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United States Secretary of Defense admitted today that his country has failed to tackle the root causes of terrorism, and added that it is too soon to say if the US-led coalition were winning the war on terror.

"On the negative side of the ledger, I think we have not made enough progress in trying to address some of the root causes of terrorism in some of these societies, whether it is economic deprivation or despotism that leads to alienation," Robert Gates told delegates at the Shangri-La dialogue in Singapore.

But he was quick to point out that there are other more complex causes behind people turning to terrorism.

"One of the disturbing things about many of the terrorists that have been caught is that these are not ignorant, poor people," he said. "These are educated people, often from professional families. So dealing with poverty and those issues is not going to eliminate the problem, but it certainly can reduce the pool of people prepared to give their lives for this cause."

President Bush emphasised last week the need to tackle the root causes of terrorism to fight Al-Qaeda.

"Everything looked fine on the surface, but beneath the surface, there was a lot of resentment, there was a lot of frustration, such that 19 kids got on airplanes and killed 3,000 Americans," Bush said at a press conference. "It's in the long-term interest of this country to address the root causes of these extremists and radicals exploiting people that cause them to kill themselves and kill Americans and others."

Terrorism experts agreed with Gates that the Bush administration has not done enough to tackle terrorism at its root.

"The issue is US occupation forces in the region as well as US backing of Israeli occupation of Palestinian land, US exploitation of Arab oil wealth and US support for autocratic regimes throughout the Mideast." Randall Hamud, the editor of the book Osama Bin Ladin: America's Enemy In His Own Words said. "Contrary to his claim that he is now pushing for democracy, Bush is helping Israel attack the democratically-elected Palestinian government and backing the autocratic regimes of Mubarak in Egypt and Musharraf in Pakistan."