Intelligence

'They fire first and think later,' say British soldiers

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Tim Albone in Kabul The friendly-fire deaths in Helmand have reopened a schism between American and British troops over how to fight the Taleban in Afghanistan.

Although publicly British commanders insist the Americans are still a vital
ally in the fight against insurgents, privately British soldiers expressed
concern and anger at their "gung-ho" approach.

Squadron Leader John Gunther, a British spokesman in Helmand, told The Times:
“The Americans have helped us out on many occasions. The cause of the
accident is under investigation, what I will say is that although tragic,
friendly fire incidents are rare and are part of armed conflict.

“We have methods in place to stop this, but they are not fail-safe.”

However, news that an investigation was being launched did little to appease
the British soldiers on the ground.

“I just can’t figure out how this has happened. How do you tell the families
they were killed by supposed allies?” one British soldier asked.

“Whenever I hear we have American jets overhead I get f***ing worried,”
another serviceman said. “They just don’t seem to know what they are doing a
lot of the time.”

“They have a different approach to us, they fire first and think later,” said
another.

“Here we are fighting the Taleban and they (US warplanes) are dropping bombs
on us," said a British soldier. "They are meant to have the best
equipment, yet this still happens time and time again. You have to wonder
what they are doing.”

Earlier this month an unnamed senior British officer told The New York Times
that differences in tactics were such that he had asked American Special
Forces teams to pull out of the town of Sangin, in Helmand, because they
were causing so many casualties and undermining support for reconstruction
projects.

The US forces also planned to build a patrol base near a religious shrine and
a graveyard — a proposal only abandoned after British troops intervened.

Des Browne, the Defence Secretary, was forced to issue a statement after the
report, in which he said the views were those of a single officer. "It
is not the view of the alliance. These things can be said in the heat of
battle," he said.

But when The Times visited Sangin last month, other soldiers were willing to
describe the difficulties of working with their allies. “They just seem to
have no idea how to fight a counterinsurgency, we have a history but they
have no reference points” said one soldier.

“They have a different approach to us, if we get in an ambush we pull back and
assess the situation," said another. "They try and shoot their way
through it and kill as many people as possible.”

August 25, 2007 at 03:39 PM in UK, US | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Al-Qaeda‘planning big British attack’

Dipesh Gadher

AL-QAEDA leaders in Iraq are planning the first “large-scale” terrorist attacks on Britain and other western targets with the help of supporters in Iran, according to a leaked intelligence report.

Spy chiefs warn that one operative had said he was planning an attack on “a par with Hiroshima and Nagasaki” in an attempt to “shake the Roman throne”, a reference to the West.

Another plot could be timed to coincide with Tony Blair stepping down as prime minister, an event described by Al-Qaeda planners as a “change in the head of the company”.

The report, produced earlier this month and seen by The Sunday Times, appears to provide evidence that Al-Qaeda is active in Iran and has ambitions far beyond the improvised attacks it has been waging against British and American soldiers in Iraq.

There is no evidence of a formal relationship between Al-Qaeda, a Sunni group, and the Shi’ite regime of President Mah-moud Ahmadinejad, but experts suggest that Iran’s leaders may be turning a blind eye to the terrorist organisation’s activities.

The intelligence report also makes it clear that senior Al-Qaeda figures in the region have been in recent contact with operatives in Britain.

It follows revelations last year that up to 150 Britons had travelled to Iraq to fight as part of Al-Qaeda’s “foreign legion”. A number are thought to have returned to the UK, after receiving terrorist training, to form sleeper cells.

The report was compiled by the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre (JTAC) - based at MI5’s London headquarters - and provides a quarterly review of the international terror threat to Britain. It draws a distinction between Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda’s core leadership, who are thought to be hiding on the Afghan-Pakistan border, and affiliated organisations elsewhere.

The document states: “While networks linked to AQ [Al-Qaeda] Core pose the greatest threat to the UK, the intelligence during this quarter has highlighted the potential threat from other areas, particularly AQI [Al-Qaeda in Iraq].”

The report continues: “Recent reporting has described AQI’s Kurdish network in Iran planning what we believe may be a large-scale attack against a western target.

“A member of this network is reportedly involved in an operation which he believes requires AQ Core authorisation. He claims the operation will be on ‘a par with Hiroshima and Naga-saki’ and will ‘shake the Roman throne’. We assess that this operation is most likely to be a large-scale, mass casualty attack against the West.”

The report says there is “no indication” this attack would specifically target Britain, “although we are aware that AQI . . . networks are active in the UK”.

Analysts believe the reference to Hiroshima and Naga-saki, where more than 200,000 people died in nuclear attacks on Japan at the end of the second world war, is unlikely to be a literal boast.

“It could be just a reference to a huge explosion,” said a counter-terrorist source. “They [Al-Qaeda] have got to do something soon that is radical otherwise they start losing credibility.”

Despite aspiring to a nuclear capability, Al-Qaeda is not thought to have acquired weapons grade material. However, several plots involving “dirty bombs” - conventional explosive devices surrounded by radioactive material - have been foiled.

Last year Al-Qaeda’s leader in Iraq called on nuclear scientists to apply their knowledge of biological and radiological weapons to “the field of jihad”.

Details of a separate plot to attack Britain, “ideally” before Blair steps down this summer, were contained in a letter written by Abdul al-Hadi al-Iraqi, an Iraqi Kurd and senior Al-Qaeda commander.

According to the JTAC document, Hadi “stressed the need to take care to ensure that the attack was successful and on a large scale”. The plan was to be relayed to an Iran-based Al-Qaeda facilitator.

The Home Office declined to comment.

April 22, 2007 at 03:44 PM in Al Qaeda, Iraq, UK | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Lawrence of Arabia takes on the Taliban-News-World-TimesOnline

 

Inspired by the legendary leader, key Washington adviser David Kilcullen tells Christina Lamb how he is reshaping strategy in Afghanistan and Iraq

Source: Lawrence of Arabia takes on the Taliban-News-World-TimesOnline

 

As Nato’s biggest offensive against the Taliban gets under way in Helmand, many of the 4,500 soldiers involved will be recalling the words of an 11-page e-mail that has circulated like wildfire among those fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq.

“You watched Black Hawk Down and The Battle of Algiers, and know this will be the most difficult challenge of your life,” it starts. “But how does [all the theory] translate into action at night, with the GPS down, the media criticising you, the locals complaining in a language you don’t understand, and an unseen enemy killing your people?”

Twenty-Eight Articles: Fundamentals of Company-Level Counterinsurgency is written by David Kilcullen, a 40-year-old Australian social scientist who is trying to redefine America’s war on terror. It is based on TE Lawrence’s Twenty-Seven Articles, a guide for British officers working with Arabs during the first world war.

Despite being Australian — he remains a reserve lieutenant-colonel in the Australian army — and an anthropologist, Kilcullen is the chief strategist on counterterrorism in the US State Department. He was given the job advising secretary of state Condoleezza Rice 18 months ago after writing an influential paper that said Iraq and Afghanistan should not be treated as a terrorism problem but as a globalised insurgency.

“My fundamental argument was that counterterrorism is enemy-centric — try to destroy the terrorists then the problem goes away,” he says. “That’s clearly not the case. Even if we kill Bin Laden, that’s not going to resolve the conflict. The problem is a quiescent population which is preyed on by a hostile element, so instead of going after that, you should go and protect the population and try to win their allegiance.”

It is a view taking hold both in Washington and London. More than five years after September 11, the US military is coming to accept that “shock and awe” is not the answer in theatres such as Afghanistan and Iraq. Troops are now issued with a counterinsurgency field manual, the first to be released by the American military since Vietnam.

Counterinsurgency has been made a key part of the curriculum on the Armor Captains’ Career Course for young US officers. In Whitehall, too, suddenly everyone in the Foreign Office Afghan group is talking about “coin”, shorthand for counterinsurgency.

So influential is Kilcullen’s thinking that he has also been appointed as chief adviser on counterinsurgency to General David Petraeus, the new US commander in Iraq. He will head a group of so-called warrior-intellectuals whose thinking was once regarded as subversive but who are now charged with finding the best way out of Baghdad. “A patient on intensive care,” is how Kilcullen describes Iraq, “not lost yet but . . .”

Kilcullen’s views were developed largely in East Timor, where he commanded an infantry company in the United Nations intervention force during the struggle for independence, and in Indonesia where he studied Islamic extremism for his doctorate.

When he was just 12, his father — a philosophy professor — gave him a copy of Lawrence’s Seven Pillars of Wisdom, which he has carried ever since. “It’s fairly battered now!” he laughs. “I do believe we can learn a great deal from him.”

Another unconventional source is the cult 1999 film Fight Club starring Brad Pitt about alienated young white men in America going through the process of radicalisation, creating an ideology and forming terror cells. At the end they carry out a widespread terrorist attack.

“If you show a film about Islamic terrorism to people who are not Muslim, all they will see is the Islam and they will conflate the two,” he explains. “You’ve got to show people the phenomenon in its natural condition in their own society.”

Last month Kilcullen was in London, advising on how to take on the Taliban. He pulls no punches over the difficulties that British troops are facing. “I work in Iraq and various other theatres in the war on terror and have seen the enemy up close and I can tell you this enemy we face in Afghanistan is the toughest we face anywhere,” he said.

His 28 principles start with “diagnose the problem”. He explains: “The hardest thing in counterinsurgency is to know what’s going on. It’s not like world war two where you just look at a map and see Hitler’s forces are there and the allies are here.”

The new US commander in Afghanistan, General Dan McNeill, who launched the Nato offensive last week, preempting an expected Taliban spring strike, seems to have followed another of his principles — “seek early victories to stamp your dominance”.

Perhaps most important is “know your turf”. Kilcullen is critical of senior European officers who believe that gratitude for reconstruction will bring people over to their side. “It’s a very naive Hollywood view of counterinsurgency that you go in, speak the language, be nice to them and they’ll like you,” he said.

“People will be grateful for what you’ve done but when the enemy turn up with weapons and threaten them they will slide back to the enemy side. In Afghanistan the population don’t exercise choice individually, it’s collectively. You win or lose this place a village or valley at a time.”

