Roundup: Fifty nations agree to cooperate on concrete measures to counter terrorism

Government representatives and global counter terrorism officials from 50 countries agreed Monday to intensify the fight against terrorism by co-implementing a long list of more than 60 measures aiming at tracking foreign fighters.

"We need to address together the problem of foreign terrorism fighters (FTFs). We agreed on a large array of extremely practical operational recommendations," said Dutch Foreign Minister Bert Koenders at the end of the one-day joint session of the Global Counter Terrorism Forum (GCTF) and the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL.

A six-page outcome paper listed measures such as accelerating and intensifying the exchange of information, detecting and intervening against foreign fighters travel routes, use of documents and recruitment, disrupting their financing as well as facilitating the re-integration and de-radicalization of FTFs. Participants are encouraged to implement these measures.

"We agreed that we have to share information better, smarter and faster," said the Dutch foreign minister, stressing that the Netherlands aims at being a catalyst in the fight against terrorism.

"Sharing of information has to be more precise in more areas," he said.

For example, information on people who join terrorist groups abroad should be shared, so that other countries and organizations such as Europol and Interpol are better informed of their movements.

Countries should also share sanction lists to make widely known people and organizations whose funds have been frozen, according to the conference's outcome declaration.

Actions also included providing maximum and timely information to Inerpol and relevant databases like Europol of the movements of FTFs to and from their home country. And the agencies' databases should be updated on a daily basis with information on travel routes and recruitment networks as well as the production and use of forged or fraudulent, counterfeit, stolen and lost identity documents.

Koenders stressed on the need to check "the personal data of all persons who cross borders" in order to stop terrorists from travelling freely.

As he said earlier, while addressing the conference delegates, "in the Paris attacks we saw how foreign fighters exploit travel routes used by refugees to reach Europe, how they poison the debate on migration by conflating it with terrorism."

A closer cooperation with the private sector to detect terrorist financing, including anonymous forms of payment such as bitcoins was also agreed. Delegates agreed on strengthening cooperation among national intelligence, law enforcement, financial intelligence units, border security and customs agencies in order to better trace, detect and counter the financing of foreign fighters.

"Suspicious transactions need to be reported immediately," said Koenders. "Terrorism is like a virus. We have to be quicker than they are."

The meeting came two months after the Nov. 13 attacks in Paris, in which extremists took advantage of gaps in European intelligence as they plotted and executed the rampage that killed 130 people.

To facilitate the sharing of knowledge the closed-door meeting decided on creating a Foreign Terrorist Fighters knowledge hub to be hosted by the International Centre for Counter Terrorism (ICCT) in The Hague.

"We need to share knowledge on foreign fighters, on how they are, what is their background, what is their relationship to organized crime," said Koenders.

Several of the Nov. 13 Paris attackers were known to the authorities in various countries, providing opportunities to stop them, but warning signs were ignored.

The Netherlands, which holds the rotating European Union (EU) presidency, aims at taking the lead in international discussions in order to promote the use of databases among national police authorities and the European and international police agencies Interpol and Europol.

The Netherlands is co-chair of the GCTF along with Turkey. The organisation was set up in 2011 on the initiative of the U.S. government as a meeting point for counterintelligence experts from around the world.

Among participants are the UN Under Secretary General Jeffrey Feltman, and top government representatives.

Delegates from Europol, Interpol, the UN and the EU also took part in the consultations. Endit