UK Christmas terror strike 'highly likely'
Pastor Dale Morgan
UK Christmas terror strike 'highly likely'*
By John Steele, Crime Correspondent
Last Updated: 1:36am GMT 11/12/2006
The risk from terrorists in the Christmas period is "very high indeed"
and the struggle against Muslim terrorism will last at least 30 years,
John Reid, the Home Secretary, said yesterday.
Mr Reid echoed the view of MI5 that there are around 30 major terrorist
plots under way and the terrorists only "have to be lucky once".
He told the GMTV Sunday Programme that an attempted attack over the
Christmas period was "highly likely", adding: "We know that the number
of conspiracies of a major type are in the tens — 30 or round about that.
"We can never guarantee that we will get 100 per cent success but we do
get 100 per cent effort from the security services."
Mr Reid said the current UK terror assessment posted on the Government's
intelligence website was "severe", the second highest level, one short
of the level at which an attack is imminent.
The Home Secretary said he did not think an attack was "inevitable" but
added: "The terrorists only have to get through once, as they did on
July 7, for us to see the terrible carnage that it causes. Our security
services have to be successful on every occasion to prevent that happening.
"I try to walk the tightrope between being truthful and honest about the
threat to the public but, on the other hand, to say we are doing
everything possible to combat it and to try to keep our lifestyle as
near as possible to the British way of life." Mr Reid added: "When it
came to the struggle against republican terrorism in Ireland and in the
mainland here, that lasted 30 years, and there is no indication to me
that this is going to be resolved any quicker than that."
He suggested that it was important to resolve the issue of Israel and
Palestine because it fuelled "international terrorism".
"If terrorism is to be defeated here in this country, the whole
community has to be united against them.
"The aim of the terrorists is to divide the community, to pretend that
this is a war between Muslims and everyone else, when it isn't. In a
funny way they reflect the views of the extreme Right of politics who
argue the same thing — that the big division is between Islam and
everyone else.
"It isn't — it's between the terrorists and everyone else and only with
that unity can we ultimately defeat them."
The head of MI5, Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, warned recently that
groups linked to al-Qa'eda were recruiting teenagers to carry out
suicide attacks and would use chemical, biological or nuclear weapons if
they got the chance. MI5 is monitoring some 200 groupings or networks
comprising more than 1,600 individuals "who are actively engaged in
plotting or facilitating terrorist acts here and overseas".
The cost of fighting terrorism has been illustrated by figures showing
that the Metropolitan Police, the force which leads British police
efforts against terror, spent £505 million last year on its Specialist
Operations department. SO includes the anti-terrorist and special
branches, now merged, and squads protecting politicians, members of the
royal family, diplomats and locations believed to be at risk, such as
Westminster and Buckingham Palace.
The Foreign Office has advised Government ministers, ambassadors and
officials to avoid the phrase "war on terror", and similar belligerent
terms, as they risk angering British Muslims and generating tensions in
the wider Islamic world.
It said it wanted to avoid re-inforcing the terrorists' world view of
conflict between the West and the Muslim world "by using language that,
taken out of context, could be counter-productive".