27 May 1996
The Washington Post
Malcolm Rifkind

Punishing The Wrong Party

Congress recently decided on unilateral and extra-territorial action against those who trade with Cuba. It is contemplating similar action against foreign companies that trade with Libya and Iran. A recent editorial in the Washington Post {"Loner," May 12} was critical of U.S. allies for complaining about these proposed trade sanctions.

Britain has no truck with terrorism. We share America's outrage at the shooting down of the Cuban exiles' aircraft. We condemned it straightaway.

We led the drive, through mul tilateral action agreed upon in the United Nations, to make Libya hand over for trial those who blew up the Pan Am plane over Lockerbie in my native Scotland. This terrorist attack took place against a backdrop of sustained Libyan support for international terrorism, including the provision to the IRA of weapons and explosives that have killed British civilians.

We lose no opportunity to bring home to Iran that its terrorism too must cease and that the fatwa on my countryman Salman Rushdie must be lifted. The European Union's "critical" dialogue with Iran is just that: a means of spelling out what Tehran must do and that terrorism is unacceptable.

Thus we have no quarrel with the aims of Congress. We too seek to change the behavior of those countries that give us cause for concern. But we disagree strongly with the means Congress envisages.

Secondary boycotts are wrong in principle. Like the United States, we never recognized the Arab boycott on firms trading with Israel. The cases are precisely comparable. No one country has the right to tell companies in another country how they should behave in third countries. When sovereign nations place limits on the trade that their citizens may pursue, they do so by their own volition and/or by adhering to the will of the international community expressed by the U.N. Security Council. We and you jealously defend that principle.

Moreover, secondary boycotts do not work, as the Arab example showed.

Worse, they produce results which the proponents do not seek. New U.S. sanctions on European firms would do damage, but not to Cuba, Iran and Libya.

First, they would cause division among Western allies who should be working together to combat terrorism. We are determined to secure justice for the families of the victims of Pan Am, Lockerbie, and the French UTA airliner. These were international crimes. We must work through the international consensus established at the United Nations to keep the pressure on Libya. The target must be Libya, not those faithfully applying U.N. sanctions. It makes no sense to give Libya the satisfaction of seeing its principal opponents fall out, as the Libyan government has unsuccessfully sought to contrive for five years.

Second, sanctions would penalize American workers. Is it really in America's interest that potential investors in Britain should be scared off from creating new jobs for Americans?

Hitting your ally doesn't harm your opponent. Rather than advocate shortsighted unilateral action, destructive of concerted action and common purpose, we should concentrate on closer cooperation in the fight against the terrorist. And let's not allow our free trade principles to become yet another victim of terrorism.

The writer is Britain's Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs.

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