UN report blames govts’ failure to cooperate: To stop terror financing
NEW YORK, Dec 17: Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda terrorist network has continued to receive funds through various sources for its terrorist activities because governments have failed to cooperate and expose the links, a UN group formed to monitor anti-terrorist efforts said in a report Tuesday.
Failures include providing names of terrorists or their organizations to the UN Security Council’s Monitoring Group, which has resulted in “degrading the value” of a UN list set up by the group.
“This approach has degraded the value of the list, which the group considers to be one of the key instruments supporting international cooperation” in the fight against terrorism, the group said.
The report also said Al Qaeda has remained an “insidious mass movement and no country or group of countries can handle the problem alone.”
The UN list now has 104 names of terrorists and organizations. The identification of the terrorists and their groups is aimed at helping governments to freeze assets belonging to them, ban their travels and impose arms embargo.
The report said that trained Al Qaeda operatives “remain at large and should be designated by states as terrorists. (But) several governments have issued and/or reaffirmed warnings concerning possible further Al Qaeda attacks.”
It said the bombing of a discotheque in Bali, Indonesia, in October, and the suicide bombing against an Israeli-owned hotel in Mombasa, Kenya, in November, were warnings that governments should tighten their cooperation. Some 200 people were killed in Bali, and in Mombasa, three Israelis and 10 Kenyans were killed.
“The global effort to combat the financing of terrorism continues to face many challenges, stemming from the complexities of international transactions and the uneven application of regulatory and control measures,” the report said.
Despite new anti-terrorist banking regulations on land as well as in offshore financial centers, “serious problems remain, and al- Qaeda is still able to receive money.”
The report said charitable groups and non-governmental organizations suspected of helping Al Qaeda, which are unregulated by states, continue to present a “major problem.”
It said many Al Qaeda operatives, under various forms, in Europe, Southeast Asia, Afghanistan and Pakistan, have remained free and unidentified. It said even if governments in those regions were able to identify them, they have failed to communicate “sufficiently to other jurisdiction” or provide names to the UN list.
The Monitoring Group was formed after September 11, 2001 by the UN Security Council to monitor efforts by and make recommendations to governments on ways to fight international terrorism.
It said Al Qaeda will survive any anti-terrorist campaigns and recruit new operatives if governments fail to share information and implement global financial controls over funds suspected to go to terrorists and their organizations.—dpa
