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Thank you Mr Chairman.

Yesterday was a good day. It was full of interesting presentations. And I want to review some key statements made as background to what I am going to say today.

Professor Wilkinson commenced by outlining basic strategies for success against terrorism. I found them compelling. To summarise, and I apologise if I am slightly inaccurate, they were that strategies against terrorism should be intelligence led; that counter-terrorist actions should include the widest possible coalition of organisations; that there must be political will and courage and sustained public support; and finally, that we should maintain the rule of law.

Whilst the Professor was I think addressing national action, these strategies are also a strong foundation for global action.

The Right Honourable Bruce George advised us that the most important element of intelligence is not its collection, analysis and assessment, but its dissemination. He is exactly right. But I would like to take his reasoning one step further. Disseminated intelligence must be acted on, not just read and understood. David Vaness confirmed this again today. Translating intelligence into hard action in the field is the only true validation of its accuracy.

Knowing something is right is entirely different from doing something that is right. In short, the doing is vastly more important than the knowing.

INTERPOL has a new mantra in intelligence today - 'information, information and more information'. With our new technological tools, no longer do we need to reject quantity in a search for manageable quality. Everything can and should be fed into our matrix of understanding. Today we can never have too much information.

There are conundrums that I believe face contemporary policing in this re-emerged age of global terrorism? I say re-emerged deliberately, because in general terms ladies and gentlemen, we have been here before.

I group these conundrums together as an overarching challenge for the police of the world - a challenge for clarity in the professional identity and functional definition of policing in a nation-supporting but truly global context.

For policing, which chiefly has a national role, globalising law enforcement responses and cooperation is a relatively new challenge. For that reason police responses to this challenge must also be new.

In reality policing has no valid guide in this other than itself. While the term 'unique' is overused today, I believe passionately that policing is factually unique. Moreover, by extension policing's global reach beyond national borders, and beyond regional configurations, is also unique.

INTERPOL is itself a distinctive organisation. By underpinning structure it is a world organisation. INTERPOL is in fact a professional fraternity of 181 member countries - in sum, the police profession of the world. The General Secretariat - our global office in France and our regional offices around the world - are in reality only a relatively small part of our overall global structure.

Like David Vaness I will use the term global often today. There is presently a great deal of focus by nations, particularly economically key nations, on building bilateral networks, regionalised partnerships, geopolitical groupings, and the like.

All of these are all important initiatives. But in my opinion while such structures will help in the short-to-medium term, they fundamentally do not address global issues globally. As an isolated strategy, in my view, regional and group solutions will not provide long term solutions for nations in what is predominantly a globally functioning environment.

By way of exemplar, as nations have found that their borders do not adequately protect them, regional and geopolitical support systems will ultimately have similar failings if they are not in some way globally integrated. INTERPOL provides that mechanism for the police profession.

At the risk of overstating my point, global problems need global solutions. Retreating to borders, to buffers or to familiar friends is comfortable and reassuring, but ultimately it is not a cure.

This dangerous era we live in, where acts of terrorism have extremely serious security, economic and political consequences, is in fact the second universal wave of terrorist-based insecurity within the past thirty years.

The 1970's saw many monstrous acts of terrorism. These created fear and anxiety across the world. The reaction of nations at that time was in general similar to the reaction of today - moving immediately to strengthen perceived national weak points in governmental systems, and then investing heavily in reviews and studies of how to do it better - but almost always for national protection purposes.

While this domestic approach is immediately logical, in my judgment it merely pauses the problem, and postpones the collective responsibility of all nations to address the inherently supra-national elements of it.

The concrete upshot of the 70's saw in particular a major change in security arrangements for the world's airlines and airports. It also saw a change generally in the focus and cooperation of national police and national security services. In the intervening period between then and today, some of that focus has been lost, and in some cases even dismantled.

The simple reason for this is that national solutions are of course subject to national perceptions and the short political life of national priorities. Whereas global solutions must by their very nature take into account the exigent circumstances of all nations. Global solutions are more alert to the extremes of optimism and distress that pertain in a real and total world. Because of the wide range of national circumstances, global solutions are also more enduring.

Before several horrendous acts of terrorism shocked the world into re-attention on terrorism since September 11, 2001, we were essentially already in an era where some military and security services had begun to establish a role in the countering of transnational crime.

Transnational crime was beginning to be recognised by some political leaders as a national security issue. The dramatic re-entry of global terrorism into this environment has hastened what was a pre-existing search for an effective response to globally roaming organised crime that was, and still is, seriously affecting world order.

Nevertheless, we must never forget that there are clear democratic and functional lines between the need for military-type force, security-type secrecy and police-type law enforcement. Confusing or blurring these lines has serious consequences.

So while the increasing overlaps between the military, security, diplomacy and policing are obvious, these overlaps are of interest not of function. We must not confuse the clearly different roles of each if we are to preserve something inherently valuable and transparent in the notion of policing. Indeed we must make these values global values.

I will now list five of the services the INTERPOL General Secretariat provides in the anti-terrorist area:

Firstly, INTERPOL has created a series of new regional and focused crime intelligence projects under its counter terrorist program. These projects provide tailored services to countries and regions that fit their specific threats and response needs. They are necessarily confidential and necessarily selectively multinational in development. But the enhanced products, the alerts, are always shared globally.

