SINGAPORE: Iraq has replaced Afghanistan as the "epicenter" of international terrorism and escalated the threat of Islamic extremist violence around the globe, security expert Rohan Gunaratna said. "The epicenter of international terrorism ... has shifted from Afghanistan in Asia to the Middle East, that is to Iraq," Gunaratna, regarded as one of the world's authorities on Al-Qaeda, told a financial security conference here.

"Like Afghanistan produced the last generation of terrorists, Iraq will produce the next generation," he said.

Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden and thousands of other Islamic militants gained their combat experience and military training while fighting to end the 1979-89 Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, and many stayed there afterward.

Similarly Gunaratna, who is the head of the International Center for Political Violence and Terrorism Research at Singapore's Institute of Defense and Strategic Studies, said Islamic militants from more than 30 nations had fought in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003.

Gunaratna said that they would eventually return to

their homelands or elsewhere around the world equipped with even more dangerous skills than Islamic militants who were in Afghanistan because the new generation had hands-on training in urban terrorism.

"When they come back, they will have certain capabilities, certain knowledge and the threat of violence will spread," he told delegates at the Asia-Pacific Financial Crime conference.

"So the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq has not reduced the threat of terrorism in any way. This is the most significant development we have seen in the past three years."

Gunaratna said up to 3,000 members of Al-Qaeda had been arrested since the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States that sparked the U.S.-led "war on terror."

"But in place of Al-Qaeda we have seen 30 or 40 different groups emerge," he said, adding that the world must accept that terrorism had become a globalized threat that cannot be eradicated. - AFP