CAIRO, April 29, 2018 - The Speaker of the House of Deputies, Dr Ali Abdel Aal, said on Sunday there weren't two kinds of extremism--- good extremism and violent extremism. Extremism is one and it leads to terrorism, he said. In an inaugural speech to the 14th conference of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Union of the Mediterranean, held in Cairo under the slogan "Combating terrorism in the Euro-Med region", Dr Abdel Aal said that all religions should be respected and held in high esteem.Terrorism, he said, was not linked to any religion, whether Islam, Christianity or Judaism. Every citizen has the freedom to adopt any religion, but terrorism has no religion or homeland and all peoples have felt its bad effects. There should be a strict determination to fight terrorism and extremism in addition to drying up its finances, he said. The participants called for activating co-operation among the countries of the Euro Mediterranean to fight terrorism and extremist organisations.This co-operation, they said, had become urgent in the light of the threat posed by this heinous phenomenon to all communities. A member of the European parliament said that terrorism was a challenge to all countries. All countries and governments should rally their efforts to get rid of this phenomenon. He said that confronting terrorism should depend on exchanging information among countries on terrorist organisations and drying up its funding. New strategies for uprooting this phenomenon should be adopted through offering solutions to the crises of poverty and employment. A member of the Belgian parliament said: "Fighting terrorism is not a wish in itself, but economy should be boosted, poverty should be combated, human rights should be encouraged and legislation to resist terrorist organisations should be strengthened so as to put an end to terrorism worldwide," he said. A member of the Greek parliament said that Egypt was one of the pillars of security and stability in the East Mediterranean due to its important strategy and heavy political weight in the region.
