TA called up for anti-terror campaign

Up to 140 Territorial Army intelligence experts are to be called up in the war against terrorism, Geoff Hoon, the Secretary of State for Defence, said.

In the first compulsory mobilisation of reservists since the Suez crisis 45 years ago, the new recruits will sift raw information to try to detect terrorist networks. The part-time soldiers, from 3 (Volunteer) Military Intelligence Battalion, include a university professor, a London Underground train driver and Frank Doran, a former Liberal Democrat lord mayor of Liverpool. Experts in Middle Eastern languages have also been called up.

Mr Hoon told MPs that the move had been agreed to "enable the current level of operations to be sustained".

Most will be deployed in Britain with the Defence Intelligence Staff and the Permanent Joint Headquarters at Northwood, north-west London, but about 40 will be attached to British forces in Afghanistan.

Lewis Moonie, a Defence minister, said: "A great mass of information has been collected in the past few weeks in Afghanistan. It now needs to be fully evaluated."

Mr Hoon told the Commons that 74 reservists had already volunteered to join British forces in Afghanistan, but denied that the call-up reflected overstretch in the British armed services.