According to Kilcullen, after more than five years in Afghanistan, the US military now understands that. “If you watch the way American forces operate, the first thing they do before they even deploy a soldier is engage with the local population and talk to their leaders. A lot of American operations now are planned by sitting down with the provincial governor, the military and police chief and local villagers. That would have been unimaginable back in 2001.”

He gives the example of a US commander in Kandahar who talked to villagers for weeks before carrying out a military operation. “He had prepositioned tailored aid packages designed to meet specific requests,” he says. “Within a few hours of the firing finishing that package was rolling so villagers could see an immediate benefit to cooperating.

“That pattern didn’t emerge by accident. America, unlike European countries, has rotated its troops back to the same areas each time so you have people operating in Afghanistan who have done two or three stints in the same place. They know the villages, know the valleys, know the people and know what not to do from mistakes made last time.”

That is not his only criticism of Europe. Referring to last year’s high casualty rate in which more than 4,000 Afghans were killed, he says: “The Europeans have been making a lot heavier use of air power than the Americans. Most people killed by American troops — which is relatively low compared with the Europeans — have been killed in direct rifle fire, in one-on-one engagement where people are actively shooting at the Americans and they’ll take them out, so there’s a pretty high chance they are killing the right people.”

He is keen to dispel comparisons with Vietnam, pointing out that the Taliban are all from Pashtun tribes. “The potential appeal of the Vietcong was unlimited. All Vietnamese could see something for them in the Vietcong agenda. But that’s just not the case with Taliban. The Pashtun population of Afghanistan is between 23% and 40% at most.

“Even in the worst-case scenario of Talibanistan to the south and east, Afghanistan would not fall. It has a whole area north of the Hindu Kush which would be viable as a state; Kabul would still be viable as capital.

“That’s not to say that things are rosy but that the fundamentals of the Afghan state are very sound compared with other insurgencies,” he says. “Look at the approval ratings of the Afghan government — still more than 50%. Tony Blair would be very happy to get that.”

March 11, 2007 at 10:21 AM in Middle East, UK | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

BBC NEWS | UK | UK Politics | Kelly death not suicide, says MP

 

An MP investigating the death of Dr David Kelly says he is convinced the weapons scientist did not kill himself. Norman Baker tells BBC Two's The Conspiracy Files he has reached the conclusion Dr Kelly's life was "deliberately taken by others". Mr Baker has also obtained letters suggesting the coroner had doubts about the 2003 Hutton inquiry's ability to establish the cause of death.

Source: BBC NEWS | UK | UK Politics | Kelly death not suicide, says MP

Hutton reached a verdict of suicide but a public inquest was never completed.

Dr Kelly, whose body was found in July 2003, had been under intense pressure after being named as the suspected source of a BBC report claiming the government "sexed up" a dossier on the threat posed by Iraq.

Distress

Coroner Nicholas Gardiner opened an inquest into his death in Oxford just a few days after his body was found on Harrowdown Hill.

As you will know, a coroner has power to compel the attendance of witnesses. There are no such powers attached to a Public inquiry
Nicholas Gardiner, writing to Lord Falconer in August 2003

But he was ordered to adjourn it by the Lord Chancellor, Lord Falconer, as the Hutton inquiry would take over, and it was not resumed.

Lord Falconer said he wanted to minimise the distress caused to the Kelly family.

The official account given by the Hutton inquiry was that Dr Kelly committed suicide by cutting his left wrist, and taking an overdose of the painkiller Co-Proxamol.

In his report, Lord Hutton said: "There was no involvement by a third person in Dr Kelly's death."

Assassinated

Mr Baker, who has spent a year investigating the case, believes there is enough evidence to suggest that the scientist did not kill himself.

The Liberal Democrat MP said toxicology reports suggested there was not enough painkiller in Dr Kelly's system to kill him, and the method he had apparently chosen to commit suicide was not a recognised or effective one.

"I'm satisfied it was not suicide. And after that you're left with the conclusion that his life was deliberately taken by others," he tells The Conspiracy Files.

He tells the programme it has been suggested to him that the weapons scientist was assassinated.

Speaking last week on BBC Radio 5 Live, Mr Baker said he was not ready to reveal all the evidence he has unearthed, but would consider passing a file to the police in due course.

Witnesses

Mr Baker has obtained letters between Mr Gardiner and the Lord Chancellor's office from 2003, suggesting the coroner was not happy with the Hutton inquiry's ability to establish the cause of death.

The letters were given to the MP by Constitutional Affairs minister Harriet Harman and have not been revealed publicly before.

I believe that David was probably a victim of Iraqi Intelligence Service
Richard Spertzel, former colleague of Dr Kelly

On 6 August 2003 Mr Gardiner wrote to the Lord Chancellor expressing concern about Hutton's lack of legal powers compared with an inquest.

"As you will know, a coroner has power to compel the attendance of witnesses. There are no such powers attached to a public inquiry," Mr Gardiner wrote.

The Oxfordshire coroner also asked to be allowed to continue with the inquest because "the preliminary cause of death given at the opening of the inquest no longer represents the final view of the pathologist, and evidence from him would need to be given to correct and update the evidence already received".

Mr Gardiner met officials from the Department of Constitutional Affairs on 11 August 2003 "to discuss the mechanics of admitting evidence from the pathologist and analyst".

Death certificate

The Lord Chancellor then accepted the coroner's need to have one further hearing.

In a letter to Mr Gardiner, dated 12 August 2003, Sarah Albon, private secretary to the Lord Chancellor, said that "the cause of death of Dr David Kelly is likely to be adequately investigated by the judicial inquiry conducted by Lord Hutton".

It said Lord Falconer accepted Mr Gardiner may want to take fresh evidence from the pathologist and analyst.

But he was "most anxious to avoid any unnecessary distress to the family, and has asked that you keep the proceedings as short as possible and, so far as the Coroner's Rules allow, take the evidence in writing".

The coroner did just that in a hearing on 14 August 2003.

On 18 August 2003 a death certificate was registered setting out the causes of death.

'Hit list'

Yet the Hutton inquiry had only just started taking evidence and its report was published a full five months later.

In March 2004, a final hearing was held in Oxford at which Mr Gardiner said he was satisfied there were "no exceptional reasons," including concerns about the Hutton inquiry's powers, for the inquest to be resumed.

The Conspiracy Files explores a number of alternatives as to how Dr Kelly might have met his end.

A former colleague of the weapons inspector, former UN weapons inspector Richard Spertzel, tells the programme he believes the scientist was murdered by the Iraqis.

Mr Spertzel, who was America's most senior biological weapons inspector and who worked alongside Dr Kelly for many years in Iraq, believes the Iraqi regime may have pursued a vendetta against Dr Kelly.

"I believe that David was probably a victim of Iraqi Intelligence Service because of long standing enmity of Iraq towards David," he says.

"A number of us were on an Iraqi hit list. I was number three, and my understanding, David was only a couple behind that.

"And none of the people on that hit list were welcome in Iraq. Immediately after David's death, a number of the other inspectors and I exchanged emails saying, 'Be careful.' "

February 26, 2007 at 01:03 PM in UK | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Obama and Cameron are test runs for a new world-Comment-Columnists-Andrew Sullivan-TimesOnline

Andrew Sullivan

Elections are about policies. They are about character. They are about parties and their evolving philosophies. But elections can also be expressive events. They don't just determine prime ministers or presidents; they express culture. They can be a reflection of the public mood, refracted through an individual. They can be a cultural statement about where a society is and where it wants to go. That was true of the emergence of Reagan and Thatcher in the 1970s - both represented a cultural shift from all that dreadful decade conjured up. It was true of Bill Clinton's promise in 1992 and Tony Blair's in 1997 as well: two men who promised to marry the market economy with a new social diversity.

Source: Obama and Cameron are test runs for a new world-Comment-Columnists-Andrew Sullivan-TimesOnline

David Cameron and Barack Obama now occupy strangely parallel places in the political culture of Britain and America. They are both young, dynamic, loquacious and extremely well-packaged politicians. They are creatures of their respective parties, and yet distinguishable from them. Obama has done his time in the precincts of Chicago politics; Cameron has worked his way patiently up the Tory machinery.

But Obama’s reasoned tone and serene religious faith set him apart from the vices of the American left, just as Cameron’s easy-going empathy distances him from the detritus of the “nasty party” on the right.

The appeal of both, however, lies, I think, in the expressive nature of their candidacies for high office. By their very backgrounds they each represent to their respective countries the latest answer to an old question. In America, the oldest and densest issue is race; in Britain, the oldest and once insurmountable issue is class. Obama is the postracial candidate for America; Cameron, in turn, represents a candidacy that is, at root, postclass.

Obama’s postracial appeal leaps out from his polling demographics. His support is not primarily from black voters. African-Americans actually favour Hillary Clinton over the son of a Kenyan immigrant and his Kansas sweetheart. Obama is racially half-black but he is not culturally African-American. His lineage does not come from America’s segregated or enslaved history. Unlike Condi Rice or Clarence Thomas, the inheritance of deeply American racism does not directly mark him.

Yes, as Obama has rightly pointed out, he is black when he is trying to catch a cab on an urban street. Bigots don’t distinguish between a black son of an immigrant and the attenuated progeny of slaves.

But he is also canny enough not to appropriate a past that isn’t his. In the famous speech he gave at the 2004 Democratic convention, he spoke the following words: “In no other country on earth is my story even possible.” But that story is one of immigration and opportunity, not slavery, segregation and survival.

Black Americans are keenly aware of these cultural distinctions. Some have been bold enough to say so. If Obama were Republican, the clamour would be much louder. But most African-Americans will surely not let Obama’s difference from many derail a chance for the first American president of African ancestry.

White Americans, in contrast, are all but falling over each other to elect a black man to the highest office. He is an opportunity for them to prove their lack of racism. After all Obama is, as one of his rivals indelicately put it, “clean and articulate”. He is, in the eyes of some whites, black but not too black.

