Dhaka, Nov 10 (bdnews24.com) – State minister for home affairs Shamsul Huq Tuku said Tuesday greater cooperation was needed among South Asian countries in the fight against terrorism to safeguard regional ties.

A three-day regional workshop for police and prosecutors on South Asian security, with a focus on control of firearms, concluded Tuesday with the renewed call to step up regional efforts to combat terrorism.

Tuku told the workshop, "All countries in South Asia, including Bangladesh, face the threat of terrorism, which is affecting stability in the SAARC region and putting regional ties at risk".

"Terrorists have no land," the minister said. "SAARC countries have to work together to face this problem. In the present-day, nothing can be done without exchange of information and united efforts."

He said the workshop was a step towards a greater regional framework for common security efforts to tackle extremism and terrorism in South Asia.

Government representatives, law enforcers, prosecutors and experts from SAARC countries, China and the United Nations Counter-terrorism Executive Directorate (UNCTED) attended the programme jointly organised by private think-tank Bangladesh Enterprise Institute, the Bangladesh government and UNCTED, in association with governments of Denmark and Australia.


UNCTED director Mike Smith said the workshop was organised to step up relations between police and prosecutors to combat terrorism, to determine strategy in the light of realities and to deal with human rights issues in facing terrorism.

Smith said a country must enable itself to counter security threats, and that process was being initiated by such workshops.

Participants discussed measures, such as economic cooperation and community policing, in the light of experiences in their own countries.

Bangladesh's inspector general of police, Noor Mohammad, said there was no alternative to effective counter-terrorism measures to prevent anarchy in society.

"We must not allow any evil force to disrupt our economic development activities," he said.

But, he added, "Bangladesh Police are working to combat all kinds of militancy and terrorism with limited means."

Another of the problems highlighted earlier in the programme was small and light firearms seized by law enforcers getting into the hands of terrorists again as the arms hauls were not being destroyed after seizure.

BEI president Farooq Sobhan said a platform had been launched to combat regional terrorism through the workshop, and similar ones would be held in other SAARC countries too.

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