WASHINGTON: The White House will hold a summit on preventing violent extremism, the US Secretary of Homeland Security said Wednesday, warning that terrorists must "be engaged."
The US continues "to face real terrorist enemies and real terrorist threats" from Islamic State militants who have overtaken large swaths of Syria and Iraq, Secretary Jeh Johnson said, one day ahead of the 13th anniversary of September 11.
The October summit on domestic and international efforts to prevent extremism, "will address the full life cycle of radicalization to violence posed by the foreign fighters" he said.
Johnson spoke only hours before President Barack Obama was to deliver a White House address in which he appeared poised to authorize air strikes against the Islamic State militants in Syria.
Although "we have no credible information that ISIL is planning to attack the homeland at present, we know that ISIL is prepared to kill innocent Americans they encounter because they're Americans," Johnson told the Council on Foreign Relations.
The US, he said, is resolved "to degrade and ultimately to destroy" IS, which is also known by the acronym ISIL.
"We are continually on guard against the potential domestic-based homegrown terrorist threat who may be working in our own society," Johnson said, adding that it was the element he feared most and the "most difficult" to detect.
"We're making enhanced efforts to track those who enter and leave Syria and may later seek to travel to the US from a country for which the US does not require a visa from its citizens," Johnson added.
"We have vastly improved this nation's ability to detect and disrupt terrorist plots overseas before they reach the homeland" he said.
But "this type of terrorist threat simply has to be engaged, we can't avoid it," he said.
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