UK Brown-Terrorist Funding
Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown Tuesday outlined plans for the UK government to use covert intelligence for the first time to seize the assets of groups suspected of terrorism.

"Our aim is simple: just as there be no safe haven for terrorists, so there be no hiding place for those who finance terrorism," said Brown.

Speaking at a conference on security in London, he said that his treasury department ’will take the lead in targeting terrorist finance and abuse of the global capital system’.

"We are consulting now on new proposals against money laundering.

We will also target the financial transactions of terror suspects operating in the UK," the chancellor said in a speech entitled ’meeting the terrorist challenge’.

"For the first time we will use closed source evidence where it is necessary to take preventative action to freeze assets. This means acting on the basis of classified intelligence," he said.

Brown remains firm favorite to replace Prime Minister Tony Blair when he steps down from power within the next 11 months.

He said that a new terrorism order would be laid before Parliament on Wednesday to give the Treasury the power to stop funds reaching anyone in the UK suspected of planning terror or engagement with terror.

The chancellor said techniques so far had ’tracked an alleged terrorist bomb maker’ who used multiple identities, multiple bank accounts, third parties and third countries to purchase bomb making equipment, to an overseas bomb factory.

Combining the technique with the expertise of the private, financial and public sectors, could result in the creation of a modern equivalent of when experts cracked the Nazis’ Enigma Code during World War II, he suggested.

This, Brown said, could be used to address ’three of the most dangerous sources of terrorist finance’ -- charities, money service businesses and financial transactions. Many charities and donors had been exploited by terrorists, he said.

Promoting his credential to replace Blair, the chancellor also reiterated his support for the government’s policy of extending police powers to detain terror suspects for more than 28 days without charge despite it being defeated by MPs last year.

In line with government policy, he also called on what he called ’moderate Muslims’ to help ’tackle at root the causes that risk driving people into the extremists’ hands’.

"First and most urgently we must act to put the Middle East roadmap back on track," Brown further said, revealing that he also would visit the region in support of the efforts made by Blair and Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett.