LONDON - Amnesty International secretary general Irene Khan spoke with AFP on Wednesday after launching the group's annual report, a damning review of the erosion of human rights amid the US-led "war on terror".

AFP: You argue that strategies employed in the US-led "war on terror" are ineffective in stemming terrorist operations, and note the Beslan school hostage crisis, the Madrid train bombings and the ongoing insurgency in Iraq. How should governments act, then, to counter such attacks?

IRENE KHAN: If you look at the "war on terror", there are armed groups who are actually operating with great barbarity. Directly influencing them would difficult becuase they don't care about human rights. On the other hand, they are getting support. They are getting arms from someone, they are getting money from someone, they are getting support from several communities within which they survive or from which they recruit.
What we've been pushing for a number of years is that we address those causes -- suppliers, enablers, but also winning the hearts and minds of people who feel they are living in an unfair environment and therefore the only option is violence.
If you look at situations like Chechnya, or the Middle East, or even, now, Iraq, that kind of exclusion is damaging for stability, on the one hand, but very lucrative for terrorist groups, on the other hand. You don't win the hearts and minds of people by stigmatizing entire communities or by creating martyrs of the perpetrators. That's why we believe that the long-term strategy for security has to be based on a respect for human rights.

AFP: You argue that the United Nations is "conflicted and weak", unable to hold its member states to account for rights abuses and unable take action at its Human Rights Commission? Why is this?

KHAN: I think it is the result of its member states... pushing their own national interests.
Because of the polarization that has happened (in the wake of the September 11 attacks on the United States in 2001) ... it has made it more difficult for international organizations to work, particularly when they are being attacked, when they are being undermined, when there are unilateral approaches being taken.
That's very important from our perspective because human rights depends on the multilateral machinery.... If you destroy that multilateral framework, you actually destroy human rights, and that's happening now.
We hope that the UN reform initiative will lead to some change. I have mixed feelings about it in the current environment. But I hope that governments will put the longer-term interests above their immediate concerns.

AFP: You assign the lion's share of blame for rights abuses in 2004 to governments, not armed groups. Why have the latter gotten off so lightly?

KHAN: We do recognize there are many countries -- Africa is a prime example -- where armed groups are pushing the boundaries of human rights into darker areas than ever before.
We are constantly looking for opportunities to campaign to also change the behavior of these armed groups... not all of them are necessarily worried about their international image.
We intend to increase our work in that area because we see them as a major actor on the human rights stage now.
But I should add that as far as governments are concerned, they are the ones who are signing up to the human rights treaties.... What armed groups do is no excuse for governments to perform in kind.

AFP: What are Amnesty's priorities in 2005?

KHAN: Amnesty International's top priorities this year are our work to stop violence against women, our work to promote arms control -- particularly small arms and conventional weapons -- and our work to fight this erosion of the ban on torture.

AFP: One of the sole optimistic points in your report is the rise of popular protest, including a mass protest against the Madrid bombings in Spain, anti-globalization "social forums" and the democratic movement in Ukraine. Can this kind of global activism influence governments which are bending human rights law?

KHAN: Look historically, look at Eastern Europe. The Berlin Wall came down because of what people were doing. The Helsinki process was about building bridges, with people and civil society concerns. Where there has been massive change on that scale, it has come because people wanted it.
People are hungry for justice and freedom.

05/25/2005 13:42 GMT