Visiting US general calls for greater anti-terrorist cooperation

A terrorist threat still exists in eastern Africa and greater military cooperation is needed to defeat it, a senior US military commander has warned. Gen John Abizaid, whose central command is responsible for Afghanistan, Iraq and East Africa, said on Monday that East African countries should work more closely together to fight terrorism. "The threat is clear, but the threat can be deterred and can be defeated," Abizaid told journalists at a press conference in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa. He said more must be done to prevent extremist groups like Osama bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda from gaining an "ideological foothold" in the region. "The level of cooperation that we have in the region in my view needs to be strengthened from a very important point and that is of collective security," Abizaid said. He stressed the need for East African countries to cooperate in the military and intelligence spheres in order to overcome terrorist activity. "This terrorist threat knows no boundary," he said at the end of a three-day visit to Ethiopia, adding that politics and economics also had key roles to perform in combating terror. "When we operate only on a nation-state basis, we will be unable to really get at the heart of the terrorist problem, which is transnational." Abizaid observed that Somalia, which neighbours Ethiopia but has had no central government since 1990, was a potential trouble spot in the region. "We certainly have indications to believe that people associated with these [extremist] groups operate in and around areas such as Somalia," Abizaid said. "We know the terrorists gravitate towards ungoverned spaces, and these are areas where they look for the opportunities to gain recruits, establish safe havens and move money." Abizaid, who met Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi and senior military officials during his stay in Addis Ababa, said the aim of his visit was to further assess the capability of the region’s forces in combating terrorism. East Africa has been the victim of brutal terror attacks in recent years. Car-bomb attacks destroyed the US embassies in both Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. In 2000, the USS Cole was attacked in Yemen. Two years later, terrorists tried to shoot down an Israeli aircraft minutes before a bomb destroyed a hotel on the Kenyan coast. Turning to Iraq, Abizaid noted that more time was needed to find weapons of mass destruction there. "It is clear that the hunt must continue," he said. "We all know this is a tough and a long fight in Iraq. It won’t be over tomorrow, and we intend to cooperate fully with Iraqi security institutions and help them help themselves."