Remarks by the Chairman

Abstract

We are all aware of the current nature of the topic which we are discussing tonight. It is too much with us. Our frame of reference is a rather painful record of terrorist action which across the past five years has sought out a wide range of victims and evidenced increasing ferocity, followed by retaliatory measures by states or private organizations. The terrorists’ attacks have had various foci: internationally protected persons, for example. In the last five years forty-six internationally protected persons were subjected to attack or threat of attack, and sixteen of them were killed. This week, for example, the residence of the Israeli Ambassador to Cyprus was attacked. Then there have been attacks in terms of location or nationality, such as the Lod Airport massacre of last May, the Munich massacre of last September, the wave of letter-bombs last summer and fall. There is aircraft hijacking. The five year record has shown 311 successful international and domestic hijackings from 1968 to 1972, or a total of 358 endangered flights if one adds attempted hijackings. And in the course of these hijackings we find that some 200 persons have been killed or injured. It may be added with regard to the incidence of hijacking that in the first quarter of 1973 there were no successful hijackings in this country or abroad, although there were seven attempts, one of them this week. Yet another phase of terrorism is the attack on representatives of foreign enterprise; we saw two such last week in Argentina.