WASHINGTON - Despite success in whittling down the terrorist group Al-Qaeda, global terrorism remains a "significant" threat and Iraq is still the central battleground, the State Department said Wednesday.
The department made its assessment in its annual "Country Reports on Terrorism 2004" which also identified Cuba, North Korea, Syria and above all Iran as continued supporters of terrorism.
For the first time, the report did not include data on the number of attacks, which was to be included in a separate text issued by the National Counterterrorism Center after a major controversy over the data last year.
But Democratic Congressman Henry Waxman said Tuesday that the data showed a sharp increase in terrorist activity, with the number of attacks last year more than three times higher than in 2003.
The State Department said in its 129-page report that "international terrorism continued to pose a significant threat to the United Stateas and its partners in 2004."
"The United States and other donor nations must intensify to bolster the political will and the intelligence, law enforcement, financial and military capabilities of partner nations to combat terrorism, on their own or with us," it said.
The report said Iraq, which the United States invaded in March 2003 to topple the regime of Saddam Hussein "remains the central battleground in the global war on terrorism."
"Former regime elements, as well as foreign fighters and Islamic extremists continue to conduct terrorist attacks against civilians and non-combatants," it said.
The report said that Al-Qaeda led by the fugitive Osama bin Laden remained the primary terrorist threat to the United States despite success in arresting several top leaders and weakening its operational capability.
"Many senior Al-Qaeda leaders remained at large, continued to plan attacks against the Untied States, US interests and US partners, and sought to foment attacks by inspiring new groups of Sunni Muslim extremists to undertake violent acts in the name of jihad (holy war)."
While there were no terrorist attacks last year on US soil, Americans were killed in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Egypt and Gaza.
It said many other countries were hit by terrorism, including Russia, Spain and the Philippines. The overwhelming majority of victims were non-American and many were Muslims, it said.
The department said that Libya and Sudan took significant steps to cooperate in the anti-terrorism drive last year. "Cuba, Iran, North Korea and Syria, however, continued to maintain their ties to terrorism," it said.
"Iran remained the most active state sponsor of terrorism in 2004," the report said.
"Its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Ministry of Intelligence and Security were involved in the planning and support of terrorist acts and continued to exhort a variety of groups to use terrorism in pursuit of their goals."
The report said that "most worrisome" was the fact that some state sponsors of terrorism "had capabilities to manufacture weapons of mass destruction and other destabilizing technologies that could fall into the hands of terrorists."
04/27/2005 19:18 GMT