But whatever the voters’ motives, Obama’s becoming a nominee or even president would be a historic moment of emotionally unpredictable consequence. He declared his candidacy last weekend where Lincoln began his law career, in Springfield, Illinois. His arrival in the White House a century and a half after Lincoln’s victory in the blood-soaked battle against slavery would and should cause all Americans to stop and take stock.

A country long contaminated by the legacy of slavery would take a moment to see how far it has come. Yes, it would be an alloyed victory. Obama the immigrant would not be the great-great-great grandson of American slaves. History is not that neat. But he would represent what the South once feared and despised. And the colour of his skin would change the character of the presidency.

Cameron represents nothing so profound. But he does signify something relatively new. Cameron’s broad-based appeal has a remarkable aspect to it — remarkable, perhaps, because it no longer seems remarkable. Voters do not view Cameron primarily through the lens of class. He isa product of Eton and Oxford; he is also a dope-smoking former member of the Bullingdon club, as we have recently discovered. These affiliations are shot through with class-consciousness. In the relatively recent past they would have rendered a Tory toff with Cameron’s past too politically toxic for primetime.

I confess to a little of this myself looking at that now-infamous photograph of him in his Bullingdon white tie and Spandau Ballet pose. I admit I felt an involuntary spasm of class-loathing. I remember the effortless sense of total privilege that some of the Bullingdon members had at Oxford — and their upper-class chaviness. (The underclass has always had its echo in the overclass, as far as binge drinking and antisocial behaviour goes.) The behaviour repelled me then. It repels me now.

But then the spasm relents and I realise what a waste of energy it is to take these old and not too pretty feelings and plaster them on someone who has obviously outgrown them. We all have pasts; we all have backgrounds. They shape us but they do not determine us. It seems to me that there are plenty of legitimate reasons to criticise Cameron (and plenty of reasons to admire him too) but his past life isn’t one of them. Yes, Etonians have human rights too. Give the man a break.

Some still harbour these resentments, of course. Roy Hattersley had a predictable splutter on Question Time last week. But the splutter dates him, as well as demeans him. Most Brits have gone beyond this kind of thing, just as most Americans are eager to get past race.

As a commenter on a Guardian blog last week opined: “Didn’t this type of class envy go out some time in the 1970s? This really is feeble stuff.”

Yes it is, in many ways. But this “feeble stuff” once defined much of British culture, just as race defined America’s. If a Tory leader with Cameron’s pedigree emerges as a classless symbol of Britain, it will indeed be a cultural moment of sorts.

Maybe a Labour prime minister could get away easily with such a privileged pedigree, just as a black Republican could win over white America more easily than a Kenyan-Kansan Democrat. But Obama and Cameron are trying for something subtler and harder. They are fallibly trying to move past these categories, while representing new and complicated forms of them.

Will either succeed? I don’t know. Race and class have mined the field with booby traps in both countries. Both men may falter; and both have something of the inauthentic about them. But more inauthentic than the rest of us? I doubt it. Life is messy in these complicated times; and getting beyond categories that limit our horizons is never easy.

One gets the sense that in Britain and America voters are seriously looking at a new century and a new paradigm. The candidacies of Obama and Cameron are test runs for a future all of us secretly want.

February 17, 2007 at 10:50 PM in UK | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Al-Qaeda tells British cells to carry out wave of beheadings

 

David Leppard

ISLAMIC terror cells in Britain have been instructed to carry out a series of kidnappings and beheadings of the kind allegedly planned by the nine terrorist suspects arrested in Birmingham last week.

The “strategic” assassination instruction was issued by Al-Qaeda’s leaders in Pakistan and Iraq to dozens of their followers in this country. It was uncovered by MI5 last autumn, senior security sources say.

As a result police are on standby for multiple attempts by terrorists to kidnap and then behead people across Britain. MI5 is conducting a counter-terrorism surveillance operation to prevent such an attack.

The alleged attempt to kidnap and behead a Muslim soldier or soldiers in Birmingham was just the first of a series of planned attacks, security sources say.

The revelation explains the recent deployment of a permanent SAS unit to London. The unit has been placed on 24-hour standby to respond to a terrorist attack in the capital. It would aim to carry out a hostage rescue mission within minutes of being alerted.

Muslim police officers serving in London may also be given extra protection. The Association of Muslim Police is in talks with the Met, which is expected to carry out a risk assessment of the dangers.

One well placed source said: “Cells in the UK have been alerted to carry out this type of attack as opposed to the more sophisticated type of bombing in which you place a large number of volunteers at risk. All you need for a beheading is a bit of courage and a sharp knife.”

The order to encourage “low-tech” assassinations is said to follow a review by senior Al-Qaeda planners after an alleged plot to smuggle bombs onto airlines was foiled by police last August.

The order encouraged followers to adopt the tactics used by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the former Al-Qaeda leader in Iraq, who was behind the abduction, torture and beheading of Ken Bigley, a British engineer, in Iraq in 2004.

Bigley, 62, was kidnapped and filmed on video begging for Tony Blair to end the war before being beheaded. Footage of his “execution” was later posted on the internet.

After learning of the alleged Birmingham plot to behead a British Muslim soldier returning from Iraq or Afghanistan last autumn, the Ministry of Defence spent several months trying to establish how many soldiers fitted into this category.

After focusing on soldiers in the regular army, the Royal Marines and the Territorial Army, officials whittled the list of potential targets down to fewer than 10.

These soldiers were warned about the potential threat and advised on protection measures, or given the means to protect themselves. Sources said several of the suspects were personally acquainted with the Muslim soldier who was said to have been lined up as their first victim. The soldier, a corporal in military intelligence, is said to be under close protection.

The surveillance operation in Birmingham was stepped up at the beginning of last month when scores of detectives were seconded from the Greater Manchester police to join their colleagues in the West Midlands anti-terrorism unit.

The decision to arrest the nine suspects is said to have been made after one of them was seen buying a video camera in an electronics shop last weekend.

According to another source close to the investigation, those involved in the plot were supplying equipment and computer hardware to Al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan. One of the suspects had recently returned from a trip to Pakistan.

There were also claims this weekend that several of the arrested men attended the Hamza mosque in the Sparkhill area of Birmingham.

An official at the mosque, who refused to be named, said it was a centre for a group called Tablighi Jamaat, described by western security services as a “conveyor belt to Al-Qaeda”. The group’s British headquarters is in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, where two of the London bombers regularly attended. In a statement, mosque officials said they could not confirm the claims.

Despite intelligence about the new UK strategy security sources say that Al-Qaeda has not entirely dropped more traditional terrorism tactics.

At least two cells are believed to be preparing attacks using cars packed with fertiliser explosives to cause mass casualties.

Armed guards were last month deployed outside the Bacton gas terminal in Norfolk following intelligence that it had been “scouted” by known terrorist suspects. Intelligence suggested the suspects were discussing how to carry out a car bomb attack.

A Whitehall official said MI5 was now monitoring about 280 terror suspects.

Each was suspected of serious intent to carry out an attack. Cells are being closely observed in at least four British towns and cities.

February 4, 2007 at 12:14 PM in Current Terrorism, MI5, UK | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Job done: Taliban ‘are on the run’

Christina Lamb Kabul

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-2583182_1,00.html

British Nato commander claims military victory even as insurgents come back fighting

“MY aim today is to convince you that we actually won the first and second Anglo-Afghan wars, contrary to popular belief,” said Colonel Dudley Giles as he showed a group of officers and diplomats inside Kabul’s Bala Hissar fort last week.

The fort is in ruins, destroyed by British troops in 1879 in retaliation for the murder of the British envoy. Giles is an accredited battlefield guide and in between heading Britain’s military police in Kabul for the past nine months, he has led a series of tours emphasising British military prowess on Afghan soil.

Down below in Kabul’s Nato headquarters, the most recent British general to attempt to tame the Afghans is engaged in a similar exercise of persuasion.

As General David Richards hands over control of all 31,000 Nato troops in Afghanistan to his American successor, General Dan McNeil, this morning, the message is very much “mission accomplished”. It is a message somewhat tarnished by the loss of the key southern town of Musa Qala to the Taliban.

Recent visitors to Richards’s office have been given a presentation entitled “2006 Achievements” that claims Nato “has gained the psychological ascendancy”. It goes on to cite statistics ranging from 6m children in school to 22m calls a month being made on the Afghan mobile phone system.

“In many respects I think we’ve been more successful than I anticipated,” Richards said last week. “At the start of the summer there was huge scepticism about Nato — could we fight, would we even still be here by now? Not only has Nato unequivocally proved it can fight but actually, militarily, it has defeated the Taliban.”

The fall of Musa Qala, where British troops had withdrawn after a much criticised peace deal with local elders, has nevertheless cast a pall over Richards’s farewells.

The attack was prompted by an airstrike near Musa Qala 10 days ago that was aimed at a Taliban commander named Mullah Ghafour but killed his family instead. He retaliated last weekend by invading the town centre but was driven out by local elders. On Friday he returned with more than 200 men and captured the town.

At Nato headquarters in Kabul yesterday, they were putting a rather desperate spin on events, saying the incursion proved to critics such as the Americans that the Musa Qala agreement had not been a peace deal with the Taliban. “We will take it back but in a manner and timing of our choosing,” said Mark Laity, a spokesman. “It’s a question of if, not when.”

Whoever ends up with their flag flying over Musa Qala, the general will not be returning home as “Richards of Afghanistan” as he clearly hoped when he arrived last April. But he has acquired widespread respect from both Afghans and diplomats as well as a nasty bout of whooping cough topped with viral pneumonia.

“General Richards has done a good job,” said President Hamid Karzai yesterday. “He’s tried hard and the situation is much better. But I don’t think we can declare victory.”

In fact he has overseen Afghanistan’s most violent year since the fall of the Taliban in 2001, with more than 4,000 Afghans and 191 coalition soldiers killed. The general, who before taking command had criticised the American forces for being “too kinetic”, ordered more than 650 airstrikes in September.

The number of strikes has now fallen to one or two a day, though this is partly because of the traditional winter lull in fighting by the Taliban.

