Countries not doing enough on terrorism-Interpol

LONDON, Nov 15 (Reuters) Governments around the world are not doing enough to prevent terrorist attacks, the head of the international police force Interpol today said.

Ron Noble, Interpol's secretary general, cited a failure by security forces to check properly the passports of foreigners against its global database of stolen or fraudulent documents.

''I think we would have to honestly say that we are not doing enough,'' Noble told Al Jazeera television in an interview.

''I am saying there is an international failure to fight terrorism at the most basic level that no rational citizen of any of our countries would accept if they were made aware of how significant the failure is and how easy it would be to correct.'' Noble said Interpol had a database of more than 13 million stolen and lost passports. But apart from Switzerland, which uncovered 100 people carrying stolen documents every month, no country comprehensively checked passports against its list.

He said the public would find it hard to understand why a measure which could prevent a terrorist attack and was ''obvious to do, easy to do and a modest cost'' was not being done. He said heads of state and senior ministers would be to blame.

''After September 11, if a citizen were to learn that a terrorist attack occurred by someone having entered their country with a stolen passport that was registered with Interpol but their country wasn't regularly checking it, I say governments would fall,'' he said.

REUTERS SY VV2244