by Monica Chamness
Staff Writer
The dust has settled and the American people have done their best to go about a normal life after Sept.11. But according to one expert, things may not be any better.
“We have a lot to do to organize ourselves so security is more on our agenda than speed and efficiency,” said Peter Burleigh, retired U.S. ambassador, speaking to the Meninak Club Monday at the Radisson. “Airports and our borders are examples. We’re now taking steps to regulate both more conscientiously, and in my view, we’re not doing a very good job of it. The airline thing is still a mess. If you have a connecting flight, they’re not matching bags to passengers on the second flight. Our ports and nuclear power plants are vulnerable. It takes money; it takes forces. The baggage checkers at the airport, I think, are kind of a joke — most places I’ve traveled anyway. I wouldn’t consider ourselves safe.”
Setting a precedent in international law, the governments of England and the U.S. have sponsored a resolution, which requires members of the United Nations to actively expose terrorists and report the findings.
The plan includes sharing information and intelligence, mandating cooperative law enforcement efforts, monitoring financial institutions linked to terrorists, monitoring all groups considered to have terrorist roots, tracking the movement of terrorists and taking steps in their countries to criminalize terrorist acts.
“All of this is new essentially,” said Burleigh. “There has been some of this kind of cooperation between friendly states like between the U.S. and our NATO allies, but as a worldwide effort, this has not happened before and already the positive results are beginning to come in.”
Burleigh says future trouble spots include Yemen, Somalia, Sudan and Iraq. He cautions to keep an eye on small nations torn by internal conflict such as Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines and Greece.
“Outside of Afghanistan, they [al-Qaida terrorists] were most active and capably organized in Southeast Asia,” he said. “Our attention is so focused on the Middle East that people aren’t thinking about Southeast Asia.”
According to Burleigh, the State Department listed 29 terrorist organizations prior to Sept. 11. That number has increased to 51.
“Our intelligence community has said that there are al-Qaida members and cells in perhaps more than 60 countries around the world.”
Unsuspecting countries far from the limelight are prime targets.
“They would look for as soft a spot as they could find where you wouldn’t be thinking of, which is why they were looking at Singapore,” said Burleigh, who has served as deputy representative to the United Nations, the U.S. ambassador to Sri Lanka and has held senior positions at the State Department, including coordinator of the Office of Counter-Terrorism before retiring last August.