NEW DELHI, Nov 20: The union home minister Amit Shah has urged all the countries to jointly fight the scourge of terrorism in the world underlining the fact that no country could defeat terrorism alone.
Addressing the concluding session of the third “No Money for Terror” (NMFT) Ministerial Conference on Counter-Terrorism Financing in New Delhi on Saturday, Shah said the international community must continue to fight shoulder to shoulder against this increasingly complex and borderless threat reiterating what the Prime Minister Narendra Modi had told the inaugural session that some countries and their agencies had made terrorism their state policy while some other indirectly support terrorism by extending protection to the terrorists, a veiled attack on Pakistan and China.
“In these terror havens, it’s necessary to shackle their unrestrained activities along with economic crackdown. All countries have to rise above their geo-political interests,” Mr. Shah said. “I believe that terrorism has no international boundaries, so all countries should think beyond politics and cooperate with each other,” Mr. Shah said.
He called for transparency in intelligence sharing among international community to defeat this “borderless threat” of terrorism. “Our first commitment should be cooperation with transparency. All countries, all organizations, must pledge complete transparency in sharing intelligence in a better and more effective manner,” he said.
Citing action by India against an organisation promoting radicalisation among youths, the home minister said every country should identify and take stringent action against such organisations. He said we have to fight this war against terrorism and terrorist groups, in every geographical space, in every virtual space.
“India has sensed the need for permanency of this unique initiative of NMFT, in order to sustain the continued global focus on countering the financing of terrorism. Time was ripe for a Permanent Secretariat to be established,” he said, adding that a proposal had been made to set it in India.
He said the approach to fight terrorism should be based on five pillars — comprehensive monitoring framework involving cooperation, coordination, and collaboration among all intelligence and investigative agencies, the strategy of “Trace, Target, and Terminate”, to be adopted from low-level economic offenses to more organized economic crimes, strengthening and harmonizing the legal structures related to terror finance, robust mechanism against the misuse of next generation technology and strengthening the legal and regulatory framework for asset recover.
(Manas Dasgupta)
