WASHINGTON. Oct 9: Hoping to dry up support for terrorism. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright took steps Wednesday to block fund raising and punish US backers of 30 foreign organisations she designated as terrorist groups, reports AP.

The list Included 13 Islamic organisations in the Middle East along with two Israeli groups. Also on the list were a number of Asian and Latin American groups. Missing were the Irish Republican Army and the Palestine Liberation Organisation. both on past US lists.

Albright's action was in response to a 1996 law designed to stop fund raising in the United States by and on behalf of organisations that engage in or sponsor terrorist acts.

As of Wednesday, any money that the 30 organisations have in the Unitea States will be blocked. Also, It will be a crime to provide money, weapons or other types of tangible support

to any of the groups.

In addition, members and representatives of these organisations will be ineligible for US visas and will be subject to exclusion from the United States.

"Our goal is to make the United States fully a no-sup-port-for-terrorism' zone," Albright said in a statement.

’By steadily reducing the habitat in which terrorism thrives, we can hope to make terrorists first an endangered species and ultimately an extinct one." she said.

In a statement issued during a political trip in New Jersey. President Bill Clinton said. "The United States is committed to fight against those who speak the language of terror."

The law was inspired in part by the April 1995 bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City.

The American-Arab Antl-piscrimination Committee complained about the high pro-

portion of Islamic groups included on the list.

Citing State Department figures. the committee said there were only three anti-US terrorist attacks in the Middle East last year.

Among the better known Islamic groups named were the Palestinian organisation Hamas and the Lebanese group Hezbollah.

Also designated were Kach and Kahane Chai, Israeli groups whose stated goal is to restore the Biblical state of Israel.

The list also was assailed by the National Coalition to Protect Political Freedom, which called it an attack on First Amendment rights.

Excluding religious materials and medicine. "Any funds that a US person gives to schools, medical clinics or orphanages linked in any way to the designated foreign groups will become a federal crime punishable by up to 10 years in

prison." the coalition said.

Sens. John Kyi and Dianne Feinstein complained about the omission of the Irish Republican Army and the Palestine Liberation Organisation from the list.

They called the IRA "one of the oldest, most violent and indiscriminate terrorist organisations in modern history.

State Department spokesman James P. Rubin noted that the IRA declared an unequivocal ceasefire on July 19 and that the British government declared subsequently that the truce was genuine in word and deed.

In Belfast. Ken Maginnls. security spokesman for the pro-Brltlsh Ulster Unionist Party in Northern Ireland, accused the Clinton administration of being "slow to learn" lesson of previous IRA ceasefire, which lasted 17 months before the group returned to bombing.