“I am very unhappy about all this bombing and have told Nato this repeatedly,” Karzai said. “As we speak, there is a little girl of four being operated on in Germany because of Nato bombing in which 22 innocent people were killed. Rather than going in Afghan villages and sometimes bombing without really checking, making mistakes, we should go to the sources of terrorism, the places where they are trained and financed.”

Many of the casualties, including the girl, were sustained in Operation Medusa, when Nato forces battled for two weeks in September to stop Taliban forces taking the key city of Kandahar. Richards describes the battle, which left more than 500 dead, as “the turning point of the whole campaign” and insists Nato has won Kandahar. “There is very little Taliban activity there now,” he said.

Furthermore, Richards claims that had he had the extra troops he pleaded for but which are only now are being sent by Britain and the US, he could have won the war.

“I don’t really feel bitter because I’m a professional soldier,” he says with a laugh. “But I would love to have had them. During Operation Medusa if I’d had that reserve I would have prevented the Taliban getting out of the neck of the bottle (back to Pakistan) and swung them into Helmand and done the things already we’re about to do in Helmand.

“If I’d had that reserve I could have made it a more conclusive victory. I could have defeated them and accelerated progress in Helmand.”

Although Richards insists that he always expected to have to fight hard in Afghanistan, he concedes that he was surprised by the intensity. However, General Abdul Rahim Wardak, Afghanistan’s portly and genial defence minister, insists last summer’s heavy fighting could have been avoided.

“What people now call last year’s resurgence of the Taliban was the result of three or four years of preparation,” he said. “The Taliban believed the international community were not firmly committed to Afghanistan and would disengage. So from day one when the West started arming our army and police with those old weapons of the Soviet era that we’d fought with for 30 years with their barrels malfunctioning, etc, it did not give a very good message.

“The Taliban also chose a critical time to emerge — both militarily, just when there was a handover of command, and politically, when there was a lot of questioning in European capitals about the wisdom of deploying their forces here.”

This, the minister said, was what gave them the confidence to try to take Kandahar. “Militarily, it made no sense to send irregular troops against sophisticated conventional forces and compel them to engage in conventional battles. It was a big military gamble and they lost. But it stretched us to our limit.”

Not only is Nato beefing up its forces with an additional 1,000 Polish troops and 800 more British, but the US has extended the stay of 3,200 soldiers from the 10th Mountain Brigade.

There is renewed focus on doubling the Afghan National Army (ANA) to 70,000.

Just as Afghanistan started unravelling because attention had switched to Iraq, it is Iraq that is prompting a realisation in Washington that Afghanistan could go the same way. The past two weeks have seen visits to Kabul from Senator Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House. President George Bush has asked for an extra $10.6 billion (£5.3 billion) in assistance.

On Thursday a beaming Wardak took delivery of 230 Humvee armoured vehicles and 800 army trucks, part of a massive new military consignment from the US.

“Building up the ANA is far cheaper than deploying international forces,” he said. “It was a mistake not to have invested more in the ANA before.”

The big question now is whether the Taliban were dealt a mortal blow by Operation Medusa, as Richards believes, and will not be able to muster their threatened spring offensive.

A Taliban spokesman claimed last month that they have 2,000 suicide bombers. Reports from across the border in Pakistan are of active recruitment. In Quetta, where the Taliban leadership is based, posters exhort: “Come and fight the British.” In Peshawar, prayers in mosques have been followed by impassioned speeches about the infidels in Afghanistan and requests for contributions to buy explosives.

Once again, the focus is on the southern province of Helmand, the Taliban heartland. It is also the centre of the opium trade, whose profits are thought to fund terrorism. Last year Afghanistan was responsible for 92% of world opium production and a quarter of this came from Helmand. Officials believe this year’s output will be higher.

Richards admits that his biggest disappointment has been the lack of progress in Helmand, where 5,000 British troops continue to be engaged in heavy fighting. He long ago stopped talking of the “ink spots”, or areas of development, that he once planned enthusiastically. According to the recently ousted governor of Helmand, Engineer Mohammad Daoud: “Since the British arrived the province has seen far more destruction than reconstruction.”

Many locals see British forces as threatening their livelihood.

Norine MacDonald, of the Senlis Council, a European think tank, has spent the past two weeks interviewing villagers in Helmand while handing out blankets and food aid, and is convinced that Nato has lost the battle for hearts and minds.

“If you’re a 26-year-old man and you see your house destroyed or your daughter killed, you’d turn against the British,” she said. “It’s not about global jihad.”

It was the fear of further alienating the population against the troops that prompted Britain’s refusal to allow ground spraying of the poppy fields in Helmand that was due to start this week.

US officials were furious, believing this to be why Karzai changed his mind about allowing spraying, particularly as the Dutch then insisted it could not take place in Uruzgan either, where their troops are based.

“The Brits really put a spanner in the works,” said one US counter-narcotics official. “How could it go ahead if they wouldn’t allow it in the biggest poppy-growing province?” British officials argue that 10 of Karzai’s ministers spoke out against spraying. Whatever the reason, few expect manual eradication to result in more than a 5% cut. British counter-narcotics officials are reduced to talking of projects such as growing mint.

The eradication force of Afghans and their international advisers, DynCorp, drove into Helmand’s main city of Lashkar Gah on Tuesday, protected by helicopter gunships. They have come under attack every night since and have yet to leave their compound.

In Kabul, many Afghans feel there is too much focus on the south. Although the capital feels far more secure than a few months ago and has seen no suicide bombs for five months, United Nations security officials point out that much of the neighbouring provinces of Wardak and Loghar are no-go areas.

Just last week, as Richards was talking up Nato, a school was burnt down in Loghar.

From today as the British flag goes down and the US flag goes up, this is no longer his problem, though he is thought to covet a role as regional envoy for Tony Blair. Many of his officers believe they will be back soon. Britain is in discussions to take command again next year. Colonel Dudley Giles is one of many who would like to return and perhaps add another chapter to his battlefield tours. He may not convince many Afghans that Britain really did defeat them in the past but most would agree with his message. “We won the war but we lost the peace,” he said.

Copyright 2007 Times Newspapers Ltd.

February 4, 2007 at 12:10 PM in Middle East, Terror groups, UK | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Churchill and Thatcher left off Tories' great Britons list

Churchill and Thatcher left off Tories' great Britons list - Britain - Times Online

Philip Webster, Political Editor
Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher are conspicuous by their absence in a list of 12 great Britons who created the institutions that shaped the country’s history, compiled by the Conservatives and eminent historians.

The ranking was prompted as part of the Tory party’s review of the teaching of history in schools and comes after surveys showing that many children lack a basic knowledge of history.

The review is looking at ways of increasing the emphasis on narrative history, which children find more interesting and which helps to make the past more accessible to them. But the debate it stokes is likely to consume the adult population as well.

As David Willetts, the Shadow Education Secretary, said yesterday, history is always a matter of interpretation and the list is neither definitive nor exhaustive. If the aim is to provoke debate, as Mr Willetts said, it seems certain to succeed.

The list is in chronological order, and begins with Saint Columba for bringing Christianity to Britain, and ends with Nye Bevan (1897-1960), who is included for his role in creating the National Health Service.

That his is the last name on the list suggests that the historians and the Conservatives do not regard any of the institutions founded since the middle of the last century as comparable to those that came before.

Mr Willetts commented: “The loss of national memory means a loss of national identity. Britain needs to be one country — and this means that all British people must share a knowledge and understanding of the events which have made us what we are as a people.

“A country is more than an aggregation of individuals. It consists of the associations that individuals form — the institutions which bind us together in common and overlapping memberships. These institutions are the inheritance of every British child, and all British children should know about them.”

He added: “History is always a matter of interpretation, and this list is intended as neither definitive nor exhaustive. But this list should provoke thought and debate.”

The selection differs considerably from the findings of the 2002 BBC Great Britons poll in which the public voted to place 100 figures in order of greatness. Only two of those on the Tory list were selected by the public to take places in the BBC Top Ten — Isaac Newton and Oliver Cromwell.

In the BBC vote, Churchill, whose cause was advocated by Mo Mowlam in a BBC Two debate, was victorious after 1.6 million votes were cast, beating the engineer Isambard Brunel by 456,498 votes to 398,526. Diana, Princess of Wales, came in third with 225,584 votes.

Charles Darwin was fourth, followed by William Shakespeare, Isaac Newton, Queen Elizabeth I, John Lennon, Horatio Nelson and Oliver Cromwell. The BBC was surprised that Shakespeare, voted Man of the Millennium in 2000, struggled to secure 10 per cent of the vote. He is not included in the Tory list.

The Conservatives have also invited people who would like to contribute their ideas on how history should be taught, and who they think have shaped Britain’s institutions, to e-mail their thoughts to the public services website: www.publicserviceschallenge.com.

The list was compiled from suggestions by Neil McKendrick, Emeritus Reader in History and former Master, Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge; David Starkey, author of The Monarchy of England; and Michael Burleigh, the historian and author of Earthly Powers: The Conflict Between Religion & Politics.

December 26, 2006 at 10:29 AM in UK | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

No engagement, no pregnancy, no assassination - one by one, all the conspiracy theories are killed off

No engagement, no pregnancy, no assassination - one by one, all the conspiracy theories are killed off - Britain - Times Online

Richard Ford, Home Correspondent, and Stewart Tendler, Crime Correspondent
The 832-page Stevens report aims to end ten years of speculation about the car crash in a Paris underpass that killed Diana, Dodi Fayed and Henri Paul

Graphic: the accident in the tunnel

The relationship

The claim Mohamed Al Fayed said that the Princess of Wales and Dodi Fayed were in a serious relationship and intended to get engaged. Mr Al Fayed told the inquiry that his son was going to present a ring to the Princess on the night she died and that they would have announced their engagement on September 1, 1997.

He also claimed that the Princess was pregnant and that the security services became aware of this through monitoring their telephone conversations. This, he maintained, provided a motive to murder them.

The investigation The Stevens team talked to the Princess’s family and friends. Prince William told the team that he had no knowledge of any plan by his mother to get engaged toFayed.

They also spoke to the Princess’s friend Lady Annabel Goldsmith, who spoke to her two days before she died. She told the inquiry that in a phone call the Princess said she was having a lovely time on holiday with Fayed but had no plans to marry.

