Brussels, 29/01/2009 (Agence Europe) - European Union Anti-terrorism Coordinator Gilles de Kerchove announced on Thursday 29 January that he intended to bring forward new proposals to prevent the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) raising money in Europe to fund attacks in Turkey and northern Iraq. “I will come to the Council (of Ministers of the EU) with some proposals to reinforce the fight against the PKK in Europe because they play a very negative role collecting money to mount attacks both in Turkey and Northern Iraq,” he said at a hearing before the European Parliament security and defence sub-committee in Brussels. The PKK, which Ankara and most of the international community consider to be a terrorist group, took up arms in 1984 in the cause of independence for the south-east of Turkey, where most of the people are Kurds. “The PKK is on our list (of terrorist organisations). It's an active organisation collecting money in the EU,” de Kerchove said. “I don't see any concrete links between this network and Al-Qaida and its related franchised organisations such as Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, which remain the main threat for the EU,” he stated, however.
Fall in popularity of bin Laden. “It is striking to see that the support for Al-Qaida, the Taliban, Osama bin Laden is declining in the Islamic world,” de Kerchove said. “It's not a surprise since most of the victims of extremist Islamic terrorism are Muslims themselves,” he added. He went on, “if you look at You Tube and you look at the number of videos posted by Muslims themselves, it is interesting to see the number that attack Osama bin Laden”. This trend has to be fostered, he said. “Anything that can encourage the religious authorities …, moderate Muslims to express themselves through the creation of portals, web sites, video clips is a move in the right direction”. As an example of this commitment, he spoke of the book by Doctor Khaled Abou El Fadl, “The Great Theft: Wresting Islam from the Extremists”, which is scathing of the way Islam has been appropriated for criminal ends.
The “long-term vision” of sharing information. “The point I must stress most and on which the European Parliament will have an important role to play is trying to devise a long-term strategy on (security) information gathering and sharing,” de Kerchove said. He regretted that the EU had not yet been able to develop a sufficiently comprehensive vision in this area. “We don't have any Promethean ambitions of gathering everything on everyone at all times. We want to restrict information gathering to what is strictly necessary, because our starting point is protecting personal data,” he said.
Awaiting the Lisbon Treaty. “With now 27 member states, we have reached our upper limit for drafting criminal law,” de Kerchove opined, suggesting it was time the European Union finally adopt the Lisbon Treaty so that there could be progress in police and legal cooperation, on which there currently has to be unanimity in Council. While the European arrest warrant had been a “real success”, the European evidence warrant had, on the other hand, been a total failure, he stated in support of his comments. “The Lisbon Treaty's biggest reform is the communitisation of the third pillar. Internal security can make no further progress the way things stand at the moment,” he concluded. (B.C./transl.rt)