War will provoke terrorism, Labour MPs warn Blair

Labour MPs warned Tony Blair yesterday that launching military action against Iraq could provoke more terrorist outrages similar to Saturday's Bali bombing.

In exchanges following a Commons statement on the attack that killed up to 30 Britons, the Prime Minister came under pressure to give assurances that the war on global terrorism would not be undermined by the campaign by the United States and Britain to disarm Saddam Hussein.

Alice Mahon, the Labour MP for Halifax, said Britain should focus on fighting terrorism and should not start a war in the Middle East, which would fan the flames of fundamentalism across the region.

Derek Foster, a former Labour chief whip, said Mr Blair had to persuade President George Bush that any military conflict outside the authority of the United Nations would fracture any coalition and undermine the fight against terrorism.

Charles Kennedy, leader of the Liberal Democrats, called for a breathing space in the war on terrorism and said the prospect of conflict with Iraq should not "distract" from it. He asked Mr Blair: "If there is to be a war against Iraq, would that increase or decrease the likelihood of further international terrorist incidents of the type we have just seen?"

Alex Salmond, leader of the Scottish National Party at Westminster, questioned the Government's intention to fight a war on two fronts, saying the preoccupation with a military campaign in Iraq should not "detract, disrupt, deflect, or in any way undermine the solidarity of the international coalition in the war against terrorism".

But Mr Blair insisted the priority was to root out terrorism wherever it was. "It is not an either-or. We need to tackle both threats," he said.

The Prime Minister said the war against terror and the Government's position on Iraq were linked because both threats were driven by "the same type of fanaticism and extremism".

Denying that President Saddam's weapons of mass destruction were a distraction, Mr Blair said it was dangerous to suggest that "somehow we choose between the threat of dealing with chemical or biological weapons at the hands of very unstable countries and international terrorism, however different the means of tackling them may be".

He said: "Unless we tackle both of them, I think they could come together in a horrific way."

He added: "Both are threats from people or states who do not care about human life, who have no compunction about killing the innocent. Both represent the extreme replacing the rational, the fanatic driving out moderation."

The Prime Minister won the backing of Iain Duncan Smith, the Tory leader, who said: "Those who say we have to choose between terrorism and weapons of mass destruction are setting a false choice. Bali cannot be used as a pretext for letting Saddam off the hook."

Mr Duncan Smith said: "Terrorism is a cancer and it must be rooted out wherever and whenever we find it. The war against terrorism and our determination to disarm Iraq must surely proceed in parallel.

"We must steel ourselves that this is now a struggle, not just of a few people in distant lands, but a struggle for all of us to defend our civilised values against those who would tear them down and return us to a new dark age."

Michael Portillo, a former Tory defence secretary, told MPs: "No one is going to be spared in the war of aggression by terrorists, so the only answer is for all of the world community to join in the fight against terrorism."