The US is sending bulletins to police and intelligence services around the world, trying to create a global network that could help round up 3,000 people in about 30 countries who are suspected of working with Osama bin Laden.
In theory that network already exists, in the form of Interpol, the police agency representing 178 nations. But a lack of money and of trust among law enforcement and intelligence agencies has kept Interpol from becoming what it was designed to be, officials say.
Interpol's General Assembly is set to convene today in Budapest. The terror attacks on the US are rewriting Interpol's agenda and, perhaps, its future. The organization's leaders will seek the full cooperation of member forces and the FBI to bring suspects in the case to justice.
"At what point do we begin to share information internationally about people we suspect of being engaged in planning to engage in terrorist activity?" Interpol's new secretary-general, Ronald K. Noble, said. Noble, formerly Treasury Department undersecretary and a Justice Department official, is the first American to head the group.
Interpol's annual budget is about US$25 million -- not even a tenth of bin Laden's reputed inheritance. More important, walls of secrecy and suspicion among national police and intelligence services mean that an alarm raised in Pakistan, for example, or Malaysia may not reach the US.
Senior FBI officials say they have been loath to share sensitive information with the organization, whose members include nations like Iran, usually hostile to the US, or whose police and intelligence services are considered unreliable.
Noble said there was a looming question for Interpol: "Is the world ready for an international criminal database accessible by the public sector and the private sector?"
Furthermore, he asked, "Is the world prepared to have an international database where people not convicted of crimes but under suspicion are listed? If there's a Delta flight going from Paris to New York, does the manifest get run through the database? The analysiswill have to begin there.
BUILDUP: US General Dan Caine said Chinese military maneuvers are not routine exercises, but instead are ‘rehearsals for a forced unification’ with Taiwan China poses an increasingly aggressive threat to the US and deterring Beijing is the Pentagon’s top regional priority amid its rapid military buildup and invasion drills near Taiwan, US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said on Tuesday. “Our pacing threat is communist China,” Hegseth told the US House of Representatives Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense during an oversight hearing with US General Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “Beijing is preparing for war in the Indo-Pacific as part of its broader strategy to dominate that region and then the world,” Hegseth said, adding that if it succeeds, it could derail
CHIP WAR: The new restrictions are expected to cut off China’s access to Taiwan’s technologies, materials and equipment essential to building AI semiconductors Taiwan has blacklisted Huawei Technologies Co (華為) and Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯), dealing another major blow to the two companies spearheading China’s efforts to develop cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) chip technologies. The Ministry of Economic Affairs’ International Trade Administration has included Huawei, SMIC and several of their subsidiaries in an update of its so-called strategic high-tech commodities entity list, the latest version on its Web site showed on Saturday. It did not publicly announce the change. Other entities on the list include organizations such as the Taliban and al-Qaeda, as well as companies in China, Iran and elsewhere. Local companies need
CRITICISM: It is generally accepted that the Straits Forum is a CCP ‘united front’ platform, and anyone attending should maintain Taiwan’s dignity, the council said The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday said it deeply regrets that former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) echoed the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) “one China” principle and “united front” tactics by telling the Straits Forum that Taiwanese yearn for both sides of the Taiwan Strait to move toward “peace” and “integration.” The 17th annual Straits Forum yesterday opened in Xiamen, China, and while the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) local government heads were absent for the first time in 17 years, Ma attended the forum as “former KMT chairperson” and met with Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference Chairman Wang Huning (王滬寧). Wang
CROSS-STRAIT: The MAC said it barred the Chinese officials from attending an event, because they failed to provide guarantees that Taiwan would be treated with respect The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) on Friday night defended its decision to bar Chinese officials and tourism representatives from attending a tourism event in Taipei next month, citing the unsafe conditions for Taiwanese in China. The Taipei International Summer Travel Expo, organized by the Taiwan Tourism Exchange Association, is to run from July 18 to 21. China’s Taiwan Affairs Office spokeswoman Zhu Fenglian (朱鳳蓮) on Friday said that representatives from China’s travel industry were excluded from the expo. The Democratic Progressive Party government is obstructing cross-strait tourism exchange in a vain attempt to ignore the mainstream support for peaceful development
RSS