The excuse of Hezbollah | Page12

In a new act of absolute irresponsibility, President Macri has just promulgated Decree 489/2019, which ignores Argentine case law in the fight against international terrorism in the framework of the defense of human rights and introduces our country into scenarios of persecution, violence and threats to the security of our people, foreign to our peaceful and sovereign vocation and to the real interests of the Argentine Republic.

Decree 489/2019 puts an end to the most important diplomatic tradition of Argentina and in fact transforms us into a country without a sovereign foreign policy, without attachment to the international agreements in which our country has been participating for decades and without any commitment to Self-determination of peoples, formerly the flags of Argentine foreign policy and government.

Removing from this conceptual and normative framework, which Argentina has always maintained over time and governments, places us in an inexplicable environment of vulnerability, by introducing, from this decision, a partial evaluation in an extremely complex and ancient conflict such as that of the Near and Middle East.

The text which forms part of the aforementioned decree, which states that "Any human person, legal person or entity that has been the subject of a court order or prosecution that imputes or admits the formalization of an investigation ", admits that the simple fact of opening an investigation, without final judgment and without evidence-based legal action, makes it possible to arbitrarily and unlawfully locate any natural or legal person in the cataloging of "terrorist" recalling the worst of Arbitrary history of the Argentine military military dictatorship, which devastated us between 1976 and 1983.

Accuse Hezbollah or any other legal or physical person of being a terrorist organization or participating in a terrorist organization, without any supporting documentation from the United Nations, the Counter-Terrorism Committee of its Security Council and without no convincing approval of this accusation produced by a state of our country, puts us on the threshold of a diplomatic conflict with several countries and of a situation of intolerable internal arbitrariness in a democratic state.

The lists of terrorist groups include many countries, but the Argentine Republic has always had a position in this sense to support the multilateral actions of international consensus and not to follow the decisions of interests of extra-continental powers, foreign to our national interests and the validity of international law.

The obvious insolvency of the Argentine Foreign Ministry, enshrined in the erroneous actions of President Macri, engenders a new geopolitical and diplomatic conflict, with absolutely unjustifiable consequences for our domestic policy.

The decision of the Argentine government to resign from its sovereign power and to act on foreign policy "at the request" of third countries deserves a firm condemnation from all Argentineans, for non-ideological reasons or for prejudices ethnic. own badessment of Hezbollah or other organizations or individuals. The recurrent will of the Argentine government to foment a foreign policy contrary to our national interests should not be granted.

All the more so as this same government removes from the elbow what he wrote handfully, because in March 2017, the Minister of Justice, Germán Garavano, had signed a protocol of agreement with the UN Counter Terrorism Committee, represented by its Director. Jean-Paul Laborde, then replaced by the Belgian diplomat Michele Coninsx.

This memorandum says in point 1 "The United Nations Counter-Terrorism Committee will provide legislative technical badistance on terrorism and its characterization, and collaborate on the development of a national strategy to combat terrorism and money laundering and the financing of terrorism. terrorism."

Even Laborde then met the AMIA authorities at its headquarters.

This badistance and consultation has not been satisfied since the issuance of Decree 489 today.

A few days later, on 15 June 2017, the United Nations General Assembly, with the support of Argentina, would adopt resolution 71/291, which aimed at "strengthening the capacity of the United Nations system". Assist Member States in the implementation of the United Nations Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy ". The new "United Nations Office for the Fight Against Terrorism" would emerge from this resolution and the Russian diplomat, Vladimir Voronkov, who still holds the post, would be appointed First Deputy Secretary of the United Nations Office against Terrorism. .

The following year, in June 2018, at the request of UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterrez, the first UN high-level conference of heads of anti-terrorist organizations of the member states will be held. . From this meeting will emerge the Global Counter-Terrorism Coordination, the largest United Nations system coordinating framework comprising the heads of 36 United Nations entities, as well as INTERPOL and the World Customs Organization. Argentina would support it and it would be formally introduced on 6 December 2018.

All of these cases, to which even President Macri's government participated, were also ignored by Decree 489.

Argentina has a tradition of respect and attention in its foreign policy towards the Near and Middle East region; it was one of the first countries to recognize the State of Israel in 1949 and the government of Juan Domingo Perón, while also occupying positions of responsibility. clear regarding the Arab League and the United Nations resolutions for the defense of the Palestinian State.

This failure, concretized by the government's decision to amend a presumably unconstitutional and openly erroneous legal, political and diplomatic decree, obliges us more than ever to ratify the pacific and tolerant vocation of the Argentine people and to seek a fight against terrorism. only in the context of institutional and recognized international law.

The disastrous experience of state terrorism in our country, with the unlawful and indiscriminate persecution of political opponents with no legal cause that I want to say and which we suffered at that time, should make us think about the impossibility of tolerating acts like this, which, as a country society, we must repudiate in its thoughtless arbitrariness.

Marcelo Brignoni is an international badyst