Global General

Danish PM warns terror threat still exists

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2011-05-02 22:15

COPENHAGEN - The death of Osama bin Laden is a "landmark and significant event in the global fight against terror," said Danish Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen on Monday.

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On Sunday night, US President Barack Obama announced that an American operation had killed bin Laden, leader of the al-Qaida terror outfit, after a firefight at a compound in Abbottabad, outside Pakistan's capital Islamabad.

"I congratulate President Obama and the American people for successfully ending bin Laden's era of unscrupulous and inhuman violence and destruction," Rasmussen said in an official statement.

He said the death was a time to remember the victims and survivors of al-Qaida's attacks against the USA on September 11, 2001, as well as terror attacks carried out by the group in other parts of the world in recent years.

Denmark, a long-standing ally of the US, takes the al-Qaida threat seriously and is currently part of the NATO-led security and stabilisation mission in Afghanistan.

After the 9/11 attacks, bin Laden initially found refuge with the radical Taliban regime that previously ruled Afghanistan, before re-locating to neighbouring Pakistan.

Rasmussen cautioned that efforts in Afghanistan are "far from complete" as "the threat from al-Qaida and other terror groups still exists."

But he added the killing of bin Laden showed that "sustained international operations against terrorism brings results."

Yet, Danish Justice Minister Lars Barfoed warned that the terror-threat against Denmark has not lessened simply because bin Laden is dead.

"There are still action groups (of terrorists) that have, until now, been independent of bin Laden's orders, and who can yet attack Denmark," he told DR News, Denmark's national broadcaster.

In a related development, Danish Foreign Minister Lene Espersen observed that bin Laden's death comes at an important time for emergent democratic movements in the Middle East and North Africa.

She said she hoped the event would help the region "move towards dialogue and cooperation, rather than radicalisation and confrontation," in comments posted on the Foreign Ministry's website Monday.