EU cooperation vital in war on terror

By Martin Banks

Date: 18/03/04

EUROPE can expect more terrorist atrocities of a similar nature to last week's bomb attacks in Madrid, unless there is a dramatic improvement in anti-terrorist cooperation between member states.

That is the stark warning from European security specialists in the wake of the coordinated blasts which tore through commuter trains in the Spanish capital, killing more than 200 people.

The wave of bombs targeting trains in Madrid - Europe's worst terror attack since the 1988 Lockerbie bomb, which brought a passenger plane down - meant large-scale terrorism had arrived on this continent, says Richard Sentner, NATO's assistant director of intelligence.

Sentner, who is a widely respected international security expert, said that "all the signs now point to Europe being a target. The Madrid atrocity could be just the first in a series of similarly spectacular strikes".

Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt urged Bertie Ahern, president-in-office of the EU, to put the fight against terrorism on the agenda of the next EU summit on 25-26 March.

In a letter he sent to the Irish prime minister last week, Verhofstadt wrote that the EU could and should do more to combat terrorism. It could create "an EU intelligence centre gathering different intelligence, security and police services", including Europol, which would concentrate on "threat analysis".

Ernst Strasser, the Austrian home affairs minister, has recently defended a similar plan. He called on his colleagues on 19 February to create an "intelligence network", a kind of "European CIA" to analyse the terror threat.

Terrorist attacks on mainland Europe are nothing new: separatist groups such as the IRA in Northern Ireland and Basque ETA have been waging war for many years.

The French rail network has only just returned to normal following threats from a group known as AZF, which said it would detonate ten bombs on France's busy railways if the government failed to pay a ransom.

However, what security services had privately regarded as virtually inevitable has now happened: a terrorist atrocity in the capital city of a European democracy.

For Sentner - and others - that signals a radical and disturbing departure from what has gone before.

"In the past, a group like ETA and other terrorist groups have confined themselves to relatively small-scale, albeit deadly, attacks.

"But a car bomb or assassination here and there no longer seems adequate.

"The premium now seems to be on the spectacular, the incident of massive proportions that will get a suitably spectacular set of headlines.

"Whoever was responsible for this outrage, the global stakes for terrorist activity have been raised and this is something EU governments must take very seriously."

The American says top of the list of any future attacks are those member states, such as the UK, Italy and Poland, which have been most vocal in their backing for the US-led war on terror.

Turning to how Europe should respond to such an increased threat, Sentner says there has to be a dramatic improvement in anti-terrorist collaboration between member states.

He says that Europe was now facing something wider: international understanding among extremists, who supply each other with arms and coordinate attacks on their common enemies.

"European security forces have been doing a good job in combating terrorism, but my hope now is that the Madrid tragedy will see a real intensification of intelligence sharing.

"Links between various terror groups cross national borders and vastly improved cooperation is the only way this thing is going to be defeated," Sentner said.

His fears are shared by another security expert, Professor Paul Wilkinson, of the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at St Andrews University in Scotland.

Wilkinson points out that while there is nothing new about terrorist attacks in Europe, governments have a responsibility to protect their citizens and to respond to any new threat.

Javier Solana, the EU's foreign policy supremo, pointed out that, notwithstanding the Madrid attack, the threat posed by ETA had actually diminished in recent years - largely because of improved sharing of intelligence between the French and Spanish authorities.

However, he believes it is too early to say whether the security threat facing Europe is any higher after last week's events.

As nations across Europe reviewed security in the wake of the Madrid attacks - Poland tightened up its airports, train stations and borders while French President Jacques Chirac raised his nation's terror alert level - UK centre-right MEP Geoffrey van Orden lambasted his fellow MEPs for last week adopting a resolution condemning the treatment of detainees at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

Van Orden, an experienced counter- terrorism specialist, who served 30 years in the British Army, condemned those who act as "apologists" for terrorism.

"Terrorism is never about injustice. It is about power. Terrorism prospers because it is successful.

"Governments make concessions and the media provides a platform for terrorist apologists. All terrorism must be condemned unequivocally."

Like Sentner, van Orden, a former brigadier, also fears more Madrid-scale atrocities in Europe are inevitable.

Meanwhile, as the memory of last week's devastating blasts begins to fade, Brussels-based American defence writer Nicholas Fiorenza summed up the feelings of many Europeans when he said: "I think everyone is holding their breath for the next big one."

30 years of terror across Europe

• Germany, 5-6 September 1972: 18 killed, including 11 athletes, in attack by Palestinian terror group Black September at Munich Olympics;
• Italy, 2 August 1980: 85 dead and 200 injured in bomb attack by right-wing terrorists at Bologna rail station;
• Italy and Austria, 27 December 1985: Total of 20 dead in attack by Palestinian terrorists on El Al airline desks at airports in Rome and Vienna;
• Spain, 19 June 1987: 21 killed and 45 injured in ETA car bomb attack on Barcelona shopping mall;
• UK, 21 December 1988: 270 dead in attack on American Pan-am Boeing 747 above Scottish town of Lockerbie;
• France, 25 July 1995: 8 dead and 150 injured in bomb attack by Algerian Islamic extremists on express train at St Michel station in Paris;
• Northern Ireland, 15 August 1998: 29 killed and 220 injured in Real IRA bomb in Omagh;
• Finland, 11 October 2002: 6 killed after bomb attack on Helsinki shopping mall by a 19-year-old student.

Richard Sentner, NATO's Assistant Director of Intelligence, has warned that Europe can expect more terrorist attacks. In order to respond to the threat Mr Sentner says there has to be a dramatic improvement in anti-terrorist collaboration between Member States.