Terrorism Financing Blacklists At Risk

The United Nations has made several modifications in response to the criticism. But Richard Barrett, a British diplomat and coordinator of the U.N. team monitoring the Taliban and al-Qaeda, which maintains the blacklist, said the world body would probably not go as far as some European courts and governments would like.

For example, he said, it was highly unlikely that the United Nations would ever agree to allow a court or independent panel to review its decisions. Such a move could infringe on powers granted under the U.N. charter, he said.

Barrett warned that a solution was elusive. If European governments stop enforcing the blacklist because of local court decisions, he said, other countries might also effectively abandon the program.

"It can clearly lead to collapse," Barrett said in an interview in New York. "People are worried about the whole procedure, about the difficulty in getting people off the list and the possibility of legal challenge. . . . We have to address these problems."

A Dwindling of Support

The U.N. blacklist was created in 1999 by the Security Council to pressure Afghanistan -- then ruled by the Taliban -- to expel al-Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden and his followers.

Previously, the United Nations used sanctions only against countries, such as Iraq. The Security Council, however, wanted to avoid punishing the general population of Afghanistan and decided instead to target individuals, businesses and groups that supported al-Qaeda. The U.N. sanctions program is controlled by the council, which has the power to add and delete names based on intelligence reports and other evidence, which are kept secret.

Most of the names were added at the urging of the United States, according to U.S. and U.N. officials. As long as no one on the Security Council objects, nominations are automatically approved.

Getting off the list is more difficult. Until two years ago, targets could not even approach the United Nations to ask for a review; they had to ask their country of nationality to take up their cause, something many are reluctant to do. Today, targets can write directly to the Security Council to plead their case. But the council is under no obligation to respond.

In July, the council agreed to make public the reasons why specific individuals and groups had been added to the blacklist. U.N. officials said the disclosures will be published on the Internet soon, although only a few paragraphs will be released on each case.

Diplomats said there had been widespread backing for the al-Qaeda sanctions at first, especially after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. But enthusiasm later waned in some countries, in part because of opposition to the U.S.-led war in Iraq.

"Once we got into the middle of 2003, we found that people were not so supportive anymore," said Michael Chandler, a former British Army officer who headed the U.N. Taliban and al-Qaeda monitoring group from 2001 to 2004. "Too many countries, for a variety of reasons, really didn't implement the sanctions properly."

Victor D. Comras, a former State Department official who served on the U.N. monitoring group until 2004, acknowledged that many countries had lost faith in the blacklist and that as a result, the number of new names had dwindled in recent years.