WASHINGTON Ñ The United States has kept seven countries on its list
of terrorist sponsors.
U.S. officials said the State Department has kept Cuba, Iran, Iraq,
Libya, North Korea, Sudan and Syria on Washington's list of terrorist
sponsors. The officials said the Bush administration had deliberated over
retaining Libya and Sudan on the list in the wake of limited cooperation by
the two
countries with the U.S.-led war against terrorism.
The State Department plans to release its annual report on terrorism on
Tuesday, Middle East Newsline reported. The report will be presented by Secretary of State Colin Powell and
the department's counter-terrorism coordinator, Francis Taylor.
Taylor said Sudan has made "great progress" in working with the United
States against terrorist in wake of the Sept. 11 Islamic suicide attacks on
New York and Washington. But Taylor suggested that Khartoum had a way to go
until it would be removed from the State Department terror list.
"The law really dictates how we treat them in terms of their designation
and what we're able to do," Taylor told the Washington File last week.
"Certainly, we expect state sponsors of terrorism to cease activities which
place them on the list. And if there is any change, we expect to see that
kind of change in behavior that could be seen as renouncing terrorism and
moving on with the majority of the nations in the world and rejecting this
type of political tool."
Officials said the forthcoming report will be far bigger than last year
and focus
extensively on the U.S.-led war against terrorism. They said the report will
review international cooperation against Al Qaida and its satellite
organizations.
The report said more people died in international terrorist attacks than
in any other year recorded. In 2001, 3,547 people Ñ most of them from the
destruction of the World Trade Center and a wing of the Defense
Department Ñ were killed.
