ISSN: 1391 - 0531
Sunday, December 3, 2006
Vol. 41 - No 27
News

STF for New York anti-terror conference

By Asif Fuard

The United Nations Inter-regional Crime and Justice Research Institute (UNICRI) and the International Permanent Observatory (IPO) are to seek the expertise of suicide terrorism and counter terrorism of the Special Task Force for the upcoming 2008 Beijing Olympic Games.

The UNICRI and IPO has invited the STF to participate in a conference to be held at the UN headquarters in New York on December 7 in which 92 countries are due to participate. The main three topics of discussion at the conference will be counter terrorism, venue security and security challenges. Other topics to be discussed are national and international terrorist threats, VIP protection from terrorist attacks and related crisis management, counter terrorism strategies and border control.

A Foreign Ministry representative and an STF counter terrorism expert are due to represent Sri Lanka at the conference which will be headed by the UN Secretary General Kofi Annan whose last conference this would be as UN head. The decision to make Sri Lanka one of the security experts for IPO was mainly due to Sri Lanka being constantly targeted by suicide bombings and having one of the worlds highest suicide bombing rates.

Due to the experience in facing constant suicide attacks UNICRI decided to invite Sri Lanka for its conference in Vienna, Austria held in May last year. This eventually led to Sri Lanka being recognized as experts in suicide terrorism and it was later invited by IPO to take part in a three-day workshop held in Beijing, China on November 20, 21 and 22 to discuss security arrangements for the 2008 Beijing Olympic games.

In the wake of last year’s July 7 London subway attack a team of British intelligence experts had come to Colombo to meet experts in the STF with regard to suicide bombing and counter measures Sri Lanka has taken.

 
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Copyright 2006 Wijeya Newspapers Ltd.Colombo. Sri Lanka.