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G-20 moves to freeze terrorist assets

Finance ministers of the Group of 20 nations agreed to freeze the assets of terrorists and implement a sweeping UN resolution against terrorist financing in a show of support for US goals following the Sept. 11 attacks.

With scores of riot police outside keeping protesters away from their meeting site, the ministers from the EU and 19 nations -- including the US, China, Russia and Saudi Arabia -- adopted an "action plan on terrorist financing" during talks Friday night and Saturday.

Canadian Finance Minister Paul Martin, the meeting's host, called the action plan a decisive step in coordinating global resources and support for cutting financing of terrorists such as Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network, blamed for the Sept. 11 attacks.

"Every single member of the G-20, without exception, has signed on to that action plan," Martin said.

The Saudi delegation refused interview requests Saturday. Saudi Arabia has supported the US-led anti-terrorism campaign but faces internal pressure from groups who share the views of bin Laden, a Saudi exile.

Martin said the G-20 nations agreed to move as quickly as possible on the plan, which also calls for making public the lists of terrorists with frozen assets and establishing or maintaining Financial Intelligence Units in each country to track terrorist financing.

However, he conceded it would take time to get countries outside the G-20 to sign on, and "even longer" to halt the informal methods of money laundering used by terrorists.

"One of the things that's happening here is we're learning as we're going," Martin said.

In the streets, hundreds of protesters opposed to the US-led military campaign in Afghanistan and the effects of globalization on the world's poor marched through the city and burned US flags at a downtown rally.

Smaller groups of demonstrators later knocked down metal barricades blocking streets around the meeting sites, and police responded with tear gas, rubber bullets, pepper spray and water blasted from a fire hose. Fourteen people were arrested Saturday, police said. Eight were detained Friday.

No injuries were reported Saturday, according to police, though at least one protester was seen bleeding from the head.

The closed-door G-20 meeting kicked off a weekend of discussions by the IMF and World Bank. An afternoon meeting of the IMF policy committee set Feb. 1 as the preferred date for countries to carry out anti-terrorism funding efforts and promised to provide funding and technical assistance to those countries needing it.

The Group of 20, created in 1999 to address international financial concerns, represents the EU and 19 nations: Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the US.

The IMF and World Bank also participate.
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