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Britain Freezes Accounts Linked to Bin Laden, Taliban
BRIGHTON, England, Oct 1 (News Agencies) - Britain has frozen $88.4 million in assets as part of a tightening clampdown on suspected terrorist networks, finance minister Gordon Brown announced Monday.
Aides said the funds were linked to the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, to Osama bin Laden and to his al-Qaeda network.
Brown announced the measure during a speech to the governing Labor Party's annual conference, held in Brighton, southern England, in a mood dominated by the aftermath of the September 11th attacks in the United States.
"Ready access to finance is the lifeblood of modern terrorism. No institution, no bank, no financial house anywhere in the world, should be harboring or processing funds for terrorists," said Brown.
"It is because here in Britain we have already implemented last year's United Nations resolution on terrorist financing that bank funds amounting to $88.4 million have now been frozen," he added.
The chancellor called on the international community to implement financial sanctions "to ensure that just as there is no safe haven for terrorists there is no safe hiding place for terrorist funds."
The assets were frozen in the London branch of a European bank, a Treasury spokeswoman told Agence France-Presse (AFP). Two weeks ago, an account was also closed at a Barclay's bank in west London.
Brown also called for the supply of weapons, not just money, to be cut off to poor countries that could be considered seedbeds for extremism.
"Just as Britain has now banned export credits for armament sales to 65 countries, it is now time for all countries to restrict credits for arms sold to the poorest countries, because that same money should be spent not on piling up weapons, but on reducing poverty," he said.
Brown also pledged the British government would hold to its public spending plans despite the economic turmoil following the U.S. strikes that destroyed the World Trade Center and part of the Pentagon.
He ruled out income tax hikes to cover the cost of Britain's war against terrorism and insisted that the country was well placed economically to withstand the burden of the global coalition against terrorism led by the United States.
He told BBC radio ahead of his speech, "We will pay the price that is necessary, the security, the military, indeed the international development responsibilities - we accept this.
"Of course there are costs involved, but we are, I think, as a country, better placed than 10 years ago, 20 years ago, to deal with costs because we did make the difficult decisions in 1997," when Labor took power.
Brown added, "On September 11th, terrorists intended to bring the world's financial system to a halt - to undermine the very possibility of global prosperity.
"So we will show by our actions in maintaining the conditions for stability and growth that we do not succumb or surrender to terrorist threats."
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