PARIS, 24 June 2003 — The United Nations will issue a report next week showing Osama Bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda militant network has some 800 members ready to strike economic or tourist targets, a French consultant to the report said yesterday.
Roland Jacquard, head of the International Observatory on Terrorism, said Bin Laden sent this “third generation of Al-Qaeda” from Afghanistan before US-led forces toppled Kabul’s Taleban leadership in November 2001.
The Washington Post reported Sunday that the report would show that UN travel and arms sanctions on members of the Al-Qaeda network had not succeeded in capturing a single suspect person or weapon crossing international borders.
“The report of the UN Security Council... which will appear next week, will show that a third generation of Al-Qaeda is forming,” Jacquard told France 2 television. “They are people with solid intellectual and paramilitary training and they have spread out to several countries where they can act on their own orders,” he said.
Jacquard said it was becoming increasingly difficult for intelligence services to track these Al-Qaeda members, whom he described as extremely dangerous. He said they had apparently picked economic and tourist sites as their next targets.
Thailand had recently arrested suspected militants in possession of the radioactive material cesium, he said.