“I said , ‘You’re not doing anything silly, are you, like getting married?’ She replied: ‘Not at all. I’m being spoilt and I’m having a lovely time, Annabel. I need marriage like a rash on my face.’ ”

When the Princess’s butler, Paul Burrell, suggested to her in a phone call that Fayed might be preparing to propose marriage, she asked for advice. Mr Burrell told the inquiry: “She didn’t want to accept it but didn’t want to offend Dodi and seem ungrateful. I suggested she wear it on the fourth finger of her right hand. She thought it was a clever solution.”

Mr Al Fayed also claimed to have information that the Princess and his son had gone to the Repossi jewellers in Monte Carlo, where they selected an engagement ring that was allegedly sent to Italy for sizing and later collected by Dodi Fayed from a Repossi branch in the Place Vendôme, in Paris.

The evidence about selecting and purchasing the ring was contradictory, Lord Stevens of Kirkwhelpington said. Fayed or the Princess might have seen an item of jewellery in the shop window, but the company has no evidence of work being carried out on the ring. Fayed did visit the Repossi branch in the Place Vendôme on Saturday, August 30, 1997, and was shown a selection of rings but he left with only a catalogue. Two rings were later sent to the Ritz and Fayed selected one from the “Tell me Yes” range, regarded as an engagement ring range. It was not pre-selected or sent to Italy for sizing.

The verdict The weight of the evidence is that Diana, Princess of Wales was not intending to get engaged. Fayed may have meant to propose but the only evidence is from Mr Al Fayed.

Pregnancy claims

The claim Mr Al Fayed claimed that the body of the Princess was embalmed illegally in France and that this was done to conceal a pregnancy.

The investigation No tests for pregnancy were carried out in France but the Home Office pathologist carried out a full post-mortem examination and saw no signs of pregnancy. There was no indication of pregnancy given by the Princess to her doctor, family, friends or associates or those carrying out “personal services” to her in the days before she died.

The Stevens team found a sample of the Princess’s blood in the wreckage of the Mercedes in 2005. Tests showed no trace of the pregnancy hormone HCG, human chorionic gonadotropin.

Lord Stevens’s report went on: “There is witness evidence from close friends and others that the Princess of Wales in mid-August 1997 was in her normal menstrual cycle. There is witness evidence that she was using contraception.”

Myriah Daniels, a holistic healer who travelled with the couple on board the yacht Jonikal, said: “I know for a fact she wasn’t pregnant because she told me she wasn’t and through the course of my work on her body I found no indications to show me that she was.”

The verdict Pathological, scientific, medical, and anecdotal evidence showed that Diana, Princess of Wales was not pregnant.

Perceived threats

The claim The inquiry investigated claims that the Princess feared for her own safety and believed that there were plans to cause her harm.

The investigation The inquiry heard that the late Lord Mishcon, the Princess’s solicitor, made a note of a meeting with her in 1995 at which she told him that “reliable sources” had said to her that by 1996 efforts would be made to get rid of her, whether by her having a car accident resulting from brake failure, or by arranging an injury so serious that she would be declared unbalanced. “The Princess apparently believed that there was a conspiracy and that both she and Camilla Parker Bowles were to be ‘put aside’ ”, Lord Mishcon told the inquiry. Although he did not believe that what she was saying was credible, Patrick Jephson, who was her private secretary at the time, “half believed” the accuracy of her comments.

In addition Lord Stevens investigated a note left by the Princess in 1996 in which she claimed that the Prince of Wales was planning an accident in her car caused by brake failure to clear that way for him to remarry. It was assumed that remarriage referred to Mrs Parker Bowles — but the Stevens inquiry reveals that the note identified another woman. “There is a generally held perception that this reference is to Camilla Parker Bowles. This is not so. Operation Paget knows the identity of the woman named.” However, it does not disclose it.

It was reported last night that the woman is Tiggy Legge-Bourke, the former royal nanny, who is now married and living in South Wales. She declined to comment.

The Princess told her friend Roberto Devorik that she feared three people: Nicholas Soames, a friend of her husband; Robert Fellowes, the Queen’s private secretary, who is married to the Princess’s sister; and the Duke of Edinburgh. “She said of Robert Fellowes: ‘He hates me. He will do anything to get me out of the Royals. He cost me the friendship with my sister’ — and added: ‘Prince Philip wants to see me dead’.”

Mr Devorik said that the Princess had had a premonition that she would be killed and was convinced that “they, the machinery” were going to “blow her up”. After her Panorama broadcast the Princess said to a friend: “I am sure Prince Philip is involved with the security services. After this they are going to get rid of me.”

On the day after losing her HRH title she looked at a portrait of the Duke and said: “He really hates me and would like to see me disappear. . . . He blames me for everything.”

On a flight to Rome with Mr Devorik in August 1996, she said: “Well, cross your fingers — any minute they will blow me up. . . You are so naive. Don’t you see they took my HRH title and now they are slowly taking my kids? They are now letting me know when I can have the children.”

But Lucia Flecha de Lima, another friend of the Princess, said she had never spoken of such fears to her. “She never feared Charles. Prince Philip tried to help her during the difficult period of her marriage, in his own way. He was sometimes a bit brutal. I have read the letters. They were not unkind. He is a clever man. He would not hurt her,” she told the inquiry.

The Duke saw no reason to comment when contacted by the Stevens team about the allegations.

The verdict There is no supporting evidence to show any grounds for the Princess’s repeated claims that she might be killed in a car accident after the brakes were tampered with. The Princess believed that her telephone conversations were being listened to and there may have been attempts to listen to her conversations at home.

The paparazzi

The claim Mohamed Al Fayed claimed that the presence of the paparazzi created the environment in which the collision could be arranged.

The investigation The Stevens inquiry went back over the Frenchinvestigation into the actions of the paparazzi. They found that the film seized from the cameras of those at the scene showed they were taking photographs of the car or the occupants, or both, almost immediately after their arrival at the scene as there were no emergency services visible in their photographs.

But there was no evidence to show that those arriving immediately after the crash, or later, deliberately interfered with attempts to save the passengers in the car or undertook any actions that showed they were involved in a conspiracy to harm them.

The verdict There is no evidence that others took advantage of an environment created by the paparazzi, and neither is there evidence that they colluded with others to create the circumstances that allowed others to murder the Princess and Fayed.

Henri Paul

The claim The inquiry investigated allegations that the driver worked for the security services, either of France or Britain, and was instrumental in the plan to have the Princess killed.

The investigation The team looked at allegations that incorrect information about Henri Paul’s fitness to drive because of alcohol had been deliberately disseminated in order to cover up the real cause of the crash, and that samples taken from his body were swapped by the security services with those of another body so that toxicological results for the French investigation did not relate to him.

Claims that Paul received payments from intelligence or security services could not be proved or disproved by his accounts. “His cash flow could not be accounted for solely from known income sources. In the absence of more specific information, different inferences can be made in respect of his finances,” the Stevens report said.

Some of the procedures and documentation relating to the first post-mortem examination on Paul were not of the highest standard. Paul had beeen drinking and was three times the legal limit in France and about twice the legal limit for driving in Britain. But there was no evidence that he was unsteady on his feet after his unexpected return to work on the night of August 30.

“Although there is no definitive evidence that Henri Paul was an alcoholic there is evidence of a perceived dependency on alcohol on the part of Henri Paul himself,” the report said.

The verdict There is nothing to support the contention that the samples analysed were not those of Paul’s blood. There is no evidence that Paul was a paid informer of MI6.

The Mercedes

The claim That the car the Princess was travelling in was tampered with.

The investigation The forensic accident investigator David Price, a consultant at the Transport Research Laboratory, examined the wreck for the inquiry. The report said: “David Price found nothing in his examinations of the mechanical elements of the car that would have adversely affected the control of the car or survivability of the occupants.

“His technical examination confirmed that none of the occupants of the car was wearing a seat belt at the time of the collision.”

This differed from the original French investigation, which suggested that the bodyguard Trevor Rees-Jones may have been in the process of fastening the belt in the front passenger seat at the time of the accident.

All the seat belts were in good working order, it said.

The verdict “There were no defects on the vehicle that could have contributed to the causes of the crash. There was no evidence of tampering. or interference with the vehicle.” Suggestions that the speedometer was stuck at 192km/h (120mph) after the crash were not correct, the report said. The instrument had returned to zero after impact and tests, backed by today’s report, suggested the crash speed was about 65mph.

The accident

The claim Mr Al Fayed alleged that a vehicle may have blocked the Mercedes, ensuring it went into the underpass, and that a bright flash may have unlawfully contributed to the crash.

The investigation There was evidence of bright lights and flashes near the Mercedes after the crash. The Mercedes began to lose control before the underpass so bright lights or flashes in the immediate approach to or in the underpass were not contributory causes to the loss of control.

The verdict No evidence of any vehicle blocking the Mercedes and forcing Paul to taken the embankment expressway.

The aftermath

The claim The Princess could have been saved if she had been taken immediately to the nearest hospital. Mr Al Fayed claimed that, en route to Pitie-Salpetrière, the ambulance passed another hospital and because it took two hours to get her to treatment her chances of survival were minimal.

The investigation Sébastien Dorzée, a police officer, was one of the first to answer the emergency calls. He was asked to keep talking to the Princess to keep her conscious. She was badly injured with blood coming from her nose and mouth. Her head was between the two front seats.

He told investigators: “She could see her boyfriend just in front of her. She moved, her eyes were open, speaking to me in a foreign language. I think she said, ‘My God’ on seeing her boyfriend. At the same time she was rubbing her stomach. She must have been in pain.”

“She turned her head towards the front of the car, saw the driver and then I think she had an even better realisation of what was happening. She became quite agitated. A few seconds later she looked at me. Then she put her head down again and closed her eyes.”

Medical evidence showed that by the time the Princess arrived at the hospital she was unconscious and on a ventilator. She went straight into treatment and never regained consciousness.

She was given emergency treatment at the crash site before being moved to hospital four miles away where she died. She had treatment and surgery before being pronounced dead at 4am.

