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Official says U.N. roster on al-Qaida, Taliban is outdated

Many terror leaders are not listed, but senior Afghan officials are.

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published July 21, 2007

UNITED NATIONS - The United Nations has not kept an up-to-date list of al-Qaida and Taliban leaders targeted by international sanctions, harming both the fight against terrorism and efforts to stabilize Afghanistan, a key U.N. counterterror official said Friday.

Several dozen important al-Qaida and Taliban figures have not been placed on a list of 490 people and businesses subject to a U.N. travel ban, arms embargo and assets freeze put in place after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, said Richard Barrett, coordinator of the monitoring team for the U.N.'s Al-Qaida and Taliban Sanctions Committee.

The gaps in the list are allowing al-Qaida and Taliban figures to carry out activities such as training fighters and organizing attacks that sanctions could help prevent, he said.

The outdated list is making it less likely that countries responsible for enforcing the measures will actually carry them out, Barrett said. "If you lack credibility, you lack implementation," he said.

Barrett attributed the lags in updating the list partly to the structure of the sanctions committee, which requires consensus among its 15 members to add or remove someone from the list.

Barrett said that the list should contain the names of perhaps a dozen Taliban leaders who have recently assumed key roles in the Afghan insurgency. It also should include an estimated two dozen al-Qaida figures.

The committee also has not decided to remove former Taliban figures who have assumed positions in the Afghan government as part of a national reconciliation process, Barrett said.

For example, Barrett said, Abdul Hakim Monib, the former Taliban deputy minister of frontier affairs, remains on the list even though he has become governor of Uruzgan province.

Belgian Ambassador Johan Verbeke, the committee chairman, said at the meeting that the list has not changed since 2003, and that political events in Afghanistan made a fresh assessment necessary.

[Last modified July 20, 2007, 22:43:17]