syrian territory, the eradication of the terrorist threat and political transition. “Anybody who massacres their own people have no place” in this transition, he stressed, in reference to the Bashar al-Assad regime, which has the military support of the Russian Federation. Barack Obama spoke along the same lines, describing the regime in place as the “number one reason” for the Syrian crisis.
The American President, who discussed Syria on Sunday in a private meeting with his Russian opposite number, Vladimir Putin, said that the anti-Daesh strategy applied on the ground “is working, but will take time”, with targeted strikes and support to fighters considered moderate with a view to starting to take back the territory under the control of the Islamic caliphate. There is no question of the United States deploying large numbers of troops on the ground, even though they have the military resources to march on Raqqa, the Daesh stronghold in Syria, he said. He explained that “this would lead to a repeat of what we have seen before. If there is no local population to push back the extremists, they will resurface unless there is a permanent military presence”. (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)