LONDON - BRITAIN is under threat from terrorists operating out of weak states where they can run training camps and raise funds undetected, a report published on Thursday said.

The report, co-authored by former Nato chief George Robertson, said there are 27 weak states that pose a threat to Britain's national security as they could provide bases for terrorists.

The countries - which include Haiti, Nigeria, Somalia and Yemen - all have vulnerable governments that are unwilling or unable to control all their territory.

The report's authors said criminal groups that fund terrorist organizations through drug trafficking and manufacturing counterfeit goods can operate in these weak states without being detected.

Terrorists who raise funds in these states could then coordinate an attack on Britain.

'Transnational terrorists have quickly discovered that the global space, being largely unregulated, with the rule of law either weak or nonexistent, is a place where they can operate with a reasonable prospect of impunity, just as they could in the mountains of Afghanistan before 9/11,' said the report, published by the Institute for Public Policy Research, an international think tank.

Mr Ian Kearns, deputy director of the IPPR and one of the report's authors, said terrorists could run camps in remote areas which governments rarely monitored.

'We have heard of terrorist training camps in the Sahel,' he said, referring to a region of sub-Saharan Africa which runs though several countries including Mali, Chad and Sudan. 'Those areas are impossible to patrol and any activity could go undetected.'

The report said Britain needed to help stabilise these states. It also said Britain should push for international regulations that would stop terrorists using freely available information to create and unleash new forms of biological warfare, such as a modified version of the influenza virus.

'We need a multilateral approach to things like biotechnology and we don't think the government is moving nearly fast enough on the subject,' said Mr Kearns.

'The global financial crisis shows us very clearly what happens if you don't have multilateral frameworks in place to deal with international issues.' -- AP