KARACHI, Pakistan - The international war on terror will prove a long drawn-out battle as militants reorganize themselves into smaller groups, Asian defense experts said Monday.

"Al Qaeda has broken its organization into smaller units of elements, making a network in third world nations," Wan Usman, head of strategic studies at the University of Jakarta in Indonesia told a seminar on the changing global security environment.

A Pakistani soldier stands guard near the venue of a defense exhibition in Karachi September 13, 2004. Pakistan, striving to make a niche for itself in the global arms market, is touting locally-built tanks and other weapons during a four-day defense exhibition which opens on September 14. REUTERS/Zahid Hussein

The network had penetrated institutions, and managed to fan destructive radical anti-Western teachings in some Muslim schools in the region, he said.

Pakistan, a key ally of the United States in the war on terror, organized the seminar as part of an international defense exhibition that formally opens in Karachi Tuesday.

Exhibitors and delegates from more than 50 nations, including the United States, Britain, Russia, China and France, are participating in conditions of tight security because of fears of terror attacks from al Qaeda or local supporters.

More than 10,000 policemen and thousands of paramilitary rangers and army soldiers, backed by helicopters and sniffer dogs, have thrown a security blanket over the city.

Many main roads were closed to traffic.

Usman said that in the Asia-Pacific region, the threat of al Qaeda was most potent in Southeast Asia.

He said a sense of unfairness was the force that motivated terrorists, who seek to destroy the modern globalized system they regard as unfair.

"The fight against terrorism can only succeed when the ideology upon which it is based is shown to be wrong," he added. Maj. Gen. Zhu Sheng Hu, a Chinese expert and former director of the Institute for Strategic Studies at the University of Beijing, called for an increased role for the United Nations in the fight against terror.

"Double standards in fighting terrorism will not work," he said. "The focus should be on removing the root causes of terrorism."

Some countries used the war on terror to increase their influence and were interfering in the affairs of other countries, he said, warning that it could weaken the international coalition against terrorism.

Pakistan Defense Minister Rao Sikandar Iqbal said political and economic disparities and the denial of the right of self determination to the people of Kashmir and the Middle East were key causes of terrorism.

© Copyright 2004 Reuters Limited

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