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| Europe |
| Al-Qaeda threatens Europe through the Balkans |
| 2005-04-28 |
| A group of prominent right-wing American analysts, supported by several Serbian academics, have claimed that the greatest terrorist threat to Europe comes from the Balkans, particularly from Bosnia and Kosovo which still maintain links to al-Qaeda and other Islamic terrorist organisations. The experts were delegates at a two day conference, sponsored by the Belgrade University, that attracted terrorism specialists from the region, the United States and Europe. Yosef Bodansky, the director of the Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Conventional Warfare in Washington, said that the Balkans was a "springboard for Islamic extremism" in Europe and that Iran was the main driving force behind it. According to Bodansky, Iran was among leading countries that finance and support Islamic terrorism directed against the United States and Europe. "The final goal of Islamic terrorist groups and organizations is to turn America into an Islamic republic and to secure world domination through it," Bodansky told the meeting. Gregory Copley, director of the Washington Institute for Strategic Studies, a leading neo-conservative think-tank which many oberservers say reflects the position of some of President George W. Bush's top officials, also attended the conference. Copely argued that Americans had demonstrated the shortsightedness of their foreign policy in the Balkans by supporting local Muslims during the civil war in Bosnia and ethnic Albanians, who are also Muslims, in Serbia's southern province of Kosovo. In 1999, Bush's predecessor, Bill Clinton, won NATO support for a bombing campaign against Belgrade to halt the "ethnic cleansing" of Albanians by Serbs in Kosovo. Copley, and some other participants, said they believed that al-Qaeda still had dormant cells in Bosnia and among Kosovo's ethnic Albanians. Evan Coleman, a consultant on terrorism for the American Justice Department and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), said that "Al Qaeda still has camps for recruiting and training terrorists in the area of Zenica in Bosnia" and that it was happening before the eyes of NATO soldiers stationed there. He said that no one in the American administration paid attention to the intelligence reports and "the government of the United States sometimes acts like a gorilla without a brain." Zoran Dragisic of the Faculty for Civil Defence at the University of Belgrade argued that Al Qaeda, Kosovo Albanians and organized crime groups were the main source of terrorism in the Balkans. Serbia could potentially fall prey to their attacks, Dragisic said, but he pointed out that the Balkans were just "an oasis" for organising and planning, while Western Europe was really the main target of terrorist attacks. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |