Blair condemns al-Qaeda

2005-08-05 13:42

London - British Prime Minister Tony Blair said on Friday it was a "complete obscenity" for al-Qaeda to justify terrorism against Britain when it supports the killing of innocent people in attacks in Iraq and Afghanistan.

He acknowledged that terror groups use Britain's support of the US-led war in Iraq as a means to attract new recruits, but blasted the logic reiterated in a threat by Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda terror network on Thursday of further atrocities in Britain and the United States if they did not pull out of Iraq.

"These very self same people who are making those remarks yesterday are the people supporting the killing of wholly innocent people in Iraq, wholly innocent people in Afghanistan, innocent people anywhere in the world who want to live by the rules of democracy," Blair said.

"And that is why, when they try to use Iraq or use Afghanistan or use the Palestinian cause as a means of saying, you know, we have justification for what we do, it is a complete obscenity," he told a news conference.

"What they are actually doing in countries like Iraq and Afghanistan, when the people have voted for democracy, is try to stop them getting it," Blair said defiantly.

His comments came after a televised warning from al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden's right-hand man Ayman al-Zawahiri of further horrors in the West.

"These policies (of Blair) will bring them more destruction after the explosions of London," said a finger-wagging, turbaned Zawahiri in the video, aired on the Arabic language Al-Jazeera television news channel.

Zawahiri went on to threaten the United States - which led the invasion of Iraq in March 2003 that Blair supported with British troops - with "horror that would make them forget the horror they saw in Vietnam."

The British leader refuses to draw a direct link between the London bombings and Iraq, saying that al-Qaeda and affiliated groups were implicated in a growing list of bombings for many years before the conflict.

But radical, anti-war lawmaker, George Galloway, who argues the two issues are deeply connected, accused Blair and top ally US President George W Bush of policies that amount to state terrorism on a massive scale.

"Have you any idea how many innocent people George Bush and Tony Blair have killed over the last three and a half years? Have you any idea how many people they killed in Afghanistan, how many people they have killed in Iraq, how many people their weapons have killed in Palestine?" he asked on BBC radio.

"If it is a question of quantum there is far more blood on the hands of George Bush and Tony Blair than there is on the hands of the murderers that killed those people in London," he said.

In Texas, Bush earlier heaped scorn on the "threatening" al-Qaeda message.

"Part of their goal is to drive us out of the broader Middle East," he said, adding that "we will stay the course. We will complete the job in Iraq".

- AFP