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USIA - STATE DEPARTMENT REPORT, JUNE 27, 1996
From: The United States Information Agency (USIA) Gopher at <gopher://gopher.usia.gov>
STATE DEPARTMENT REPORT, JUNE 27, 1996
(G-7/terrorism, Saudi Arabia/bombing, Bosnia) (610)
There was no regular briefing, but Acting State Department Spokesman
Glyn Davies spoke on-the-record with reporters.
G-7/ANTI-TERRORISM -- Davies predicted that all of the anti-crime and
anti-terrorism measures now under discussion at the G-7 summit in
Lyon, France will be adopted. The recommendations, he said, fall into
four categories: "First, under the rubric of 'nowhere to hide,' the
leaders are going to commit themselves to effective prosecution or
extradition of major criminals and terrorists, to build cooperative
information networks, and strengthen and develop reciprocal witness
protection programs. Second of the four major areas is called 'drying
up criminal and terrorist resources,' where they will work to promote
seizure and forfeiture of criminal and terrorist assets, to gather
information on financial transactions of criminals, share information
on money laundering techniques and the prosecution of these crimes.
Third of the four -- 'protect national borders' -- where they will
make it a crime to smuggle illegal aliens, exchange information on
movements of alien smugglers and other organized criminals including
terrorists, safeguard travel documents from fraud and abuse, develop
mutual databases for tracking forged and stolen documents. And
finally, under the rubric of 'detecting and preventing hi-tech crime,'
to look for and find common approaches to combat hi-tech crime and
crack down on 'cybercrooks,' including terrorist uses of hi-tech
criminal information warfare techniques against civilian financial
institutions and government databases."
Davies added that it is hoped these measures "will go a long way
towards countering the threat posed by international terrorism." He
refused to speculate whether these initiatives, if they had been in
place, could have prevented the recent bombing at King Abdul Aziz Air
Base in Saudi Arabia. "If you have a determined terrorist group, and
they have sufficient means at their disposal, you can't get to those
groups and stop those attacks one hundred percent of the time. That's
just the way it is. So much of what the international community has to
do -- and here the United States is taking the lead -- is put in place
regimes of information-sharing and cooperation so that these problems,
these groups, can be found before they do anything, that
investigations can be begun, that we can share information with other
countries.....And I think that if we were to put more of those kinds
of measures into place, we might be able to get at more groups like
this that are out there and are obviously undetected until they set
off an explosion."
SAUDI ARABIA/BOMBING -- Davies said that there are no leads yet on who
may have been responsible for the bombing at the military barracks at
King Abdul Aziz Air Base near Dhahran in Saudi Arabia. Two groups have
publicly claimed responsibility, but there is not yet evidence to
suggest that their claims may be credible, Davies said. He noted that
the United States is very pleased with the cooperation given by the
Saudi Arabian government. "They stepped up to the challenge of dealing
with this explosion in a very serious and constructive way. They've
been very open and cooperative.... We're very thankful for the help
they have given us," he said.
BOSNIA -- The only impediment to beginning the train and equip program
in Bosnia is the implementation of a defense law, Davies said. "It's
just a question of getting this law passed...that contains the right
kind of elements for equip and train to have an effective receptor, an
effective organization that we could plug it into," he said.
There is no transcript available of this briefing.
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