PRESS BRIEFING BY CHAIRMAN OF MONITORING GROUP ON SANCTIONS AGAINST AL QAEDA, THE TALIBAN AND ASSOCIATES

PRESS BRIEFING BY CHAIRMAN OF MONITORING GROUP ON SANCTIONS

AGAINST AL QAEDA, THE TALIBAN AND ASSOCIATES

Great strides had been made in combating Al Qaeda, but the terrorist group still posed a major threat to global peace and security, the Chairman of a Security Council monitoring group said at a Headquarters briefing today.

Michael Chandler, who chairs the Monitoring Group on sanctions against Al Qaeda, the Taliban and associates, said that many Al Qaeda operatives remained at large and new recruits were constantly joining its ranks.  The terrorists had also formed alliances with national or regional extremist groups bent on using terror to achieve their objectives.

He emphasized the need to improve international cooperation, including broad information-sharing, cooperative police investigations and the application of system-wide financial controls, to keep Al Qaeda from resisting, recruiting and rearming.  “Al Qaeda is an insidious movement and no countries or group of countries can handle this problem alone”, he added.

The key to international cooperation, he said, was the United Nations Consolidated List, which was intended as a full catalogue of persons and entities making up or associated with Al Qaeda.  However, that List continued to include only a small subset of people identified as Al Qaeda members or known by some countries to be linked with terrorists.

He said the Monitoring Group’s third report -- which focused on measures taken against Al Qaeda to freeze financial and economic assets and impose a travel ban and arms embargo -- urged the 1267 Committee (dealing with sanctions against the Taliban) and the Security Council to encourage countries to provide the names of all individuals they had identified as Al Qaeda members or associates.  Those lists should include all people trained as terrorists in Al Qaeda's Afghanistan camps, in South-East Asia and elsewhere, particularly those schooled in explosives, hijacking and chemical or biological agents.

Noting that the Monitoring Group had identified 104 individuals from press reports and other information who did not yet appear to be on the United Nations list, he said it had asked countries whether or not those individuals should be on the United Nations list, and some had already come forward to confirm or refute the names.

Turning to financial sanctions against Al Qaeda, he said the group seemed to have disseminated or hidden many of its assets since the 11 September attacks on the United States last year, while the numbers of its benefactors had increased.  Perhaps Al Qaeda now depended more on charities to support its operations since such organizations were unregulated in several countries.

To effectively combat the financing of Al Qaeda, he stressed, banks and other financial institutions must lay down strict new customer rules and expand the use and filing of reports on suspicious transactions.  Al Qaeda had taken

full advantage of the absence of such measures, especially where wireless or similar remittance systems could be used to move money around.

The use of travel bans to combat Al Qaeda was also problematic, he said, since such measures could only be used if known or listed terrorists applied for visas or overtly presented themselves at a border point.  Both those scenarios were highly unlikely.

As for the arms embargo, he noted, the world was awash with small arms and explosives, and few additional measures were underway to control their smuggling or illegal sale.  More must be done to register and regulate arms brokers as well as to monitor arms transfers.  Also, the arms embargo should be implemented in geographically defined areas where Al Qaeda or its associates were known to be present.  The Monitoring Group's report proposed an embargo on Afghanistan, which would exempt bona fide weapons needed by government forces or law enforcement agencies.

Asked by a correspondent whether the Monitoring Group’s 104 possible terrorists had been identified through judicial processes or public information, Mr. Chandler replied that their names had appeared in the public domain with some indication that they were connected with Al Qaeda.  In such cases, the Monitoring Group was simply asking at this stage whether they should be on the list or not.

Noting that the present report was less gloomy that the previous one, another correspondent asked whether that reflected an improvement in the situation or pressure from governments that had been criticized in the previous document.

Mr. Chandler responded that more information was coming to light, which had allowed countries to gear up and apply more resources to the fight against terrorism.  The Monitoring Group had recently visited several countries and seen at first hand many positive signs that they were trying to get on top of Al Qaeda.

Asked how the Monitoring Group felt about the appearance of new Al Qaeda training camps in eastern Afghanistan, he replied that they were of great concern, since their emergence signified that people were still disillusioned enough to side with Al Qaeda.  Indeed, sympathy for the organization was widespread in some countries, he added.

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