London - The BBC World Service has taken a policy decision not to describe the attacks on the US as "terrorism".
Mark Damazer, the BBC's deputy director of news, said the service would lose its reputation for impartiality around the world if it were seen to use such a subjective term.
While guests and contributors to World Service programmes may describe the deliberate flying of jet planes into the World Trade Centre as acts of terror, news correspondents use more neutral terms such as "attack".
Mr Damazer, speaking in a debate about television coverage of September 11th at the Newsworld conference in Barcelona, insisted the decision was not intended to downgrade the horror of the event. But if the word terrorism was used there would be implications for the description of more subjective acts of terror such as those carried out by Hamas in the Middle East or ETA in Spain.