Terrorism "has no future" - Patriarch Kirill
Myshkin, September 10, Interfax - Terrorism "has no future because experience shows that terrorist acts fail to achieve the goals of the terrorists," Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia said in comments on a bombing in Vladikavkaz, southern Russia, on Thursday that claimed 17 lives and injured more than 100 people.
"Russia suffers from terrorism, and not only Russia. Terrorism has become the scourge of our times, it is a war without rules, a war that claims the lives of innocent people," Kirill said during a visit to a World War II memorial in Myshkin, the Yaroslavl Region.
Terrorists seek "to break the spirit of the people, to shake the determination of the government, to ruin the unity of the nation, to achieve their political or other goals in an extremely frightful and lawless way," he said.
"I am sure that terrorism has no future because experience shows that terrorist acts fail to achieve the goals of the terrorists," the Patriarch said.
"The sooner they come to realize this the less blood will be shed by them and their victims," he said.
He offered his condolences to "our entire people because those fatalities affect all of us."
Patriarch Kirill prayed for an end to all hostility and bloodshed, "so that people are able to solve even the hardest of problems, where there would seem to be no hope of mutual understanding, so that controversies and conflicts are overcome in a peaceful way and a life of wellbeing is created for our people."
Source: Helsingin Sanomat 2004, Mikael Storsjö, Jukka Mallinen, Heidi Hautala, Beslan and Kavkaz Center
- - - -