Associated Press reported on Wednesday that Interpol Secretary General Ronald Noble said cocaine trafficking was used to finance both the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia and Hezbollah.

Addressing the Americas Interpol Conference, he urged governments to follow up more closely on lost and stolen passports and warned against using them to smuggle terrorists into the United States.

He added that very few passports were reported lost or stolen, and very few were checked against international databases that tagged them as missing documents when travelers cross borders.

Noble said that only one in every three travelers entering American nations in 2008 had their passports checked against Interpol's database for stolen or lost travel documents.

He said that countries of Central America "have become the main transit point for Iraqis being smuggled into the United States," with Interpol tracking 74 cases of Iraqis traveling with fraudulent passports from various European countries. Only 24 of those documents had been reported lost or stolen to Interpol.

"Think about how simple if would be for al-Qaeda terrorists to slip into or through your countries in order to plan and carry out the same kind of deadly terrorist attacks that occur far too frequently in Iraq," Noble told 60 senior police officers from around the Americas attending the three-day conference.

Noble did not specify what Iraqis were being smuggled. Mexican officials said many of those found in their country were Iraqi Christians trying to reach relatives in the United States.

Noble also said it is easy to imagine street gangs and terrorist networks jointly exploiting each other’s money, manpower and local knowledge, though he said reports of such collaboration had not been confirmed.

-NOW Staff