BRUSSELS, 30 January 2004 — UN chief Kofi Annan yesterday warned governments against abusing the threat of terrorism to justify violating human rights, in comments on the detainees at the US military base in Guantanamo Bay.

Annan, while not identifying the United States directly, said that restricting civil liberties by citing the “T word” in fact delivers what international terrorists want to achieve.

“If we are not careful we will hand to the terrorists a victory they cannot win on their own,” he told reporters, when asked for his views on Guantanamo, where over 600 suspects are detained.

He called for the rights of those accused of terrorism to be respected.

“We need to be careful not to get into a trap of believing there is a trade off between effective action against terrorism and human rights. There is no trade off,” he said.

“As I look around the world in some countries ... the ‘T’ word is being abused and exploited,” he said, lamenting that those who cited the word believed they “can do everything (they) want.”

There are approximately 660 detainees from 42 countries at Guantanamo. Most were captured in Afghanistan as part of the US fight on terror following the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks in the United States.

Twenty of the detainees are Europeans, including nine from Britain and six from France.

Annan also said that the Middle East peace process was “in distress but not dead” following the latest deadly bomb blast in Israel.

And he appealed for “courage and leadership” from the Israeli and the Palestinian administrations to unblock the peace process.

“We need to encourage and find ways of ending this cycle of violence, revenge and attacks as we’ve seen today,” he told a news conference in Brussels.

“I am sometimes frustrated and disappointed that we’ve not been able to press ahead with the road map as fast as we can,” he added, referring to an internationally backed peace plan.

“It is in distress but it is not dead,” he added.

“I would once again want to appeal to the leaders... to summon the courage and the leadership to get back to the table and begin to make reciprocal and parallel concessions and confidence-building measures to move the process ahead,” the UN chief said.

“We will do the best we can but they have to show the leadership for the sake of their own people and their nations. And that is what after all leadership is about.”