India seeks stepped up international efforts against terrorism

UNITED NATIONS: Warning that terrorism constitutes the most serious challenge to global peace and security, India has asked the international community to step up efforts to expose links between terrorists and their support networks and destroy their safe havens.

"Today, terrorists are not only truly globalised, but are also waging an asymmetric warfare against the international community. They recruit in one country, raise funds in another and operate in others," India's Permanent Representative to the UN Hardeep Singh Puri said here.

"They have global logistical and supply chains; they have developed transnational financial systems; they use the latest and most sophisticated technologies and have command and control mechanisms that are able to operate across continents on a real-time basis," he said.

Puri, who is also Chairman of the Counter-Terrorism Committee, was speaking at the UN Secretary General's Symposium on International Counter-Terrorism Cooperation.

He said concerted international efforts are required to identify and expose the linkages that exist between terrorists and their supporters and to destroy terrorist safe havens, their financial flows and their support networks.

Countries, including India, have been victims of this scourge for several decades, with the 9/11 attacks bringing home to the western world its devastating consequences, Puri said.

Despite efforts by the international community, there has been no let up in terrorist violence and the world continues to confront the challenge emanating from the epicentres of terrorism, he said.