2007年VOA标准英语-US Says Terror Attacks Up 25 Percent Worldwide

By David Gollust
Washington
30 April 2007
 

A U.S. State Department report Tuesday said terrorist incidents and casualties attributed to them rose sharply in 2006. Most of the increase was due to the soaring violence in Iraq. VOA's David Gollust reports from the State Department.

The annual report, mandated¹ by Congress, paints a grim picture but officials here nonetheless are claiming some strides in the international struggle against terrorism.

The document, citing figures from the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center, said terrorist attacks worldwide increased by about 25 percent last year compared to 2005 to more than 14,000 total incidents.

Fatalities² attributed to those attacks jumped by about 40 per cent to more than 20,000 with about two-thirds of the deaths occurring in Iraq, many of them in suicide bombings targeting large crowds.

The report acknowledges that since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, that country has become what it termed a "rallying cry" for terrorists.

But it says the intervention³ removed an abusive totalitarian regime that supported regional terrorism, and is allowing a new democratic political process to emerge.

The acting⁴ coordinator⁵ of the State Department's Office of Counterterrorism, Frank Urbancic, told reporters terrorists would like to make Iraq the kind of safe-haven they once had in Afghanistan.

"If the battle against terrorism isn't in Iraq, it's going to be somewhere else. It started out in Afghanistan. The terrorists are looking for places where they can operate, and that's what they're doing. So we can fight them in Iraq. We can fight them somewhere else," he said.

The report says the number of terror attacks in Afghanistan increased by almost 50 percent last year to nearly 750 incidents and that there was a similar rise in attacks in Africa, many in Sudan's troubled Darfur region.

But attacks were said to have declined in other areas including South and East Asia and in Europe and Russia, where no major terrorist incidents were reported.

Urbancic said in many areas, international cooperation and information-sharing have meant a less permissive operating environment for terrorist groups. "The terrorists are not omnipotent⁶ and they are not almighty⁷ and they have suffered real losses. We've been very successful against their leadership. We've been very successful in disrupting many of their networks. Not all of things that we've been successful in doing have been able to be made public. But there are great successes that are out there," he said.

The report says Iran remains⁸ the most significant state sponsor of terrorism, and continues efforts to destabilize Iraq by providing weapons, training and advice to Iraqi Shia militants⁹.

Four other countries - Syria, Cuba, Sudan and North Korea - are similarly listed as terrorism sponsors and are subject to U.S. sanctions.

However the report credits the Sudanese with increased cooperation in the anti-terrorism struggle and it notes that North Korea is not known to have sponsored any terrorist acts in 20 years.

As part of the six-party agreement on North Korea's nuclear program reached in February, the Bush administration has agreed to begin the process of removing Pyongyang from the U.S. terrorism list.

Libya, which renounced¹⁰ terrorism and weapons of mass destruction in 2003, was taken off the list last year.

1 mandated   

adj. 委托统治的

参考例句：

• Mandated desegregation of public schools. 命令解除公立学校中的种族隔离
• Britain was mandated to govern the former colony of German East Africa. 英国受权代管德国在东非的前殖民地。

2 fatalities   

n.恶性事故( fatality的名词复数 )；死亡；致命性；命运

参考例句：

• Several people were injured, but there were no fatalities. 有几个人受伤，但没有人死亡。
• The accident resulted in fatalities. 那宗意外道致多人死亡。 来自《简明英汉词典》

3 intervention   

n.介入，干涉，干预

参考例句：

• The government's intervention in this dispute will not help.政府对这场争论的干预不会起作用。
• Many people felt he would be hostile to the idea of foreign intervention.许多人觉得他会反对外来干预。

4 acting   

n.演戏，行为，假装；adj.代理的，临时的，演出用的

参考例句：

• Ignore her,she's just acting.别理她，她只是假装的。
• During the seventies,her acting career was in eclipse.在七十年代，她的表演生涯黯然失色。

5 coordinator   

n.协调人

参考例句：

• The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, headed by the Emergency Relief Coordinator, coordinates all UN emergency relief. 联合国人道主义事务协调厅在紧急救济协调员领导下，负责协调联合国的所有紧急救济工作。
• How am I supposed to find the client-relations coordinator? 我怎么才能找到客户关系协调员的办公室？

6 omnipotent   

adj.全能的，万能的

参考例句：

• When we are omnipotent we shall have no more need of science.我们达到万能以后就不需要科学了。
• Money is not omnipotent,but we can't survive without money.金钱不是万能的，但是没有金钱我们却无法生存。

7 almighty   

adj.全能的，万能的；很大的，很强的

参考例句：

• Those rebels did not really challenge Gods almighty power.这些叛徒没有对上帝的全能力量表示怀疑。
• It's almighty cold outside.外面冷得要命。

8 remains   

n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹

参考例句：

• He ate the remains of food hungrily.他狼吞虎咽地吃剩余的食物。
• The remains of the meal were fed to the dog.残羹剩饭喂狗了。

9 militants   

激进分子，好斗分子( militant的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• The militants have been sporadically fighting the government for years. 几年来，反叛分子一直对政府实施零星的战斗。
• Despite the onslaught, Palestinian militants managed to fire off rockets. 尽管如此，巴勒斯坦的激进分子仍然发射导弹。

10 renounced   

v.声明放弃( renounce的过去式和过去分词 )；宣布放弃；宣布与…决裂；宣布摒弃

参考例句：

• We have renounced the use of force to settle our disputes. 我们已再次宣布放弃使用武力来解决争端。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Andrew renounced his claim to the property. 安德鲁放弃了财产的所有权。 来自《简明英汉词典》