UNITED NATIONS, Feb 16: Governments should work more closely with Inter pol to identify lost and stolen passports and other travel documents in order to thwart terrorists planning and executing attacks , a UN Al Qaeda/Taliban sanctions monitoring team said on Tuesday.

The international community must also intensify efforts to track portable anti-aircraft missile systems, weapons of mass destruction and commercially available material that can be turned into explosives to help deter future operations, the experts team said in a report to the UN Security Council.

Mr Richard Barret, coordinator of the team, said the theft of passports and other travel documents was not unique to any particular region or country, adding it was prevalent all over the world.

The panel of experts was set up last year to evaluate the effectiveness of a UN program to crack down on the Al Qaeda network and Afghanistan's former Taliban rulers.

A UN Security Council resolution approved shortly after the Sept 11, 2001, attacks on the United States required all 191 UN member-nations to freeze the assets of any person or group suspected of ties to Al Qaeda or the Taliban.

The measure also ordered governments to block suspects' travel and bar them from obtaining arms, funds or other resources. To help governments know who to look for, a council committee maintains a list of people and groups believed to have links either to Al Qaeda or the Taliban.

The latest report by the expert panel said Al Qaeda remains a moving and constantly evolving target, requiring governments to continuously refine their programs to counter the group. The existing travel ban has failed to net any suspects, not because extremists do not travel but because the restrictions are too weak, the experts said.

Nearly 430,000 blank travel documents, including a large number of passports, have been stolen or lost and "law enforcement authorities have long identified a clear link between terrorist activities and the use of stolen or fraudulent travel documents", they said.

All governments should join Interpol, which keeps a database of stolen and lost travel documents, and register all such documents with the international police agency and quickly invalidate them, the experts said.

The council also should require governments to cancel any visa or residence permit issued to anyone on the UN list of terrorism suspects and either try them for crimes or send them home, they said.

The Security Council should also urge governments to beef up border controls to prevent terrorist groups from using couriers to smuggle gold, diamonds and other precious commodities to finance their operations, the panel said.

Finally, the UN council should consider restrictions on the use of the Internet to lure people "onto a terrorist path", the experts said. These could range from "stemming the distribution of extremist material inciting to violence" to requiring Internet service providers to verify who their customers are to adding to the UN list any Internet firm providing services "designed to promote acts of terrorism", the panel said.