Track dirty money to fight terrorism: US experts

Washington, March 14 (IANS) US President Barack Obama's promised Afghanistan-Pakistan strategy to be delivered to the April 3-4 North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) summit should track 'dirty money', both from drug production and neighbouring countries, two US experts have suggested.

'Follow the Money,' suggested former Central Intelligence (CIA) intelligence analyst Paula Garthoff and former White House drug policy spokesman Robert Weiner in an op-ed column titled 'Banking: Stop Flow of Funds that Underwrite Terrorism' in the Miami Herald Friday.

'The money produced by the drug business must be a central focus of our new strategy in Afghanistan, which now produces 92 percent of the world's opium and transits a third of it through Pakistan,' they said.

'President Obama must confront a hard reality: illegal money underwrites those bent on wreaking havoc on America,' Weiner and Garthoff asserted.