A major international conference on al Qaeda and international terrorism takes place here on 2 December. Sponsored by the New York University Centre on Law & Security and the New American Foundation, the one-day conference will open with a paper by CNN's expert on terrorism Prof. Peter Bergen on the current state of al-Qaeda as an organisation. It will also hear presentations by Bruce Hoffman, senior analyst, RAND Corporation and author of Inside Terrorism and Steve Simon also of RAND who is author of The Age of Sacred Terror.
The second session will be addressed by Yosri Fouda of Al Jazeera and author of Masterminds of Terror who in 2002 interviewed Khalid Sheik Muhammad, who is said to be the operational planner of 9/11. Also featured is Dr Jessica Stern of the Harvard University John F. Kennedy School of Government and author of Terror in the Name of God. The session will also hear from Marc Sageman, forensic psychiatrist, and former CIA case officer, who worked with the Afghan mujahideen in Islamabad from 1987 to 1989 and who recently wrote a book called Understanding Terror Networks. Also featured is Abdel Bari Atwan, Managing Editor, Al-Quds Al-Arabi who has interviewed Osama bin Laden.
The third session will be devoted to al Qaeda in Europe with presentations by Rohan Gunaratna, Director, Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies in Singapore and author of Inside Al Qaeda and Ursula Mueller, counterterrorism expert; and minister at the German embassy in Washington. The next session on militant Islam will be addressed by Michael Scheuer, former chief of the CIA Counterterrorist Centre's Bin Laden unit; and author, as "Anonymous", of Through Our Enemies' Eyes. Also on the roster is Salameh Nematt, Washington bureau chief of Al-Hayat. The session dealing with the US and al Qaeda will be addressed by Daniel Benjamin, senior analyst, Centre for Strategic and International Studies and author of The Age of Sacred Terror, Col Pat Lang, former Chief of Middle East Intelligence, Defence Intelligence Agency and Reuel Gerecht, Director, Middle East Initiative, Project for the Next American Century, who is a former CIA Middle Eastern specialist.
The final session on al Qaeda's influence on Pakistan and Saudi Arabia will be addressed by Hamid Mir of Geo TV, Pakistan, Anatol Lieven, of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and Lawrence Wright of the New Yorker magazine. 
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