WASHINGTON, April 23 (Reuters) - Nations on the front lines of the battle to curb terror agreed on Friday to step up vigilance against individuals carrying cash across borders to fund attacks, said a joint statement from finance officials.
"We recognize the danger posed by terrorist financiers using cash couriers or transferring cash across borders and undertake to combat this growing threat by strengthening the control of cross-border cash movements," the statement released by the U.S. Treasury Department said.
Earlier, finance ministers from the Group of Seven wealthy nations and a dozen other far-flung countries from the Middle East to Asia met at the World Bank in Washington to discuss how to avert attacks by choking off cash terror groups use.
"The recent tragedies in Madrid and Riyadh show clearly that we cannot relax our vigilance and must not slacken our resolve or our efforts to combat this scourge," Treasury said, referring to bomb attacks on trains in Madrid and on an office building in Saudi Arabia that killed and injured hundreds.
Tightening curbs on terror groups' ability to move money has become a staple of meetings of the G7 -- the United States, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Japan -- since airplane attacks against New York's World Trade Center and on the Pentagon near Washington on Sept. 11, 2001.
This meeting also included representatives from China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Morocco, Pakistan, Philippines, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Spain and the United Arab Emirates.
Talks about how to hinder terror groups' activities were to continue among G7 finance chiefs at a dinner on Friday evening before Saturday's formal talks on global economic conditions.
The statement said meeting participants welcomed a decision by the IMF and World Bank to make compliance with anti-money laundering standards a part of the lending agencies' regular reviews of borrowers' activities.
The officials also pledged to continue to work with charities to stiffen their defenses against the possibility of being duped into unwittingly being used as a means for transferring money to groups involved in terror.
http://www.forbes.com/markets/newswire/2004/04/23/rtr1346022.html
