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Cairo, 3 oct - (ANA) - - Islamist militants are shifting their focus from southwest Asia to Arab North Africa and stepping up violence in the region, Tunisian President Moncef Marzouki said in an interview published yesterday. Moderate Islamists who were harshly suppressed by secular Arab dictators have gained political power or prominence following popular uprisings in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt. But armed, militant Islamist groups, including the North African wing of al Qaeda, have also benefited from lapses in internal security across the region wrought by the often chaotic transition to more democratic government. Marzouki told pan-Arab daily al Hayat that some of Tunisia's hardline Salafists had links to al Qaeda and that North African countries would work before the end of the year to form a united front against the threat of rising Islamist militancy. He said around 3,000 Salafists in Tunisia were estimated to be potentially dangerous and described them as a "cancer" in the country, the first in the Arab world to bring down dictatorship in a wave of popular uprisings. Marzouki, a secularist in office under a power-sharing deal with the moderate Islamist Ennahda party after it won a free election a year ago, said talks with such militants were futile and the threat they posed must be addressed with legal measures. (ANA)