In a joint letter to Bush early last month (January, 2002), eight leading American human rights groups said his order authorizing the tribunals--which could impose the death penalty--will be cited by foreign dictators "for decades to come" as a justification for summary executions. The credibility and effectiveness of the United States in opposing such repressive procedures will be seriously harmed by this precedent.

Compliance with the Security Council requirements "could lead to unwarranted infringement on civil liberties," Bacre Waly Ndiaye, the chief human rights officer at the U.N. Secretariat, told the council's new counterterrorism committee. "There is evidence that some countries are now introducing measures that may erode core human rights safeguards."

In an unexpectedly swift response to the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the Security Council called on U.N. members on Sept. 28 to provide information within 90 days about their legal restrictions on fund-raising, financial transfers, arms acquisition and immigration.

But there is no agreement on what constitutes terrorist activity, U.N. experts say, and some governments are presenting what critics contend are police-state measures as part of the U.N.-endorsed campaign.

"In some countries," Ndiaye told the counterterror committee at its Dec. 13 meeting, "nonviolent activities have been considered as terrorism, and excessive measures have been taken to suppress or restrict individual rights, including the presumption of innocence, the right to a fair trial, freedom from torture, privacy rights, freedom of expression and assembly, and the right to seek asylum."

"We are going to see repeated examples of governments using the new security environment as a pretext for silencing dissidents," he said. "This gives a green light to the Mugabes of the world to go after their opponents under the cover of what the U.S. and the U.K. are doing" to fight terror.

The chairman of the Security Council's counterterrorism committee, British Ambassador Jeremy Greenstock, has agreed to Ndiaye's request that he add a human rights specialist to the committee's advisors, who already include specialists on money laundering and intelligence gathering. But the council's priority is to combat terrorism.

"The counterterrorism committee is not going to be the tool to resolve human rights problems around the world," said a European official at the committee who asked not to be named. The U.N.'s own human rights advocates are limited to an advisory role in Security Council proceedings, noted Ndiaye, the New York deputy of Mary Robinson, the Geneva-based U.N. high commissioner for human rights. She in turn reports to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

Robinson, a former president of Ireland, is viewed with suspicion in Washington, Moscow and Beijing because of liberal stands that are widely admired by human rights activists. Russia and China have publicly interpreted the Security Council's counterterror push as an endorsement of their own armed campaigns against Muslim rebels, which have drawn strong criticism at U.N. human rights forums.

Ndiaye carefully refrained from identifying those countries, but human rights advocates quickly came up with a long list, from Algeria to Zimbabwe. In an interview at his office here last week, Ndiaye said he was concerned that the campaign could backfire and undermine U.N. efforts to promote democracy and the rule of law in Eastern Europe, Southeast Asia and his native West Africa.

"The challenge is how to make counterterrorism measures compatible with human rights," he said. "Unfortunately, under the guise of fighting terror, some governments are pursuing other agendas. Our concern is that this may provide cover to many governments to get rid of their opponents."

On Dec. 20, the Cuban legislature, with President Fidel Castro presiding, unanimously passed a law that state media said expanded the application of capital punishment for crimes defined as terrorism, including the use of the Internet to incite political violence.

A week earlier, the government of Zimbabwe published a proposed law that would make it a crime to "undermine the authority of or insult" President Robert Mugabe, who is again seeking reelection. Mugabe's aides defended the legislation as necessary to combat terrorists, a category they said includes most of the president's opponents as well as critical journalists. "We agree with President Bush that anyone who harbors, finances or defends a terrorist is himself a terrorist," a presidential spokesman said.

In Central Asia, the government of Uzbekistan has defended its jailing of moderate Islamist opponents as part of the world campaign against "evildoers," while Kyrgyzstan has intensified internal travel controls on dissidents.

The trend to toughen statutes aimed primarily at domestic dissent worries advocates such as Michael Posner, executive director of the New York-based Lawyers Committee for Human Rights.

By the midnight deadline Thursday, more than 100 of the U.N.'s 189 member states had filed their replies to the council, and most of the rest pledged to submit responses when the U.N. resumes sessions early this month. The published responses range from long catalogs of efforts to disrupt terrorist networks to cursory reiterations of official policy.

The U.S. report, which American officials say was intended as a "template" for other countries, runs 23 pages. Venezuela, which has been accused of sheltering Colombian terrorists, sent a two-page memo pledging cooperation with the council and summarizing its long-standing international treaty commitments. The hard-line military regime in Myanmar, in an equally terse submission, depicted itself as a victim of global terrorism, citing last year's occupation of its embassy in Bangkok, Thailand, by dissidents it labeled "expatriate terrorists."

Within Myanmar itself, however, "there are no terrorists," the government assured the Security Council. One of the first Middle Eastern submissions came from Syria, which is poised to join the council for a two-year term this month. The Syrian response makes a virtue of Syria's strict controls over both the economy and the political system, contending that financial support for terrorists is effectively curtailed by the absence of any private banking system or independent charities. The Syrians cite as a further deterrent their "harsh penalties" for threats to the public order, including capital punishment for such offenses as the "disruption of means of information, communications or transport."

The United States still officially calls Syria a terrorist state because of its backing of Hezbollah guerrillas in southern Lebanon and because of Damascus' history as a haven for Islamic Jihad and other militant Palestinian factions. Syria asserted in its report that although it has ratified several regional and international conventions against terrorism, the "legitimate struggle against foreign occupation" does not fall under the definition of terrorism in these treaties. Syria, which does not recognize Israel, condones armed attacks by Palestinians within Israel's borders as well as in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Israeli and Palestinian diplomats said in interviews that the U.N. counter terror push has already blunted outside criticism of methods