BERLIN, Nov 4: Nato’s top soldier said on Tuesday that lawless parts of Africa would increasingly provide a haven for extremist groups which

are stepping up recruitment there.

“Africa, with its large ungoverned spaces, is increasingly going to be a haven for terrorists, for merchants of weapons of mass destruction and for people who are engaged in illegal international activities,” said U.S. General James Jones, Nato’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe.

He told a news conference in Berlin that Nato patrols in the Mediterranean, in an operation named Active Endeavour, had dramatically improved security at sea and reduced illegal immigration into Europe.

But traffickers were responding by developing new land routes via the Balkans and North and sub-Saharan Africa. Those parts of Africa were showing clear signs of what he said was increased terrorist activity and recruitment.

“There’s a lot of recruiting going along. For people who are fairly desperate, it’s a fairly easy job to make a convert...We have to worry about that,” he said.

Jones cited potential security threats in Tunisia and Morocco, both targets of suspected al Qaeda attacks in the past two years, and Algeria, which was torn apart by Islamist violence for much of the 1990s.

He did not name any countries as potential extremist havens in sub-Saharan Africa, but security experts have long warned that states such as Somalia could provide a breeding ground for such groups in the same way that Sudan and Afghanistan played host to al Qaeda in the past.

East Africa has been a target of choice for al Qaeda, which is blamed for the bombing of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, and suspected of carrying out a car bomb attack that killed 15 at a hotel in Mombasa, Kenya, a year ago.

Jones said such threats would require a policy of “engagement” from Nato. That could take the form of training local armed forces and developing partnerships of the kind that the alliance has fostered with ex-communist East Bloc nations.

The former marine commander, who visited Iraq last week, described attacks on U.S. and foreign targets as the “aftershock” of the U.S.-led war to topple Saddam Hussein.

“What we’re seeing now is the aftershock. We have to get through the aftershock period, and I think we will,” Jones said.

He said it was “way too early” to compare the situation in Iraq with Vietnam, where he served at the height of the conflict in 1967-8.—Reuters