PARIS, April 26 (Xinhua) -- French President Emmanuel Macron said Thursday that the international community should conduct "perfect" coordination to forge "concrete" acts against terrorist cells' financing.
"What we have succeeded on the ground militarily, we must do in the fight against the financing (of ISIS and al-Qaeda) with the same strength, determination, clarity and solidarity," Macron told a gathering at "No money for terror" conference.
Macron, who made combating terrorism his top priority, called for "coalition of states and international organizations that accept to work together and decide to cooperate to dry up any financing resources of these groups (ISIS and al-Qaeda)".
To Macron, terrorists were using "all contemporary forms of financing "which required "another step in the fight against terrorism".
Addressing the gathering, he invited concerned countries to put aside their territorial interests and "make the commitment of transparency and mobilization", to dry up terrorism funds at roots.
In this context, the French president called for better information exchange to create a cooperation network that facilitates information's flows.
Adding to that, he pledged to tackle the anonymity of financial transfers in cooperation with the country's main partners and key allies.
Representatives from 70 countries and regions and hundreds of experts gathered in Paris for the two-day conference on ways to fight terrorism financing.
In a final statement released on Thursday by Macron's office, participants underlined the crucial need of an integrated approach to combat terrorism financing, vowing to improve domestic legal and operational frameworks to collect, analyze and share information by national authorities.
Furthermore, they pledged to strengthen the effectiveness by allowing financial intelligence units, and concerned services to gather and share data on the financing of the individuals, groups, undertakings and entities associated with terrorist groups.
They also agreed on criminalizing terrorism financing, including that of terrorist travel and recruitment and applying effective, proportionate and dissuasive criminal sanctions, even in the absence of a link to a specific terrorist act.
Effective implementation of asset freezing mechanisms to hinder terrorist activities was also recommended at the conference, according to the statement.
Participants will meet in Australia next year to evaluate progress of the implementation of Paris meeting's commitments.
