Globo Law Enfarcement Tag Teams Tuesday, 30-Jan-01 12:14:20 63.10.99.29 writes: EmergencyNet News "Instant Updates," News Briefs, and Stories We're Following For: 30 January 2001 Breaking News: JAPAN/WORLDWIDE: UN Official Says Organized Crime Bigger Threat Than War Pino Arlacchi, Under-Secretary-General at the United Nations Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention said in a key-note address to a three-day Asia-Pacific Law Enforcement Conference Against Transnational Organized Crime that internationally-organized crime is now a bigger threat to security for ordinary people than war. Arlacchi reportedly told the conference on combating transnational crime on Tuesday: "A reversal of sorts has taken place ... during the Cold War the greatest concern was international war. Today, we are more preoccupied by intra-state ethnic or religious conflicts and by domestic and transnational crime." Arlacchi told some 230 representatives of Asian police and law enforcement agencies from 30 countries that the fight against the organized criminals behind human trafficking, corruption and cyber crime must be a genuinely global effort. He said: "When it comes to transnational crime ... different judicial systems, laws and regulations ... stand in the way of better cooperation. This has allowed organized criminals to cooperate across borders with greater ease than law enforcement officials. The greatest need of all ... is for the spirit of consensus to continue." ERRI's Sr. National Security Analyst Clark Staten said of the report, "This U.N. report further confirms a hypothesis that we have been working on for several years...namely that organized crime is mixing with terrorism, gun running, narcotics trafficking, internet crime, and other illegal acts." "We are facing an increasing sophisticated enemy in organized crime, who know no boundaries...either in terms of national sovereignty or in the level of their assault on civilized society," Staten continued. "The nations of the world must find better ways to work across borders to combat this legion of malcontents, or we will surely face dire consequences," he concluded. joe 6pk