GENEVA, Jan 19: Jacques Rossier, the respected president of the Fondation Geneve Place Financiere, a banking industry trade association, has told President George Bush in no uncertain terms that his attempts to bring his war against terrorism to Switzerland will not only prove unsuccessful, they may also very well boomerang against Mr Bush and American interests throughout the world.

“Let us not forget,” Mr Rossier has been quoted as declaring to the US President, “that those who are terrorists for some happen to be freedom fighters for others.”

Mr Rossier, himself an official of an important private Swiss bank Darrier Hentsch, was reacting to increased pressure he says is being brought upon Switzerland’s banking industry by Mr Bush who, in the name of his war against terrorism, would like for Swiss bankers to automatically submit their transactions to American control.

The pressure recently brought to bear against the Swiss banking industry to effectively further weaken its banking secrecy laws, he says, is the most serious manifestation of such an attitude in a US-led campaign that has now lasted some 30 years.

Because of the Patriots Act, passed near unanimously by the US Congress in the wake of the Sept 11 attack on the World Trade Center, Mr Rossier says that it had been made clear to the Swiss banking industry that because of an “extraterritorial effects” clause in the act, Washington was now acting as if it had total jurisdiction over all banks that had subsidiaries on US soil, which is the case of most of the major Swiss banking institutions.

As a result of the act, affirms Mr Rossier, the United States was now threatening to boycott any banks present on US soil if they did not allow the United States to intervene in their non-US operations, indeed, he revealed, Washington had let it be known it could suspend the right to operate on US territory of any bank that did not comply with the wishes of the American authorities.

As far as Mr Rossier is concerned, such an attitude on Washington’s behalf threatens to upset what he characterizes as “the fragile balance between the ideal of liberty and the need for security.” The pressure brought to bear in recent weeks on the Swiss banking industry, he says, is being taken seriously by Swiss bankers, for the simple reason that they consider their presence necessary in US financial markets, which represent one- half of all financial activity around the world, especially when measured in terms of stock market capitalization.

Still, he notes, Switzerland considers its banking secrecy laws to be “non-negotiable,” and that the Swiss banking industry has already put into place, largely as a result of past US pressure brought to bear in the matter, a sufficient number of laws that allow the industry to perfectly control any attempts at banking fraud in general and the laundering of dirty money in particular.

Moreover, notes Pascal Couchepin, the Swiss minister in charge of the economy, Switzerland’s banking secrecy laws are not only “morally defensible,” Swiss public opinion also supports Switzerland’s decision not to kowtow to the increasing pressure brought to bear against its banking industry by Washington, which “has only resulted in an increased exasperation” on the part of the Swiss.