London, Nov 11: Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network has been largely dismantled, but the threat posed by extremist Muslim terrorists remains high and has grown harder to track, a report said today. The number of countries likely to pose a "medium" security risk to western businesses operating in them grew to 71 for 2004, with 14 countries bumped up from "low" risk, said the report by the London-based control risks group.
Many of those were gulf nations, including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman and Qatar, said the report, which was meant to aid companies in evaluating risks in different parts of the world. Among the other nations moved from "low" to "medium" risk were Thailand, Bolivia and Morocco. Kevin Rosser, one of the report's authors, said worldwide counter-terrorism efforts, including the arrests of al-Qaeda leaders like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, had significantly disabled the network.

"The al-qaeda organization that existed on Sept. 11 (2001) ... Really no longer exists, it's been largely dismantled," he said.

"What we're beginning to see is a much more disparate movement of people who are sometimes coordinating their acts and sometimes not, but who are inspired by the example of al-Qaeda and who are carrying out attacks," he continued. "So we see the threat becoming much more elusive and the danger is that it becomes much harder to track." Bureau Report