Syria’s Permanent Representative to the UN, Bashar al-Jaafari, stressed the importance of confronting terrorism as a collective international mission that requires a true political will by all governments of the world.
Al-Jaafari’s remarks came during a speech delivered during the United Nations High-level Conference of Heads of Counter-Terrorism Agencies of Member State which kicked off on Thursday at the UN headquarters under the theme “Strengthening international cooperation to combat the evolving threat of terrorism”.
The Syrian diplomat noted that the flow of foreign terrorist militants into Syria and Iraq constituted an unprecedented phenomenon on the international level in terms of the number of terrorists or the number of the countries from which they came.
“The UN reports confirmed that tens of thousands of terrorists have flown from 101 UN member states,” he said.
Al-Jaafari revealed that the number of the foreign terrorists with European nationality who fought in Syria reached more than 12,000 terrorists, noting that most of them were from Britain, France, Belgium, Germany and Spain.
He warned against expansion of foreign militants, noting that this phenomenon has risks posed by their return to their homelands.
“The expansion of this dangerous phenomenon have been a result of failure of the international community to bear its responsibilities from the very beginning,” SANA news agency quoted the Syrian diplomat as saying.
“We would not have been sitting here in this hall to discuss what has become known as the danger of the return of the foreign terrorist fighters if the governments of the UN member states have activated early alarm systems and exchanged data about extremists,” said al-Jaafari
He indicated that the Syrian government has information and confessions which intersect with UN secret or public reports confirming that there are governments and intelligence agencies have been involved in facilitation of recruiting, financing, arming and training foreign terrorist militants.
Source: SANA
