Twenty-nine countries from around the world, including the European Union and Pakistan, on Thursday launched a new multilateral organisation dedicated to fighting terrorism. The new group will become “a counterterrorism network that is as nimble and adaptive as our adversaries,” US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said at the inaugural meeting of the Global Counterterrorism Forum, or GCTF.
“Let us pledge to learn as much as we can from one another,” she said at the meeting in a New York hotel on the margins of this week’s United Nations General Assembly. The United States and Turkey will be the initial co-chairs of the group’s coordinating committee. Major nations from Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Europe are members of the group, which includes leading Muslim nations like Egypt and Pakistan as well as emerging economic powers like China. The 30 founding members of the group are Algeria, Australia, Britain, Canada, China, Colombia, Denmark, Egypt, the European Union, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Morocco, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Pakistan, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and the United States.
