By Judy Aita
Washington File United Nations Correspondent

United Nations -- Calling for unity against terrorism and urging nations "to unite as a family as never before across all our differences," New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani October 1 opened a General Assembly session which is meeting to voice its own response to terrorism.

"Good intentions alone are not enough to conquer evil...It is action alone that counts," said Giuliani, who is the first New York mayor in 50 years to address the assembly.

"We need to reassert our right to live without fear," he said. "Here in New York, across America, and around the world with one clear voice, unanimously, we need to say we will not give in to terrorism.

"Surrounded by our friends of every faith, we know this is not a clash of civilizations. It is a conflict between murderers and humanity. This is not a question of retaliation or revenge. It is a matter of justice leading to peace," the mayor said.

"The only acceptable result is the complete and total eradication of terrorism."

Giuliani said that on September 11, 2001 New York City was attacked in an unprovoked act of war. More than 5,000 men, women and children of every race, religion and ethnicity were killed, he said, including people from 80 different nations.

"This was not just an attack on the city of New York or on the United States of America. It was an attack on the very idea of a free inclusive, and civil society," he said. "It was a direct assault on the founding principles of the United Nations itself....Indeed, this vicious attack places in jeopardy the whole purpose of the United Nations.

"The preamble to the U.N. Charter states that this organization exists to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person; to practice tolerance and live together in peace as good neighbors; and to unite our strength to maintain international peace and security," Giuliani said.

Urging people not to engage in group blame or group hatred, Giuliani said such actions are "exactly the evil we are confronting with these terrorists."

"If we're going to prevail over terror then our ideals and principles and values must transcend all forms of prejudice. This is an important part of the struggle against terrorism," he said.

"We have very strong and vibrant Muslim and Arab communities in New York City. They are an equally important part of the life of our city. We respect their religious beliefs," Giuliani said.

U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan and U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte began the debate, which is expected to last several days as more than 140 U.N. member nations signed on to explain their official positions on terrorism and make suggestions on what actions the international community might take to ensure that similar attacks are prevented in the future.

On September 28 the Security Council adopted a resolution, binding on all U.N. members, to cut off financial assets, end safe havens for terrorists, and strengthen cooperation between nations on finding terrorists and bringing them to justice.

In his first speech before the assembly, Negroponte, who is the chief U.S. envoy to the U.N., warned that the "spirit of cooperation is going to be tested" in the months and years ahead.

The ambassador said that ending terrorism "will require the sustained application of political will, a vital commitment to one another that infuses all of the measures we take today and will give us the courage to undertake unforeseeable actions tomorrow."

"The struggle we face will be lengthy. Its progress will be erratic," Negroponte said, adding, "this war won't be over until we shatter the global terrorists' ability to share information, techniques, personnel, money and weapons."

"And as we dismantle the terrorists' ability to leverage their resources by cross-border subterfuge, we must also shut down their activities in each and every member state. We cannot let them act together; we cannot let them act alone; we cannot let them act at all," the ambassador said.

"The United States, like all members, had the right to defend itself. But we do not feel alone in our struggle, and we are not proceeding alone," Negroponte said. "In this great house of nations, we have many friends. We know that."

Negroponte said the al-Qaida terrorist network has reached into the systems of global cooperation and communication which have been painstakingly established to bring the world closer together -- from civil aviation to telecommunications to financial services and to the free movement of people -- and turned these building blocks of peace into weapons of war.

Reflecting Giuliani's admonition, Negroponte stressed that the "war we wage is not a battle against Islam ...there is no division between the U.S. and Islam."

"The division that exists is between the civilized world and terror, between the rule of law and the chaos of crime, between a world at peace and a world in peril," he said.

The United States "helped defend Muslims in Kuwait. We helped defend Muslims in Bosnia and Kosovo. We remain the largest single provider of humanitarian aid to Afghanistan. There are over 1,200 mosques and two million Muslims in the United States, and their faith is a gift we revere and cherish," the ambassador said.

Negroponte, who spent his youth in New York City, said that "the unspeakable loss of life, the destruction of the World Trade Center, the suicidal flight into the walls of the Pentagon, the horrifying crash of a commercial airliner in a field in Pennsylvania -- were very different from the scourge of war our predecessors knew and pledged to end, but they were acts of war nonetheless."

Secretary General Kofi Annan told the Assembly, "the task now is to build on that wave of human solidarity -- to ensure that the momentum is not lost, to develop a broad, comprehensive and, above all, sustained strategy to combat terrorism and eradicate it from our world."

The General Assembly role must not be symbolic, the secretary general said. "It must signal the beginning of immediate, practical and far-reaching changes in the way this organization and its member states act against terrorism."

While the shock of the September 11 crimes has united the world, Annan said, "if we are to prevent such crimes from being committed again, we must stay united as we seek to eliminate terrorism."

Annan said that "terrorism will be defeated if the international community summons the will to unite in a broad coalition, or it will not be defeated at all."

"We are in a moral struggle to fight an evil that is anathema to all faiths. Every state and every people has a part to play," he said. "This was an attack on humanity and humanity must respond to it as one."

He warned that the greatest immediate danger is that a group or an individual acquires and uses a nuclear, biological or chemical weapon. He said nations must strengthen cooperation and tighten domestic efforts against the use or proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

Annan also called on the U.N. member nations to "strengthen controls over other types of weapons that pose grave dangers through terrorist use.... "This means doing more to ensure a ban on the sale of small arms to non-state groups; making progress in eliminating landmines; improving the physical protection of sensitive industrial facilities, including nuclear and chemical plants; and increased vigilance against cyberterrorist threats."

The secretary general further urged the assembly to complete the comprehensive convention on international terrorism.