"I predict that the quality of all our lives will change to a certain extent, as measures previously considered needed (only) in forward areas will increasingly be ... adopted in our home countries," Cofer Black told a conference of U.S. and European counter-terrorism officials and experts.

Black, who until earlier this year was the U.S. State Department's counter-terrorism coordinator, declined to elaborate.

He said Iraq had become "a university on how to conduct highly effective assassinations and bombings." He said the skills learned by terrorists there meant that "we are likely to see increasingly innovative" means of attack.

"The survivors of the Iraq jihad will have gained tremendous operational capabilities" in traditional areas of terrorist training like the construction of large vehicle bombs, Roger Cressey, who was the White House deputy counter-terrorism coordinator during President Bush's first term, told United Press International.

He said the creation of a new cadre of hardened Islamic terrorists was "one of the biggest unintended consequences of the war in Iraq."

Balthazar Garzon, the Spanish investigating magistrate who is Spain's leading prosecutor for terrorism and related crimes, compared the graduates of the Islamic insurgency in Iraq to the Arab mujahedin who successfully fought the Soviets in Afghanistan with help from the United States and Islamic governments like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.

Those so-called Afghan Arabs were the cadres that went on to form al-Qaida, but Garzon said the Iraq war was creating "an even more serious problem."

All three men spoke at a conference in Florence, Italy, last week organized by New York University's Center on Law and Security.

The conference, attended by European and U.S. counter-terrorism officials and experts, heard in a series of off-the-record sessions what Cressey called "the real concern" among counter-terrorism law-enforcement specialists from both sides of the Atlantic about this new generation of Islamic terrorists.

Recent investigations by authorities in several European countries have discovered networks of Islamic extremists recruiting and making travel arrangements for young radicals who want to go to fight the U.S. military in Iraq.

U.S. counter-terrorism specialists say these young recruits, if they survive, will pose a particular security problem because they may have no documented history of links with extremist organizations and - carrying European passports - can easily reach the United States.

Noted terrorism author and analyst Peter Bergen quoted the Florentine philosopher Nicol� Machiavelli's admonition to be both a lion and a fox. "The lion cannot recognize traps, but the fox is defenseless against wolves."

"I think we can all agree," he said, "that the invasion of Iraq was a rather lion-like activity."

The invasion, he said, had created "a classic defensive jihad," or holy war, in Iraq, which had been endorsed by many of the same Islamic leaders who had been quick to condemn the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

"At a minimum," he concluded, the invasion had "increased the pool of people (in Islamic countries) who do not like America and are prepared to vote for parties whose agenda at least dovetails to some extent with that of (al-Qaida leader Osama) bin Laden."

Bergen called these battle-hardened veterans "the shock troops of the new Islamic International." He said the threat they posed was likely to be even more severe on the Arabian Peninsula.

Citing one study showing that more than 60 percent of the foreign fighters killed so far in Iraq were from Saudi Arabia, Bergen concluded, "The Saudis are going to have a much bigger problem" than either Europe or the United States with returning fighters.

Cressey said the new generation of militants -- used to "being hunted in a much more aggressive fashion than by law enforcement" -- will have acquired skills "in terms of operational security, counter-surveillance, communication and overall tradecraft that are going to make it very difficult to track them and take them down."

The problem of identification was mentioned by several of those speaking at the conference as a challenge for future counter-terror practitioners.

One European official said many of those who found their way to Iraq to join the Islamic insurgency there had no prior history of links to extremism. "They are unknown people," the official said.

Garzon said Bosnia, which had been a destination in its own right for Islamic holy warriors during the Balkan wars, might provide a way back into Europe, "a welcome or shelter for ... radicals and terrorists."

Other European officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the political sensitivities of the issue, pointed out that Turkey's border with Iraq had always been difficult to police and that it could also provide a route back into Europe.

Black endorsed the Bush administration's so-called flypaper strategy: that the lure of the insurgency was "a significant opportunity" because it brought jihadis to Iraq, where they could be killed by the U.S. military.

"It is a target-rich environment,"he said of Iraq. "The metrics will be good. More and more of these guys are going to get caught."

The problem, he explained, was that those who do survive will be highly trained and battle-hardened, skilled in techniques like the construction of huge truck bombs with potentially devastating effect.

"What really concerns me is, not many have to get past you when they are trained so well in explosives," he said.

"The greatest variable," he acknowledged, "is the actual survival rate of trained terrorists coming out of Iraq. This will define the magnitude of the follow-on problem."

Cressey disputed the flypaper strategy, arguing that it relied on the fallacious assumption that the war was a zero-sum game in terms of terror recruiting and the numbers of jihadis were a constant.

"It's not as if when you kill one (terrorist in Iraq), you reduce the total pool (of terrorists) by one, because new ones are being created (by the war) all the time," he told UPI.

He also echoed other speakers in noting the sad irony that stabilizing Iraq and beating the insurgency there might unleash this new generation of holy warriors.

"It is all very well to talk of flypaper," another European official said, "but what happens when it is no longer so sticky?"

Cressey said, "If Iraq becomes stable, the jihadis will go to another battlefield. ... Some of the Europeans could go home."

Both he and Black agreed that transatlantic cooperation was essential to protect U.S. security.

"Can we keep it away from our shores?" Cressey asked of the threat. "To do that there's got to be strong U.S.-European cooperation.

"We must be careful not to look at this as just Europe's problem. Because if we do, it'll metastasize to the point where we have to deal with it in America."

Black said that, as during the Cold War with the Soviet Union, the security of the American people depended on a "forward defense" in the European theater.

"Our fates are wrapped up together," he said.

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