The inquiry found no evidence to show that any alternative treatment would have saved the Princess. There is medical debate about stabilising a crash victim before moving them to hospital. French practice at the time was to stabilise first but neither action would have saved her.

The ambulance did pass the Hôtel-Dieu hospital but it had no equipment for dealing with her injuries. The crash was at 12.23am and she arrived in hospital at 2.06am. It took 26 minutes to get her to Pitie-Salpetrière. The ambulance travelled slowly because of fears about her low blood pressure and stopped at one point.

The verdict A conspiracy would have required the agreement of medical specialists of some distinction following a plan of collaboration. Stevens said: “The evidence is that every effort was made to save her life.”

The embalming

The claim Mr Al Fayed maintained that Diana was embalmed in France to conceal her pregnancy and the actions of the French authorities were orchestrated by the British Ambassador and MI6.

He said that Dominique Lecomte, the pathologist who carried out an external investigation of the body, gave the authority for the embalming although it was unclear if the Royal Family or anyone else had given instructions.

As part of the cover-up Paul Burrell, the Princess’s butler, allegedly collected her blood-stained clothes despite the fact that the death was being treated as potentially suspicious. He later burnt the clothes.

The investigation No pregnancy test was carried out in France or Britain. “The only concern of the medical staff was emergency treatment to save her life. After the Princess was pronounced dead there was no need for further tests,” said the report.

No pregnancy tests were carried out in Britain because it was not relevant to the cause of death. The embalming was legal and authorised by a senior policeman and the British Consul-General, and the French pathologist was not involved. A French embalmer believed that no other method — such as dry ice — would work because of the extent of the injuries.

Mr Burrell told the inquiry that he had seen Diana’s clothes in a bag in the surgeon’s room in Paris. The records show that he signed for them but he cannot remember doing so.

He said that the “clothing that had been taken off the princess in Paris was returned to me the next day at Kensington Palace”. They included “her white pedal pusher trousers that I had brought her for the holiday. They were clearly blood-soaked”.

After talking to Lucia Flecha de Lima, “I destroyed them for health reasons. I did not know what else to do”. He had never seen the Princess’s outer clothing since the crash.

There is no evidence to show MI6 had any involvement with the embalming. Sir Michael Jay, the British Ambassador, denied being involved in the decision about embalming and the report finds no reason to doubt him.

The verdict “The evidence shows that all those involved in the decision to embalm the Princess of Wales believed it was necessary to make her body presentable before viewing”, Lord Stevens concluded. Stevens said: “There is no indication that the burning was anything but an innocent act.”

The French inquiry

The claim The French authorities did not carry out proper investigations at the scene of the crash and deliberately prevented investigators for the family of Henri Paul from getting body samples and blood for independent tests. The body was released for burial on the condition that no tests were carried out.

French police were accused of not roping off the scene for long enough for detailed work. Traffic investigations and a photograph of the Mercedes entering the tunnel showing its speed were suppressed.

A statement by Eric Petel, a motorcyclist, who claimed to be first on the scene and described hearing an “implosion” just before the crash, was suppressed by police and later lost.

The investigation The autopsies on Paul’s body were carried out by the French authorities. There were two; in France they can only be carried out by a doctor appointed by the authorities. Blood and tissue tests can also only be carried out by authorised experts.

Herve Stephan, the investigating magistrate, agreed to release the body but did not stipulate that there should be no further tests. However, the law would not have allowed them.

French investigators told the British inquiry that the accident scene was treated the same as any other. Roads are usually opened quickly to get traffic moving but are closed again later if there is more work to be done. The traffic investigator’s report under the French system is part of a dossier of material held by the investigating judge.

The Stevens inquiry found that the photograph of the Mercedes was taken outside the Ritz and not at the tunnel. They traced the photographer who took it as the couple were leaving on their final journey.

The report said that Mr Petel’s evidence should be treated with caution and “there is no corroboration for his account. The evidence available from other winesses contradicted his view that he stopped and tended the Princess of Wales. Those arriving at the scene would surely have seen him at the car”.

The French thought that he might have been a motorcyclist who had driven close to the crashed Merecedes without stopping, but at one point his claims were described as “pure fabrication”.

The verdict None of the claims was proven.

The white Fiat

The claim The Al Fayed team claimed that the white Fiat Uno that hit the Mercedes on the Alma underpass was driven by James Andanson, a French photographer who had been working in the south of France watching the Princess and Dodi Fayed.

His father claimed that Mr Andanson had been turned by the French and British security services. He was “murdered” in May 2000 to silence him and his death was never properly investigated.

The French investigating magistrate halted the search for the Uno without reason.

The investigation Mr Andanson was not in Paris on the night of the crash. His wife told the investigation that he was at home with her at Lignieres, 170 miles from Paris, on the night of the crash and left at 4am to fly to Corsica for an assignment.

He did own a white Fiat Uno and the evidence suggests it was at his home outside Paris. At the time of the crash the car had done more than 360,000 kilometres and was nine years old. Police questioned him and examined and eliminated the car from their inquiries in February 1998.

The French police believe that he committed suicide and the British team agree. There is no evidence he was murdered or that he worked for MI6. The burglary after his death was investigated and professional criminals were arrested but nothing belonging to Mr Andanson was taken.

The French stopped hunting for the Uno in October 1998 after checking 4,668 cars. It has not been identified.

The verdict Mr Andanson had nothing to do with the Uno that crashed into the Mercedes.

MI5 and MI6

The claim British security services were involved in a staged accident to kill the Princess and Fayed. This was done to prevent an announcement of the pregnancy and marriage of the couple. The plot was launched at the behest of Prince Philip.

Mr Al Fayed supported his claims with details from Richard Tomlinson, who worked for MI6, and David Shayler and Annie Machon, who had worked for MI5.

The investigation Police spent three weeks going through MI6 records. They interviewed all the MI6 officers in Paris in 1997. Many were on leave in August 1997 and none knew Paul. MI6 records show no sign of MI6 operations at the hotel.

There were claims that two MI6 officers arrived at the embassy just before the crash and left soon afterwards. Mr Tomlinson admitted to police he had been wrong about the postings of the two, named as Richard Spearman and Nicholas Langman, and admitted his suspicions “would appear to be unfounded”.

The two former MI5 officers told police that from their knowledge of the service the Princess was not under surveillance.

The verdict “There is no evidence that any Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) officer of any designation was involved in the events surrounding the crash in the Alma underpass.”

All the evidence shows that MI6 did not know that the couple were in Paris and there is no evidence to support the claims about Prince Philip.

Copyright 2006 Times Newspapers Ltd.

December 15, 2006 at 02:48 AM in UK | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Religion on campus

Religion on campus - Comment - Times Online

A secular society that demands tolerance should also show tolerance

The renewal of interest in religion in recent years applies as much to Christianity as to other faiths such as Islam. The decline in church attendance in Britain has slowed, there are signs of an increase in applications to be Church of England clergy or Roman Catholic priests, and the young, who had abandoned religion in droves, are more inclined to opt for religious studies in the sixth form. The extent of this shift should not be exaggerated but, nevertheless, the fashionable thesis that religion would die an inevitable death through natural wastage appears to be unfounded. Spirituality, in various forms, and faith have returned to Britain’s campuses.

This trend, as we report today, has been met with a secular backlash that it might fall to the courts to settle. A series of student unions have sought to regulate, restrict or simply ban what were previously recognised as official societies that practised Christianity.

Three cases have acquired prominence. Birmingham University Christian Union was banned from the list of accredited societies after it refused to amend its constitution to permit non-Christians to become executive committee members. The Exeter Univers-ity Christian Union has been ordered by its student union to rename itself the Evangelical Christian Union and has been suspended until it complies. At Edinburgh University, the Christian Union faces sanctions after it was accused of adopting a Bible-based programme on human relationships that deems homosexuality to be un- desirable. These prohibitions mean that the organisations concerned are denied access to money, union facilities and a forum to publicise their activities.

This clash between uncompromising secularism and faith is partly the result of a change in style. Many university Christian unions were once reticent institutions for those who were secure in their own faith, but less inclined to convert the heathen masses on campus. Partly because of the rise of evangelism in Protestantism, but mostly because of the confidence and visibility which religion has regained, believers on campus are increasingly determined to defend themselves and recruit members. This has led to charges of “brainwashing” and to a conflict best described as distinctly un-Christian in its character.

Tolerance is, or rather should be, a street in which the traffic flows in two directions. Universities are establishments in which ideas are supposed to be incubated and exchanged, cham- pioned and challenged. A student union should be a forum in which that philosophical debate takes place and not a body that takes it upon itself to determine which arguments are acceptable or sufficiently “right” to be allowed an audience. A blinkered secularism is no better than theological dogmatism.

There must also be the legitimate suspicion that Christianity is regarded as a “soft target” by union activists. It is doubtful whether student bodies of other faiths would be informed that they had to accept those who did not wish to uphold their beliefs as executive committee members or have their termcards scrutinised for perceived slights against homosexuality. The revival of religion in the universities is being treated as, at best, an unwanted anachronism or, at worst, an outright threat, instead of being seen as a contribution to a continuing dialogue about the nature of the modern world. Student unions should be stimulating that intellectual debate, not suppressing it.

November 18, 2006 at 08:13 PM in UK | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Cameron: A new approach to foreign affairs – liberal conservatism

Conservative Party - News Story

The annual JP Morgan lecture at the British American Project

"It is an honour to be speaking to the British American Project today, on this sombre anniversary.

Your organisation is one of the most illustrious of the countless ties that connect our two countries.

Today we remember the almost three thousand dead, killed in the most callous and indiscriminate act of terrorism in modern history.

There is much we owe to their memories.

To find and defeat those responsible for planning international terror.

To do everything we can to stop further outrages.

And, above all, to make the world safer for the future.

Fighting terrorism is the most consuming concern for modern government.

I know that if my Party wins the next election, the moment I walk through the front door of Downing Street I will have the huge responsibility of protecting the British public from this threat.

It will involve action to support and enhance our security response.

It will involve action to make our society stronger at home.

And it will require firm action on the international front.

It is the international dimension that I'd like to focus on today.

