UN symposium for victims of terrorism proves controversial.

To read Reuters on the UN's "victims of terrorism" symposium is to get the impression that it was a feel-good photo op with one routine dark cloud making a brief appearance:

. . . Ban brushed aside reporters' questions on why no victims of "state terrorism" or speakers from Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan or the Palestinian territories were present.

The Inner City Press offers its own report the behind-the-scenes controversies, which were more complex than Reuters suggests:

UNITED NATIONS, September 8 —— On the eve of the UN's victims of terrorism symposium, organizing Assistant Secretary General Robert Orr was besieged by press questions about how the victims had been chosen, why no victims from Somalia, Afghanistan or Pakistan—or Sri Lanka for that matter—would be attending, and a right of veto the UN had apparently given to governments over victims from their country.

On Somalia, which Inner City Press asked about, Orr said the UN had tried, but there is a lack of "civil society" organizations to provide contacts with victims. While he claimed that the geographic spread tracked the incidence of terrorism, only one of 18 victims comes from Asia. This despite continuing attacks in Sri Lanka, where suicide bombing is said to have been invented. While all four of the symposium's funders, and four of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, are represented by victims, there is no victim from China, despite the characterization of Xingjian insurgents as terrorists, and deadly attacks during the Olympic Games this summer.

More troubling, Orr said that the government of each victim was consulted. Inner City Press asked what this meant in, for example, Colombia, from which Ingrid Betancourt is coming. Would victims of the pro-government paramilitaries not be invited? Orr did not dispute that governments were given veto rights. Rather, he bragged that no country exercised its veto right. But that's based on the proposals that the UN made.

More from Matthew Lee here.

The UN has not yet settled on the difference between a terrorist and a freedom fighter, which is why events like these continue to be politically sensitive. The IHT's claim that "[t]he Arab-Israeli conflict has been the fault line along which consensus has foundered" ain't even the half of it.