Global war on terror must be maintained, US diplomat says as UN passes new resolution
Terrorist threat ‘is an evolving one and an adaptive one’, Nathan Sayles, coordinator for counterterrorism on UN Security Council, says
The United Nations’ latest measures to restrict the movement of foreign terrorist groups are necessary to tackle the evolving global threat following the dismantling of Islamic State strongholds in the Middle East, a senior US diplomat said on Friday.
Nathan Sayles, US ambassador-at-large and coordinator for counterterrorism on the UN Security Council, said the international community needed to take concrete steps – such as collecting the names of airline passengers and maintaining terrorist watch lists – to counter a changing environment.
“Terrorists don’t stand still, the terrorist threat that we all confront is an evolving one and an adaptive one,” he said during a telephone press briefing from Washington. “We can’t stand still either.”
His remarks came after the UN Security Council passed new measures, including tightening global aviation security, designed to prevent the movement of both terrorist fighters returning from conflict zones and home-grown extremists.
The latest move, which builds on a 2014 UN resolution mandating states to criminalise the activities of foreign terrorist fighters, also requires member nations to collect biometric data for all known and suspected terrorists.