WASHINGTON, Feb. 15 (Xinhuanet) -- The U.S. National Counterterrorism Center maintains a central repository of 325,000 names of international terrorism suspects or people who allegedly aid them, The Washington Post reported Wednesday.

    The number has more than quadrupled since the fall of 2003, counterterrorism officials were quoted as saying.

    The list contains a far greater number of international terrorism suspects and associated names in a single government database than has previously been disclosed, the report said. Because the same person may appear under different spellings or aliases, the true number of people is estimated to be more than 200,000, according to officials of the counter terrorism center, which was created in 2004 to be the primary U.S. terrorism intelligence agency.

    American citizens make up "only a very, very small fraction" of that number, and "the vast majority are non-U.S. persons and do not live in the U.S.," the report quoted an administration official as saying.

    The U.S. government has been trying to streamline more than 26 terrorism-related databases compiled by agencies throughout the intelligence and law enforcement communities. Names from the counterterrorism center list are provided to the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Terrorist Screening Center, which in turn provides names for watch lists maintained by the Transportation Security Administration and other agencies, according to the report.

    Civil liberties advocates and privacy experts said they were troubled by the size of the database of the National Counterterrorism Center, and they said it further heightens their concerns that such government terrorism lists include the names of large numbers of innocent people, the report said. Enditem