International community must fight shoulder to shoulder to defeat terrorism — Shah

New Delhi, Nov. 19 (PTI): Asserting that no country can defeat terrorism alone, Home Minister Amit Shah on Saturday said the international community must continue to fight shoulder to shoulder against this increasingly complex and borderless threat.

Addressing the concluding function of 3rd ‘No Money for Terror’ Ministerial Conference on Counter-Terrorism Financing, he said some countries and their agencies have made terrorism their State policy.

“In these terror havens, it’s necessary to shackle their unrestrained activities along with economic crackdown. All countries have to rise above their geo-political interests,” Shah said.

He said some countries repeatedly support terrorists and those who harbour terrorism.

“I believe that terrorism has no international boundaries, so all countries should think beyond politics and cooperate with each other,” Shah said.

He called for transparency in intelligence sharing among international community to defeat this “borderless threat” of terrorism.

“Our first commitment should be cooperation with transparency. All countries, all organizations, must pledge complete transparency in sharing intelligence in a better and more effective manner,” he said.

Citing action by India against an organisation promoting radicalisation among youths, the home minister said every country should identify and take stringent action against such organisations.

He said we have to fight this war against terrorism and terrorist groups, in every geographical space, in every virtual space.

“India has sensed the need for permanency of this unique initiative of NMFT, in order to sustain the continued global focus on countering the financing of terrorism. Time is ripe for a permanent Secretariat to be established,” he said, adding that a proposal has been made to set it in India.

He said the approach to fight terrorism should be based on five pillars — comprehensive monitoring framework involving cooperation, coordination, and collaboration among all intelligence and investigative agencies, the strategy of “Trace, Target, and Terminate”, to be adopted from low-level economic offenses to more organized economic crimes, strengthening and harmonizing the legal structures related to terror finance, robust mechanism against the misuse of next generation technology and strengthening the legal and regulatory framework for asset recover.