UN brands Uighur group 'terrorists'

The outlawed movement wants a separate Uighur state

The United Nations has added a separatist group active in north-west China to a list of organisations judged to be terrorist.

China welcomed the decision as justified, saying the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) had killed more than 160 people during a decade of attacks in Xinjiang province.

This is a thorough terrorist organisation

Kong Quan,
China's Foreign Ministry

The group, which seeks a separate state of East Turkestan, was put on the US terror list last month with American officials saying they believed it had links to al-Qaeda and was planning to attack their embassy in Kyrgyzstan.

A Chinese spokesman said the latest UN move - which had been proposed by Beijing - was the encouraging result of China's co-operation with the US and other countries in fighting terrorism.

A spokesman for China's foreign ministry, Kong Quan, said the group - which operates under several different names - was "one of the most dangerous terrorist organisations".

"The objective of the organisation is to split China through terrorist activities and to establish an Islamic state in Xinjiang by combining government and religion," he said.

Bombing blame

He blamed the movement for a May 1995 bombing in the Xinjiang capital of Urumqi and a March 1999 bombing in the southern Xinjiang city of Hetian.

"According to incomplete police statistics, a series of violent bombing, terrorist and assassination activities by this organisation has led to the death of 166 people and the injury to some 440," Mr Kong said.

"The ETIM is closely connected with [Osama] Bin Laden's al-Qaeda organisation.

"People have been trained by them to plot terrorist activities, so this is a thorough terrorist organisation."

Human rights groups have voiced concern that China has been using the US-led war on terror to crack down unfairly on Xinjiang's Muslim Uighur ethnic minority.