Reuters reports that U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said on Thursday that some groups sometimes described as terrorist might be seeking to redress grievances, gain rights or achieve freedom from oppressors. \"In language that contrasts strongly with the Bush administration\'s previous rhetoric on terrorism,\" Reuters reported, \"[Powell] said that not every case would be \'black and white\' and that there would be \'gray areas\' that might need to be treated politically.\"
Powell told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that Bin Laden\'s Al-Qaeda organization is a clear case of a terrorist group, as \"probably\" are the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia and the Real Irish Republican Army in Northern Ireland. \"But then you start to run into areas where one man\'s terrorist is another man\'s freedom fighter, and that\'s where you have to apply judgment,\'\' he added. \"To test whether groups qualify as targets against which the United States could sustain an alliance, one would have to ask whether they have a better way to \'express grievances\', \'change the political problem,\' and \'gain their rights,\' Powell said. \"These are difficult calls to make... You can be quite challenged in explaining these differences with respect to the Middle East,\'\' he added.
Powell told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that Bin Laden\'s Al-Qaeda organization is a clear case of a terrorist group, as \"probably\" are the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia and the Real Irish Republican Army in Northern Ireland. \"But then you start to run into areas where one man\'s terrorist is another man\'s freedom fighter, and that\'s where you have to apply judgment,\'\' he added. \"To test whether groups qualify as targets against which the United States could sustain an alliance, one would have to ask whether they have a better way to \'express grievances\', \'change the political problem,\' and \'gain their rights,\' Powell said. \"These are difficult calls to make... You can be quite challenged in explaining these differences with respect to the Middle East,\'\' he added.