Tighter airport security would do more than a second UN resolution

Claims by conspiracy theorists have reached new levels of absurdity. Last week some of them sniffed the political air and wondered whether the British Government had manufactured a terrorist threat in order to justify a war against Iraq. Fleetingly the conspiracy theorists must have had a vision of Alastair Campbell rushing into Tony Blair's office and declaring: "I've had a brainwave. Let's send the tanks to Heathrow."

Of course there have been maniacally comic attempts to convince voters that a war was necessary, from the plagiarising of a 12-year-old PhD thesis to the sudden seriousness with which the US is taking the latest message from Osama bin Laden. In the past Mr bin Laden's messages have been more or less dismissed by the US administration, with hints that he might be dead. Last week he conveniently mentioned Iraq in his despatch, and Colin Powell liberally quoted the words as proof that the terrorist was alive and kicking and linked with Saddam. For the first time, I wondered whether Mr bin Laden was actually dead.

However contorted, these were examples of spin with a purpose, propaganda by the US and British governments to make the case for war. The tanks at Heathrow airport do not make the case for war against Iraq. They make a different case altogether, underlining in the most vivid way possible the more immediate danger posed by terrorists with no proven link to the Iraqi regime. The spinners for war are not helped by the tanks.

The only link between al-Qa'ida and Iraq is limited to a hypothetical situation: if Saddam possesses weapons of mass destruction he might hand them over to terrorists. This does not, by any stretch of the imagination, constitute an immediate threat. While Bin Laden lives, North Korea boasts of its nuclear capability and the Isreali/Palestine conflict remains unresolvedthe world sweats over an hypothesis.

Most urgent of all the immediate threat from terrorism cries out for more political focus than it is getting. No doubt there is much intelligence work going on behind the scenes, but there are already signs that terrorists are regrouping in Afghanistan as the short attention span of the US is diverted to Iraq. In the meantime, in Britain, terrorists real or imagined are already causing mayhem. Look at the chaos at Heathrow and Gatwick last week – and the terrorists have not even made a direct move.

The real or imagined terrorists are making waves politically as well. To close or not to close an airport? How much information should ministers release to the public? These are nightmarishly complex decisions at the best of times. With ministerial minds on Iraq, mistakes will be made. The Labour party chairman, Dr John Reid, is used to running damage limitation exercises. He is not used to running them when he has caused the damage. Dr Reid inadvertently caused excessive alarm last week by comparing the threat facing Britain with 11 September in the US. I do not blame him for his original error, provoked by those silly questions suggesting the terrorist threat had been a "spin" operation. But it highlights the extreme sensitivity of the situation.

To take one small example. Gatwick airport was closed because a traveller possessed a live grenade. He managed to get through the relatively lax security in Caracas. Here is an immediate priority for political leaders: the need to ensure safety standards at airports are universally high. Lax airport security in some parts of the world is currently more of a threat to Britain than Saddam. Instead of contriving a second UN resolution against Iraq, the world's leaders should be gathering at an international airport security conference.

In Britain there are peculiar problems associated with terrorist attacks. The country's decaying infrastructure and confused overlapping lines of control have made the managers of public services extremely nervous. A layer of snow brings the south-east of England to a standstill, partly because public transport comes to a halt, quite unnecessarily in the view of most experts. The chaos caused by the closure of Gatwick airport last week resulted from another edgy over-reaction. There is a difficult balancing act here between taking risks and being so cautious that the consequent disruption is in itself a triumph for terrorists. The implications of the terrorist threat should be the subject of emergency Commons debates; it impacts on lives and the British economy far more than Saddam. Instead, the Commons may be recalled this week to debate Iraq.

Inevitably the focus of any debate will be on the need for a second UN resolution, the problem with which is ... the first UN resolution. Resolution 1441 is worth revisiting. It is like a Tony Blair speech on the euro: at the end of it you are not entirely sure what it means. The US and Britain highlight the fact that the resolution demands that Iraq fully complies with its disarmament obligations. As both countries point out, the resolution states that Iraqi co-operation is the key.

On the other hand, the resolution does give the inspectors a central role in the process. This is the point stressed by France and Russia. More broadly, those opposed to military action argue that the inspectors should have all the time they need to complete their work. The resolution does not say that. But it does not set any time limit either. The French and Germans rightly emphasise that 1441 does not pave the way for automatic force. That is true. On the other hand it does not rule out force.

It is no coincidence that the resolution points in several different directions. The countries that signed up to it have conflicting views. There is only a limited amount that words can do when the United Nations is emphatically not united over Iraq. Presumably a second UN resolution would be even more convoluted. As matters stand a new resolution would need to allow the US and Britain to claim authorisation for war while allowing the weapons inspectors to continue their work. That would take some drafting.

This is becoming like a dark Peter Sellers farce in which the main players pursue a complicated red herring while the more dangerous villains make hay. Mr Blair is fighting for his political future over a likely war with Iraq. President Bush, addressing troops heading for the Gulf, crudely conflates the looming conflict with the war against terrorism. The rest of the UN agonises over Hans Blix, under pressure to contrive a unity that does not exist. While the world looks away, the terrorists prepare to strike.