FOREIGN POLICY IN OPPOSITION

It is important to take care when developing foreign policy in opposition.

First, we are Her Majesty's loyal opposition - and I take the 'loyal' part seriously.

Where possible, we should offer support to the Government so ministers can speak abroad with the authority of the whole country.

And second, we should use the time and space available to us seriously.

Foreign policy-making should not be a narrow discipline: we should bring a wide range of experts into the process.

William Hague has been developing our thinking in a range of areas, with, for example, a new Conservative focus on human rights.

And I have established a Foreign Affairs Council to access the advice of a wide range of senior former diplomats and service personnel.

It includes, for example, Charles Powell and Charles Guthrie, as well as historians and former ministers, and will help me formulate foreign policy for the next Parliament.

A MATURE DEBATE

I also believe that we should try to debate foreign policy in a mature and responsible way.

It is not responsible to try and polarise debate through simplistic exercises in political positioning.

If you question the approach of the US administration, you're "anti-American."

If you support what the United States is doing, you're "America's poodle."

If you care about civil liberties, you're "soft on terror."

If you back an extension of our security laws, you're "building a police state".

These are not mature contributions to debate.

Foreign policy decisions are not black and white, something which the public well understands.

We need a sense of balance, judgement and proportion in handling the complex and dangerous challenges of foreign and security policy in the twenty-first century.

REMEMBERING 9/11

In analysing the threat we face today, I'd like to go back to September 11th, 2001.

At lunchtime on that day I was working at home in my constituency in Oxfordshire.

When the news came that America was under attack, the first thing I thought about was Sam, my wife.

She was in Manhattan.

She'd flown there to open a new store, one that she had designed.

It took several hours to get through to her on the phone.

Like so many others, I watched those towers come crashing down.

I used to go for meetings there when I worked in business before becoming an MP.

Like everyone in this room, I looked on with horror and wondered what kind of world had dawned that morning.

9/11 was a wake-up call indeed…

…although with hindsight, the first attack on the World Trade Centre in 1993, the horrific bombings of US embassies in East Africa, and the assault on the USS Cole should have woken us up already.

But 9/11 alerted us all to a security threat on a new and unprecedented scale…

… to a world of connections and complexity, conflating religion, foreign policy, domestic security policy, even economic policy in an unstable mix…

… and to a world in which we urgently needed new thinking to match these frightening new challenges.

THE THREAT

All that we have learned since 9/11 confirms this picture.

Yet there are some who still do not appreciate the new realities.

They believe that the threat is no different in nature from that posed to Britain by terrorism in the past, for example by the IRA.

I am afraid that this view simply does not reflect reality.

This terrorist threat is clearly different from those we have faced before.

We are dealing with people who are prepared to do anything, kill any number, and use suicide attacks to further their aims.

These people include a number of our own citizens.

They are driven by a wholly incorrect interpretation - an extreme distortion - of the Islamic faith, which holds that mass murder and terror are not only acceptable, but necessary.

As I said in a speech on this subject in August last year, "there is no list of demands we can accept and no group of terrorists we could meet and negotiate with - even if we wanted to - to stop the attacks."

This terrorism cannot be appeased - it has to be defeated.

And as I said in August this year, the actions we must take domestically, in partnership with other countries, could not be more pressing.

Expanding the security services and unfreezing the Home Office budget.

Improving anti-terrorism law.

Deporting those foreign nationals who threaten or directly encourage terror.

All of these things are vital and urgent.

But true success in this endeavour, and true progress in making the world a safer place requires a deep understanding of what we're dealing with.

We will not defeat the terrorists unless we cut off their life support systems.

And the deformed vision of Islam which inspires some of them is part of a wider picture that includes…

…the perception by many Muslims that Islam is under attack…

…the suppression of political freedom and economic opportunity by ruthless dictatorships…

…the relative lack of progress in some Muslim societies…

…and the belief that the West deliberately fails to resolve issues of crucial concern to

Muslims, like Palestine.

The clear implication of this is that we cannot just rely on conventional counter-terrorism.

We need a broader and highly co-ordinated strategy…

…identifying and thwarting terrorist plots…

…separating the terrorists from their recruiting base…

…and winning the trust of the majority Muslim community…

… addressing the geopolitical issues that constitute direct and indirect security threats.

THE CURRENT RESPONSE

In foreign policy terms, how have we dealt with this threat over the past five years?

Broadly, the response can be summarised as 'neo conservatism.'

There is a wide-ranging debate about exactly what neo-conservatism is.

But for the purposes of my argument today, we can focus on three propositions that are most commonly understood to represent the core of neo-conservative thinking.

First, a realistic appreciation of the scale of the threat the world faces from terrorism.

Second, a conviction that pre-emptive military action is not only an appropriate, but a necessary component of tackling the terrorist threat in the short term.

And third, a belief that in the medium and long term, the promotion of freedom and democracy, including through regime change, is the best guarantee of our security.

THE LAST FIVE YEARS

We must be honest in looking at what has happened in the world during the five years that these beliefs have been the guiding principles of British and American policy.

It is, of course, a mixed picture.

We have managed to avert further terrorist attacks on the scale of 9/11, and our security services deserve all our thanks for the brave and painstaking work they do.

And yet across the globe, terrorists are being recruited in increasing numbers and are active in many more areas than before September 11th.

Hundreds of people have died at their hands: here in London we lost fifty two people in July last year.

Two of the world's most repressive regimes, in Afghanistan and Iraq, have been removed.

I supported both these actions, and I support our ongoing work in those countries.

And yet both continue to suffer appalling levels of violence.

These countries used to suffer barbaric dictatorships.

Now they suffer terrible civil conflict, and our own troops are continually exposed to murderous attacks.

Libya, once the greatest terrorist threat to the West, has abandoned its nuclear weapons programme.

But North Korea continues to make steps towards developing its own arsenal.

Syria has withdrawn its troops from Lebanon.

But as we have seen in recent months, Hezbollah still poses a grave threat to democracy in Lebanon and to stability in the region.

And at the epicentre of global instability, in the Middle East, Israel is in the slow and painful process of disengaging from Gaza, and free elections have been held in the occupied territories.

But those elections delivered Hamas to power - an organisation which remains publicly committed to the destruction of Israel and prepared to use terrorist methods.

Finally, there is Iran.

There is little positive to report on this front.

The regime in Tehran has encouraged parts of the insurgency in Iraq and is widely suspected of involvement in the murder of British troops around Basra.

It is the principal sponsor of Hezbollah.

Worst of all, it is now only a few short years away from developing its own nuclear weapons capability - and it remains to be seen whether the world's great powers have the will and the ability to stop it.

So: continuing instability in the world.

An ever-present threat of terrorism.

Democracy struggling, often unsuccessfully, to take root in the Middle East.

The threat of a nuclear Iran.

On any reasonable measure, the challenges are greater today than five years ago.

And we must recognise something else - that the way we have tried to meet these challenges over the past five years has had an unintended and worrying consequence.

It has fanned the flames of anti-Americanism, both here in Britain and around the world.

ANTI-AMERICANISM

I find it extremely troubling how many people - not just in countries affected by war and instability, but here in the West, here in Britain…

…regard America not as a beacon of freedom and a pro-democracy superpower, but as the world's worst power.

Anti-Americanism represents an intellectual and moral surrender.

It is a complacent cowardice born of resentment of success and a desire for the world's problems simply to go away.

I and my Party are instinctive friends of America, and passionate supporters of the Atlantic Alliance.

We believe in the alliance for both emotional and rational reasons.

Emotional - because we share so much.

A set of values and beliefs about the world - a common language, common institutions, and our common belief in individual liberty.

Profound memories too - our soldiers fighting together to liberate Europe; our joint effort to withstand and defeat the Soviet Empire.

But there are rational reasons for the Atlantic Alliance as well.

The fact is that that Britain just cannot achieve the things we want to achieve in the world unless we work with the world's superpower.

So when it comes to the special relationship with America, Conservatives feel it, understand it and believe in it.

All Conservatives share this attitude.

I cannot think of a single Conservative Member of Parliament who does not think the same way.

That is a source of great strength for any Conservative leader in their dealings with America.

We do not have to worry about a divided party at home.

It is precisely this strength of feeling that gives us the confidence to speak freely to any American administration.

I believe that it is now vital for our strategic and security interests that we challenge anti-Americanism.

That means reviving the best traditions of the special relationship.

And it also means developing with America a tough and effective foreign policy for the age of international terrorism - a policy that moves beyond neo-conservatism, retaining its strengths but learning from its failures.

SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP

Britain does not need to establish her identity by recklessly poking the United States in the eye, as some like to do.

But we will serve neither our own, nor America's, nor the world's interests if we are seen as America's unconditional associate in every endeavour.

Our duty is to our own citizens, and to our own conception of what is right for the world.

We should be solid but not slavish in our friendship with America.

It all comes down to a sense of confidence.

Your long-standing friend will tell you the truth, confident that the friendship will survive.

Your newest friend will tell you what you want to hear, eager to please so as not to put the friendship at risk.

We have never, until recently, been uncritical allies of America.

We have for more than half a century acted as a junior partner to the United States.

Churchill, though he found it difficult, was junior partner to Roosevelt; Margaret Thatcher to Ronald Reagan, John Major to George Bush Senior in the First Gulf War.

It is not an easy part to play, but these three Prime Ministers learned to carry it through with skill and success.

I worry that we have recently lost the art.

I fear that if we continue as at present we may combine the maximum of exposure with the minimum of real influence over decisions.

The sooner we rediscover the right balance the better for Britain and our alliance.

This is not anti-American.

This is what America wants.

As Senator John McCain has said:

"not only do we seek European leadership, we believe it is necessary to make the world a better, safer place for our interests and our values. This means true leadership, not a group of countries that merely follows American directions, as some fear; nor a coalition that opposes American power simply because of its country of origin, as others suggest."

THE NEXT STEPS

In that context, what should be the outline of British and American foreign policy in the post-neo-conservative world?

Let me start by making clear where I agree with the neo-conservative approach.

I fully appreciate the scale of the threat we face.

I believe that the leadership of the United States, supported by Britain, is central to the struggle in which we are engaged.

