With 10 to 15 million stolen passports in use around the world at the present time, the global struggle against terrorism is seriously hampered, Interpol Secretary General Ronald Noble told AFP.
It is imperative that all nations take the problem seriously, he said during a two-day visit here to inform the Counter-terrorism Committee of the UN Security Council of Interpol's work since it opened an office at UN headquarters a year ago.
"If member countries treated stolen passports like citizens treat their stolen credit cards, then we would have many, many fewer terrorists and organised criminals in the world than we currently do," Noble said in an interview with Agence France-Presse.
The council in late July called for greater UN-Interpol co-operation and urged member states to promptly inform Interpol of any passports and travel documents reported lost or stolen.
Noble said only 87 countries are participating in an Interpol computer data base on stolen passports, while 100 others remain undecided.
Since it was created three years ago when only 12 countries had signed on, he added, the data base has gone from 3,000 to more than eight million entries.
"Unless all countries share that information globally, the terrorists and organised criminals will be able to move from country to country," Noble said.
"We know that in the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993, the person who did it, Ramzi Youssef, was in possession of a stolen Iraqi passport," he said. "We know that the prime minister of Serbia (Zoran Djindjic) was assassinated (in 2003) by someone carrying a stolen Croatian passport that had been stamped 26 times by six European countries and by Singapore," Noble said.
In co-operation with the United Nations, Interpol has sent three experts, including an analyst, to work with the investigation into the assassination of former Lebanese premier Rafiq Hariri in February, the Interpol chief said.
The police organisation is also helping track down the Mitsubishi truck that was stolen in Japan and filled with explosives used in the murder.
Tokyo failed to notify Interpol of the vehicle theft, said Noble calling the failure "an opportunity lost to possibly disrupt that attack."
"We submit that had that data been entered into the Interpol data base and had the Lebanese border control checked the data base as they frequently do, maybe that truck would have been prevented from getting into Lebanon," he added.
Since then, Interpol has broadened its alert system to include red for criminal suspects, yellow for missing people and black for body identification.
A special alert is sent to the United Nations when dealing with members of al Qaeda or the Taleban targeted for sanctions by the UN Security Council, Noble added.
UN-Interpol co-operation also extends to UN peacekeeping operations, Noble said, adding that the typical model is Kosovo: "It's traditional police work. There is a tremendous organised crime network and also the risk of police corruption is enormous".
Interpol also supports UN operations to counter smuggling of weapons and precious stones, as in Liberia, Noble told AFP.