[ALBSA-Info] Don't ignore Greek terrorism

[Iris Pilika]

The Christian Science Monitor


February 14, 2001, Wednesday

OPINION; Pg. 11


Don't ignore Greek terrorism

E. Wayne Merry

WASHINGTON


The United States labored 10 years to bring about the
recent trial in the Pan Am bombing case. US officials
worked overtime to arrest the suspects now on trial in
New York for bombing two US embassies in Africa in
1998. And serious efforts are under way to find the
culprits in attacks on US targets in Yemen and Saudi
Arabia.

But there's a gap in this pattern. We should devote
similar attention to the longest series of unsolved
anti-American terrorist attacks in the world - those
in Athens. This problem will assume critical urgency
with the approach of the 2004 summer Olympics
scheduled for Athens.

The first attack, a brutal murder, took place more
than 25 years ago, and the left/nationalist group
called "November 17" has remained active ever since.
Under a banner of opposing liberal democracy,
capitalism, and foreigners, the group has tried to
kill more than a hundred Americans. Sadly, five US
Embassy officials are dead.

The toll is so low only because for years the US has
spent more taxpayer dollars for diplomatic security in
Greece than anywhere else in the world, money badly
needed to protect other posts.

In part because the US Embassy is a forbidding
fortress, the terrorists have shifted their murderous
attentions, killing British and Turkish diplomats and
bombing the German and Dutch embassies. They have also
killed or wounded prominent Greeks and attacked
numerous businesses, many of them American.

By the grim standards of modern terrorism, November 17
is a modest threat. It should have been put out of
business long ago. But it has recruited new, younger
assassins and greatly expanded its range of weapons
and explosives. Its success has encouraged copycat
activities, with more than 100 bombings in Athens just
last year by a plethora of groups.

The problem is Greek government passivity. Despite
scores of attacks - many with eyewitnesses - there
have been no arrests. No suspects have even been
identified. Many Western countries have faced radical
leftists, but only Greek law enforcement has zero
accomplishments.

Few Greeks believe police failure is an accident.
Repeatedly, key information about investigations is
leaked to the tabloid newspapers. Last fall, six
months of hard work by some of Scotland Yard's best
investigators - sent to Greece after the murder of the
British defense attache in June - was exposed in two
Athens dailies. The information could come only from
inside the "elite" counterterrorist forces.

Time and again, witnesses who have given police
"secret" testimony have received threatening phone
calls or seen their cars firebombed by way of warning.
Why should anyone help the police when they can expect
their identity to be in terrorist hands in short
order?

Washington bends over backwards not to antagonize
friendly governments, but last year gave Greece
failing grades in the security field three times. In
May the State Department's annual report on global
terrorism specified Colombia and Greece as the two
most problematic countries.

In June, a bipartisan National Commission on Terrorism
identified 146 anti-American terrorist attacks in
Greece (all unsolved) over 25 years and recommended
Greece and Pakistan be subject to legal sanctions for
failure to cooperate. In December the Federal Aviation
Administration gave Greece a failing grade in aviation
security standards, not related to November 17 but
symptomatic of the overall security problem.

Then, on Feb. 7 CIA Director George Tenet told a
Senate committee of "a major vulnerability" of the
2004 Olympics scheduled for Athens, saying Greek
authorities "need to take this terrorist threat far
more seriously than it's been taken in the past."

During three years in the US Embassy in Athens, I
learned the hard way why official cooperation with
Greek security authorities has so far accomplished
nothing. A top Greek law-enforcement official told me
his agency intended to "wait out" the terrorists,
hoping they would give up and retire. A
political-level official of the Foreign Ministry
bluntly told me Greece has nothing to fear from
Washington because his ministry exercises more
influence on Capitol Hill than does the State
Department. Last year, a senior editor of the most
respected daily paper in Athens dismissed November 17
as an American problem, not a Greek one.

The official approach is to belittle the problem
abroad to protect the important tourism industry
rather than enforce the law at home.

The Bush administration must treat anti-American
attacks in Greece as no different from terrorism
elsewhere. To start, it should tell Greek leaders it
could not certify Athens as safe for American athletes
and fans during the 2004 Olympics if November 17 is
not destroyed.

The danger of the national humiliation that would
follow an American boycott should convince Athens at
last that terrorism requires action rather than
rhetoric. Greek authorities can deal with this problem
if they want to, and Washington should make certain
they do.

E. Wayne Merry, a former State Department and Pentagon
official, is a senior associate at the American
Foreign Policy Council in Washington.


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