Washington: The United States has for the first time extended its terrorism blacklist to the Internet, designating four Websites affiliated with an extremist Jewish group as terrorist organisations, US State Department officials said on October 10.

The move was all but unnoticed when it was put into place last week in a routine re-designation of 25 "foreign terrorist organisations" whose inclusion on the list was about to expire.

It affects Websites run by or tied to the Kach or Kahane Chai group, which have been on the blacklist for years, the officials said.

"This is the first time to our knowledge that a Website or any Website has been designated an FTO," one official said, using the State Department's acronym for "foreign terrorist organisation".

The four Websites are - www.newkach.org, ww.Kahane.org, www.Kahane.net and www.Kahanetzadak.com, according to a State Department notice published in the Federal Register on October 2.

With the exception of www.newkach.org, which is currently being redesigned and features no content, the Websites offer news, commentary and links to other sites of interest to followers of the late radical Israeli-American rabbi Meir Kahane, who advocated armed anti-Arab resistance.

The impact of the designations, which carry a host of US travel and financial sanctions, was not immediately clear as Websites often have no physical presence other than their existence in cyberspace.

As of today, all four of the banned sites could be easily accessed on the Internet.

Agencies