SEA urged to do more to cut terrorist financing

CEBU — The United Nations’ top counterterrorism official sounded the alarm yesterday on the unchecked flow of funds to terror groups in Southeast Asia and called on countries in the region to tighten their financial systems to choke off funding for terrorist activities.

On the opening day of a conference to study how to deal with terrorism in the region, Ellen Margrethe Loj, who chairs the UN Security Council’s counterterrorism committee, said more than half of the countries in Southeast Asia still needed to enact laws to curb terror financing.

Loj told delegates at the three-day meeting here yesterday that terrorist organizations may be channeling funds through informal remittance systems to religious and charitable groups.

"Progress has been much slower in relation to laws criminalizing the financing of terrorism, with more than half of the countries of Southeast Asia yet to enact such laws, and almost half not having yet ratified the international convention concerning the financing of terrorism," said Loj, who is also Denmark’s ambassador to the United Nations.

Attempts by terrorists to find new, unregulated ways of channeling funds pose a particular challenge to efforts to cut terror money, she said.

Countries also need to promote intercultural dialogue and promote the "absolute unacceptability" of terror as a means of achieving any end, Loj said.

Loj did not give estimates as to how much money was circulating among terror organizations in the region, where al-Qaeda-linked groups like the Jemaah Islamiyah and Abu Sayyaf operate.

"Thus a particular challenge relates to choking off all available means of financing terrorism," Loj said.

Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden was widely believed to have poured funds for the Abu Sayyaf through Islamic schools and relief organizations in Mindanao. A brother-in-law of Laden used to head a charitable institution in Mindanao but it has since shut down.

Loj at the same time noted a growing appreciation among Southeast Asian countries of the ways by which funds from organized crime — such as drug trafficking — may be channeled to support terror organizations in a manner similar to other regions of the world.

Benjamin Defensor, a former Armed Forces chief and chief of the APEC counterterrorism task force, said the main goal of the first Philippine Counter-Terrorism Experts Conference (CTEC) is to find policies that address the root causes of terrorism.

He said delegates would also consider how developing countries might strike a balance between counterterrorism moves and protecting their cultures and religions.

East Timor Foreign Minister and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Jose Ramos-Horta urged governments to strike a balance between fighting the scourge of terrorism and protecting civil liberties and human rights.

"Ideas are the main weapon in this fight," he said, adding that ideologically inspired terrorists of the 1960s and 1970s in Europe were defeated by the power of superior ideas, such as belief in tolerance, democracy and economic prosperity.

"The superior morality of the rule of law, democratic and transparent government and respect for diversity are the most powerful weapons against extremism and intolerance," he said.

President Arroyo, a staunch backer of the US-led campaign against terrorism, called for reassessing terrorism’s nature and root causes, and a strategy that goes beyond political and military responses to the scourge.

"The challenge lies in finding a ‘middle way’ to address terrorism and the psycho-social, economic and political issues that bear upon it," she said in a statement read by Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita. "As we must aim to subdue terrorists and avert their plans, so too must we fight poverty and social inequality."

The European Union delegation to the CTEC for its part said it is reinforcing its cooperation with the ASEAN Regional Forum and called for closer collective action among regional groupings to stop the flow of terror funds.

Differing outlooks on the US-led anti-terror campaign are pronounced in Southeast Asia — considered a hotspot for Islamic militants.

The predominantly Christian Philippines has allowed US troops to train and arm soldiers fighting al-Qaeda-linked militants in the south — something unthinkable in Muslim-majority neighbors Indonesia and Malaysia.

When Australian Prime Minister John Howard suggested his country had the right to launch preemptive strikes on terror targets in Asia, several Asian countries strongly protested. — With AP