Balthazar Garzon, the Spanish investigating magistrate who heads that country's effort to prosecute Islamic terrorists, told a conference in Florence, Italy, that this "second generation" of extremists, some of them as young as 16, have in many cases no history of affiliation with al-Qaida or other established terror groups.

Speaking through an interpreter, he described the group that carried out the Madrid railway bombings in March 2004 as "a whole network based on personal contact, where a single person was a kind of catalyst."

Garzon's comments echoed later off-the-record contributions from officials in other European countries who discussed their concerns about what he dubbed "spontaneously generated" terror cells among the grownup children of Muslim immigrants recruited to the extremist cause in jails or over the Internet.

Rather than being organized in discrete cells, Garzon said, these second-generation jihadis tended to form loose constellations defined by "the system of personal relationships among the members."

Rather than a hierarchy, they were "individuals who make up a sort of galaxy."

For these new, looser networks, Garzon said, "Al-Qaida is an ideological reference point, not a real articulated structure with a command chain."

Because these youngsters often have no history of connection to extremist groups, intelligence and law-enforcement agencies can remain unaware of their existence, the conference heard.

"They are unknown people," said one senior European law-enforcement official who asked for anonymity because of his involvement in prosecuting such groups.

Officials from several European countries reported recent investigations that 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.

Those who join the Islamic insurgency and survive will be used to "being hunted in a much more aggressive fashion than by law enforcement," Roger Cressey, who was the White House deputy counter-terrorism coordinator during President Bush's first term, told United Press International.

They 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."

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

"The administration gave no appreciation of the danger of creating a new cadre of jihadis," Cressey said.

Analyst and author Peter 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 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.

Only a handful of the foreign insurgents killed or captured so far by the U.S.-led forces in Iraq have been Europeans.

But, as citizens of European nations, these second-generation radicals can easily travel to the United States without a visa.

Concern about this threat, about what al-Qaida and its affiliates might have -- in Cressey's words -- "metastasized" into, is also said to be one of the factors behind a high level interagency review of counter-terrorism policy in Washington.

"We are looking at ways to strengthen our global counter-terrorism strategy," one White House official confirmed to UPI.

The review -- first reported by The Washington Post last week -- was initiated by the White House sometime in the spring "to improve on the progress we've already made ... (and make) sure we are doing everything we can to protect the American people," the official said.

Cofer Black, who until recently was the State Department's counter-terrorism coordinator, the most senior U.S. diplomat on that beat, told the conference that despite U.S. successes in killing or capturing foreign insurgents, the capabilities the survivors are acquiring are changing the odds.

"Not many have to get past you when they are trained so well in explosives," he said -- a reference to the skills needed to make suicide-bomb belts and large truck bombs.

Indeed, Black prophesied that protection against such a serious threat might entail significant changes to the U.S. way of life.

"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," Black told the conference.

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