Funding for Interpol must be increased dramatically for the global police body to meet the threat posed by international terrorism, Interpol's secretary general said Thursday.
"The case we are working for is that of a suspected terrorist carrying a biological or nuclear weapon intending to kill hundreds of thousands if not millions of us," Ronald Noble told AFP. "In order to prepare against that possibility we need a billion dollar a year organisation not a million dollar a year organisation," he added at the end of Interpol's four-day annual conference in Marrakech in southern Morocco.
Interpol operated at a deficit last year with its expenditures of 46.7 million euros exceeding its budget of 45.1 million euros. The organisation has a budget for 2007 of 44.5 million euros. The global police body is financed by its 186 member states whose governments pay annual contributions calculated using a framework agreed on by members. Since the September 11, 2001 attacks against the United States, Interpol has increasingly been called upon to offer operational support to police forces in member states in the fight against terrorism, so more money is needed to do the job properly, Noble said.
The number of names of suspected terrorists in Interpol's database jumped to 12,000 from around 2,000 after the attacks and member states' police forces are now for the first time connected to the same communications system but much more needs to be done, he added.
Only 17 out of Interpol's 186 member countries systematically check the passport numbers of incoming travellers against the agency's global stolen and lost travel documents database which has over 15 million entries. "Significant progress has been made but we have just finished a 100 meter sprint in a marathon and we have to run as fast," Noble said.
Interpol decided at the general assembly to set up a working group to study and submit recommendations regarding the development of a new financial contribution scale for the organisation. A total of 541 officials from 79 different countries worked for Interpol at its headquarters in France as well as its regional bureaus and its office at the United Nations as of the end of 2006.
In 2006, more than 4,200 people wanted by Interpol were arrested worldwide, up 20 percent since 2005. The global body was founded in 1923 with the aim of smoothing international police cooperation. Nearly 600 delegates from 145 Interpol member states took part in the general assembly which wrapped up Thursday.