The International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol) has been seeking improvements so as to strengthen effectiveness in its fight against international crime, the organization's Secretary General Ronald Noble said Monday in Hong Kong.
"All international crime is local crime somewhere", Noble said, so Interpol's every member country has the responsiblity to pool their information in combating crime.
Even though Interpol has the theoretical infrastructure to provide a mechanism for the immediate exchange of information to assist law enforcement in investigative efforts, the communications structure among Interpol is decaying and outdated, he noted.
Noble pointed out while the wealthy countries can afford advanced communication technologies, poorer countries lack the resources, training and expertise. Currently, almost half of Interpol's member countries do not have the ability to send and receive information using state-of-the-art technology.
"We cannot afford to let harmful gaps in technology prevent police from sharing information worldwide", Noble emphasized, adding that the issue must be corrected.
Besides technological backwardness among some member countries, according to Noble, changing the police forces' unwillingness to share information about fugitives and serious international crime, however, may be the greatest challenge confronting fighting transnational organized crime, as member countries' police forces do it on a voluntary basis.
Interpol needs to encourage its member countries to put more information into Interpol's data bases, Noble said. He added that the data probably didn't mean much at first sight until bits of information were pieced together and make more sense.
Interpol, set up in 1923 with 179 member countries, is the largest international organization second only to the United Nations. In Noble's opinion, Interpol's "richest and most diverse region in terms of people, languages and challenge remains in Asia."
In order to reduce the number of countries in which criminals can hide, it was recommended at Interpol's Asian Regional Conference last month in Sri Lanka, that Interpol target three Asian countries for membership, including Afghanistan.
(Xinhua News Agency March 18, 2002)
