USIA - STATE DEPARTMENT REPORT, JUNE 27, 1996

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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)

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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