Secondly INTERPOL is connecting all 181 member countries to its new state-of-the-art global communications system, called I-24/7. Our new I-24/7 network is fully encrypted and permits the instant exchange of sensitive and classified police information on 24 hours a day and 7 days a week basis, between any number of countries and to our offices.

Police connected around the world to the INTERPOL network can now send and receive complex and detailed digitised graphics, sound and data on suspected terrorists, immediately that information is shared with INTERPOL.

Thirdly, INTERPOL has created a 24 hour a day, 7 day a week command and coordination centre in Lyon. This is where we receive, process and deliver critical police information from 181 member countries in all of INTERPOL's official languages.

Fourthly, INTERPOL has implemented an electronic system for its fugitives and sought-after-information Notice System. Our more widely known INTERPOL Red Notices are for wanted fugitives, but our other notices, such as blue and green for instance, are necessary international alerts and requests for information on particular persons, groups or related nominal information.

INTERPOL publishes and circulates these notices around the world in a matter of hours or minutes following a country submitting that information or request.

Lastly, INTERPOL is updating its policy on the category of crimes for which its international wanted person's notices, or red notices, can be issued. When approved, INTERPOL Red Notices could be issued for the crime of 'membership in a terrorist organization', even though the person sought for arrest may not have yet committed any terrorist act or be known to have committed a terrorist act.

This would be a new and important policy change. However, in order for this new policy to be most effective, more countries around the world will have to make INTERPOL Red Notices a sufficient legal basis for the detention or provisional arrest of suspected terrorists, prior to the conduct of extradition proceedings.

Now let me be even more specific in a tactical sense. INTERPOL has created an internal crime project titled the 'Fusion Task Force'. The hypothesis of the Fusion Project is the increasing relationship between organised crime and terrorist organisations, which ultimately exposes both to detection through traditional police investigation and existing intelligence re-assessment. This is a first step in building a platform of new information linkages and analyses.

What does transnational organised crime bring to terrorist? Firstly, money making methods. Secondly, money laundering methods, particularly access to alternative remittance schemes. Thirdly, a criminal contact network driven by money. And lastly, and even more seriously, a criminal means of getting things done throughout the world, particularly access to corrupt officials and corrupted structures.

As an overall proposition, provided terrorist organisations do not compete with, but complement transnational organised crime groups, this malevolent partnership will significantly magnify the problems of both.

The final objective of the Fusion Project is the entrenchment of innovative and multi-disciplinary methods of assistance to member countries in the investigation of terrorism. INTERPOL's large and diverse membership is a strong point in this process, being a catalyst to collection of global information that cannot be assembled on national basis.

Today Fusion is identifying members of terrorist organizations and the logistical networks that support them. This operational support is of immediate operational value. In the longer term the Fusion database will be valued for its generational research database, contemporary alerts and the creation of best-practice investigation models.

Our primary successes are substantial increases in the levels of intelligence sharing between countries. The Fusion Task Force has a contact police officers network operating across five continents, with information coming in from over 90 countries. We hold nominal information on terrorists with over 50 different nationalities.

Overall INTERPOL has more than 110 countries actively participating one way or another in our counter terrorism program. As a consequence we have more than tripled the files held on individual terrorists since 2001.

I will briefly outline several other important new initiatives. We have just issued our terrorist arrest report for 2003. The collection and publishing of this compilation has lead to an increased reporting of terrorists arrested and this has significantly increased our database. We have also collected significant numbers of photographs, fingerprints, and the fine points of emerging terrorist operating trends and travel patterns.

Another new project is project 'dirty bomb'. This is a cooperative program with the US Department of Energy, the International Atomic Energy Agency and the World Customs Organization. This project is aimed at preventing terrorism through the assessment of theft and diversion information relative to nuclear and radiological materials.

We have also initiated a pilot project for several countries to provide them with radiation detection instrumentation equipment to improve their ability to reduce the threat posed by nuclear and other radioactive materials.

Recently INTERPOL co-hosted a conference in Bali, Indonesia. Bali was the site of one of the most serious acts of terror to face policing in the modern era. This conference focused on developing civilian protection plans and forensic and investigation methodologies in ways that are increasingly multinational and interdependent.

The Bali investigation was just that - a multinational crime with a multinational response. In my professional view, the Bali investigation is an international model for operational police cooperation.

On a final note, all of these initiatives at INTERPOL have the same thematic objectives:

1. To increase information on terrorism groups and assist countries on the identification of suspected terrorists operating in them;
   
   
2. To build the capacity of member countries through training and analytical support;
   
   
3. To support member countries in specific terrorist incidents and investigations; and
   
   
4. To assist in the development of better liaison between law enforcement, customs, intelligence services and the military.

Because of the successful world action in reducing state funding for terrorist groups, most of them are now becoming highly dependent on financing their activities through criminal activity. As a result, the relationship between terrorism and criminality has taken on a new and highly dangerous importance for the world's police. But this is the skill area of police, and an opportunity for police. We must take that opportunity, globally, and take it now.

Thank you