LONDON, 2 October 2005 — Intelligence and security chiefs from 27 European countries yesterday concluded a two-day summit held in London and chaired by MI5 director general Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller on counter-terrorism co-operation, especially through the drawing up of a “best practice guide” in an attempt to learn from the lessons of the London suicide bombings on July 7 and the botched attempts on July 21 and the Madrid train bombings last year.
The 27-nation Counter-Terrorism Group (CTG), comprising the 25 European Union member countries and Norway and Switzerland, according to the British Home Office, met for two days in London to discuss how they could draw on the experience of the two London bombings and the Madrid train bombings to protect themselves from further attacks and to prepare their responses if they are hit. The chairmanship of the CTG rotates according to the presidency of the EU, which is currently held by Britain.
The meeting held behind closed doors and away from the gaze of the media, according to the Home Office, had “agreed to build upon the existing program of mutual co-operation and intelligence-sharing focused on combating international terrorism”.
The meeting could not have come at a more poignant time as yet another two terrorist bombs against international targets exploded on the popular Indonesian tourist island of Bali yesterday. Early reports suggested at least nine people were killed with the death toll expected to rise further. The explosions in Kuta and the Jimbaran beach area came almost three years to the day when some 202 people, mostly Australian and British tourists, died in terrorist bombings in 2002.
It also coincided with the latest US anti-terrorist offensive in Iraq called ‘Operation Iron Fist’ which is focused in and around the town of Sadah, near Al-Qaim, in the Al-Anbar province on the border with Syria, which the US alleges is a haven for foreign terrorist insurgents crossing over from Syria.
It further coincides with British Defense Secretary John Reid’s first visit Afghanistan for talks with president Hamid Karzai. Around 900 British soldiers are already stationed in the country, and the figure could rise to 4,000 by next May, according to Reid.
The CTG was formed in the wake of the 9/11 attacks in the United States in 2001 and has been meeting on a regular basis ever since to discuss the international terrorist threat. Its formation reflected a belief among intelligence chiefs that international co-operation between agencies is vital if they are to combat fluid terrorist groups able to move easily from country to country. In early September, MI5 Director General Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, at a CTG conference of security chiefs held in the Hague in the Netherlands and hosted by the Dutch Intelligence Agency AIVD, discussed in depth the nature of the terrorist threat which the UK and the West were faced with, and how this threat could be pre-empted or contained to protect the citizens and the security of the countries.
“Governments face difficult decisions about how best to protect the public, without preventing normal life going on or damaging the economy,” stressed Dame Manningham-Buller. “We want people to continue their way of life and have confidence to make their own decisions on risk. Given we in the UK, and I expect the statistics are not so different here, receive over a hundred pieces of threat intelligence a week, i.e. intelligence pointing to a terrorist threat, decisions on what to do are difficult, especially as is so often the case if the intelligence is piecemeal and uncertain. The repercussions, another dilemma, of such decisions can be significant.”
International co-operation in the face of an international threat, she urged, was essential. The Hague meeting was vital because it was the first time that the European Counter-Terrorist Group met the Security Services of the ten EU accession countries into the CTG.
“In my area we are working through the CTG and have an extensive range of work in hand. We need to engage more extensively with partners outside the EU in order to put the threat within Europe into a broader context and we need to build both on the links to Europol and the relationship with the EU SitCen. I know some believe that international, or in this case EU, work can present a difficult dilemma with regard to national interests but, in my experience, substantial counter-terrorist work on a practical, tactical level works successfully every day on the basis of the relationships of mutual trust to which I referred at the start of my talk. And at the political and strategic level there is further important work in progress,” she added.
The UK, the Netherlands and beyond, she warned, faced a high level of threat. The scale of the problem has become more apparent “as the amount of intelligence collected and shared has increased. Responding to it is challenging. Intelligence, the capability to collect it and the competence to handle it are vital but not sufficient.”