I believe that the neo-conservatives are right to argue that extending freedom is an essential objective of Western foreign policy.

And I agree that Western powers should be prepared, in the last resort, to use military force.

We know from history that a country must be ready to defend itself and its allies.

More than that, we and others are justified in using pre-emptive force when an attack on us is being prepared, and when all means of peaceful dissuasion and deterrence have failed.

Furthermore, I believe that we should be prepared to intervene for humanitarian purposes to rescue people from genocide.

LIBERAL CONSERVATISM

But I believe that in the last five years we have suffered from the absence of two crucial qualities which should always condition foreign policy-making.

Humility, and patience.

These are not warlike words.

They are not so glamorous and exciting as the easy sound-bites we have grown used to in recent years.

But these sound-bites had the failing of all foreign policy designed to fit into a headline.

They were unrealistic and simplistic.

They represented a view which sees only light and darkness in the world - and which believes that one can be turned to the other as quickly as flicking a switch.

I do not see things that way.

I am a liberal conservative, rather than a neo-conservative.

Liberal - because I support the aim of spreading freedom and democracy, and support humanitarian intervention.

Conservative - because I recognise the complexities of human nature, and am sceptical of grand schemes to remake the world.

A liberal conservative approach to foreign policy today is based on five propositions.

First, that we should understand fully the threat we face.

Second, that democracy cannot quickly be imposed from outside.

Third, that our strategy needs to go far beyond military action.

Fourth, that we need a new multilateralism to tackle the new global challenges we face.

And fifth, that we must strive to act with moral authority.

Let me touch on each of these in turn.

THE NATURE OF THE THREAT

Part of the problem we have encountered these past five years is that the struggle has been perceived - as the terrorists want it to be perceived - as a single struggle between single protagonists.

The danger is that by positing a single source of terrorism - a global jihad - and opposing it with a single global response - American-backed force - we will simply fulfil our own prophecy.

We are not engaged in a clash of civilisations, and suggestions that we are can too easily have the opposite effect to the one intended: making the extremists more attractive to the uncommitted

This is not to deny the connections between terrorist activity in different parts of the world.

It is simply an appeal for us to be a little smarter in how we handle those connections.

Our aim should be to dismantle the threat, separating its component parts, rather than amalgamating them into a single global jihad that simply becomes a call to arms.

DEMOCRACY CANNOT QUICKLY BE IMPOSED

The second proposition of a liberal conservative foreign policy is a recognition that democracy cannot quickly be imposed from outside.

In part, this is because democracy takes time.

The transformation of a country from tyranny to freedom does not begin and end with regime change and the calling of elections.

Put another way, democracy is not the foundation of freedom.

Democracy itself has foundations, without which it cannot stand.

A great American President once stood on an American battlefield and reminded his audience that their forefathers had "brought forth in this continent a new nation."

As Lincoln said at Gettysburg, America was "conceived in liberty."

But though that new nation was born in 1776, it had been long in the womb.

It takes longer to build a democracy than the time it takes to draw up and sign a constitution or a declaration of independence.

The foundations of democracy are the rule of law, including the freedoms of speech and association;

...civil society, meaning the network of independent organisations which sustain social life independently from the state;

…an independent and impartial judiciary;

…and a free economy, including the freedom to trade and to register property.

The ambition to spread democracy is noble and just.

But it cannot be quickly achieved to suit a political timetable.

Because it takes time, it cannot easily be imposed from outside.

Liberty grows from the ground - it cannot be dropped from the air by an unmanned drone.

In the last month I have visited both South Africa and India.

These countries show that democracy can flourish everywhere there are people.

And the key to this flourishing is growth from within.

Roelf Meyer, co-architect of South Africa's new, non-racial constitution, told me why he thought the handover from apartheid to majority rule was achieved with such relative peace and stability.

One of the main reasons, he said, was that political and community leaders inside South Africa took ownership of the process, and responsibility for their people's future.

So in many ways the debate about whether Britain, or America, or any other external power, should engage in nation-building misses the point.

You can't carry out nation-building unless the people inside a country want to build a nation.

As the Republican Senator Chuck Hagel has put it, "We can help countries reach their destination but it must be on their terms and their way."

A good example is the EU accession process, through which countries have voluntarily embraced democratic and institutional reform in order to gain the benefits of EU membership.

Let us remember that it took Britain and America decades to emancipate women and the male working population, to clear slums and to conquer killer diseases like cholera and typhoid.

So we must show sympathy for the sheer difficulty and desperation of life in many countries that we would like to move forward on the path to democracy.

They face huge pressures and challenges - like the basic battle for water supplies, or a high birth rate leading to an overwhelmingly young population.

BEYOND MILITARY ACTION

Recognition of these circumstances leads us to the third proposition of the liberal conservative approach: that our strategy needs to go far beyond military action.

As I have made clear, there may be circumstances in which military intervention is the best way to deal with security threats: we should never shy away from that reality.

I thought carefully about this responsibility before deciding to stand for the leadership of my Party.

I know that sometimes it will have to be done.

Sending troops into battle is one of the most difficult decisions a Prime Minister can ever make.

I've always had the greatest faith in our armed forces.

I was in Afghanistan earlier this summer. Seeing our servicemen and women at work in Kandahar, in Kabul, and at Camp Bastion in Helmand province has redoubled that faith.

But it is not military might alone which will deliver security to us, or freedom for the world.

If we accept that democracy takes time; that it is founded on the institutions of society, and that it cannot easily be imposed from without…

…then we must put far greater effort into helping undermine dictators and tyrannies from within, and helping moderate regimes to move forward.

Bombs and missiles are bad ambassadors.

They win no hearts and minds; they can build no democracies.

There are more tools of statecraft than military power.

Intelligence, economic development, educational training, support for pro-democracy groups, international law, foreign aid, sporting and cultural initiatives can all play their part.

Britain has a huge contribution to make here, from the knowledge and experience of our diplomats abroad, to the work of the British Council, to our expertise in culture, media and communications.

As the limits of military power become more obvious, we must use our non-military power to better effect.

So force should be a last resort.

Even in a technological age every war produces innocent civilian casualties.

Every war, however skilfully conducted - and our own armed forces have shown unmatched skill in such conflicts - produces its quota of sorrow and anger, with consequences hard to predict.

The prospect of war may attract too readily those who look for quick dramatic answers.

Such answers often turn out to be illusory.

A NEW MULTILATERALISM

Whether our chosen method of intervention is military or non-military, I believe that the new and highly connected nature of the threat we face demands a new emphasis on multilateralism…

…the fourth proposition underlying the liberal conservative approach.

We should not be naïve or starry-eyed about multilateralism.

But a multilateral approach is essential if we are successfully to tackle some of the biggest security challenges we face - for example the challenge of nuclear proliferation.

Of course, a country's right to decide its own foreign and defence policy, and - within a framework of rights and responsibilities - to act alone when necessary, is a cornerstone of nationhood.

But as we have found in recent years, a country may act alone - but it cannot always succeed alone.

The United States has learnt this lesson painfully.

As Senator Joe Biden has put it:

"There was never any doubt that we could defeat Saddam Hussein without a single foreign soldier. But because we chose to wage war virtually alone, we have been responsible for the aftermath virtually alone."

A new multilateralism should have two dimensions: international institutions, and international alliances.

There has always been scope for multilateral action that involves NATO, the UN, the G8, the EU and other similar institutions.

But I believe we will need to both reform existing institutions, and develop new ones if we are to have the range of response mechanisms we need for the range of security challenges we face.

In deciding the most appropriate instrument for action, we will need to balance two factors: legitimacy, and effectiveness.

These factors tend to work in opposite directions.

The United Nations, for example, confers the ultimate legitimacy on any multilateral action.

But the very process of securing that legitimacy can undermine its effectiveness - as we saw, for example, in the Balkans.

We have seen another example more recently. Darfur is at the risk of genocide from the Government of Sudan.

Yet Sudan has been able to ensure that the UN is effectively unable to act.

So we may need to fashion alliances which can act faster than the machinery of formal international institutions.

We must also use our considerable historic, cultural and trading links with Islamic governments that seek cooperation rather than confrontation, to strengthen their position domestically and within the Islamic world.

For instance I regret that our Government has been so indifferent to the views, and neglectful of our friendship with, the Gulf states.

And from Malaysia, to Egypt, to Jordan, to the Maghreb, there are governments with whom we work closely already, and with whom we could do more.

This does not mean uncritical acceptance of all their views or actions.

But it does mean persistent engagement at all levels, and it means basing our actions on real sensitivity and understanding of their domestic circumstances.

Most of all Turkey, with its very substantial Muslim population, should be a principal ally of the West.

Turkey is a democracy, an aspirant EU member, and a key strategic partner in the post 9/11 world.

MORAL AUTHORITY

The fifth and final proposition of a liberal conservative foreign policy is the vital importance of moral authority.

I believe that the values we hold dear in Britain and America are the common values of humanity.

Human dignity, personal freedom, national self-determination - these are the aspirations for all people everywhere.

But if we assume - and I think we should assume - some responsibility for extending these values internationally, we must strive to do so in a way that is consistent and honourable.

A moral mission requires moral methods.

Without them, we are merely war-makers.

Might becomes our only standard of right.

And we sink in the esteem of the world.

If the West is to help other countries, we must do so from a position of genuine moral authority.

This means we must strive above all for legitimacy in what we do.

We need to ensure that we only deploy troops as a last resort, and that a British Government takes with the utmost seriousness any decision to send our servicemen to kill and be killed anywhere in the world.

And I believe that the consent of Parliament should always be required for any substantial deployment of troops on active service.

But legitimacy means more than going through the right channels.

It means doing the right thing.

That is why we must not stoop to conquer.

We must not stoop to illiberalism - whether at Guantanamo Bay, or here at home with excessive periods of detention without trial.

We must not turn a blind eye to the excesses of our allies - abuses of human rights in some Arab countries, or disproportionate Israeli bombing in Lebanon.

We are fighting for the principles of civilisation - let us not abandon those principles in the methods we employ.

We must not forget the lessons of the Cold War.

A firm stand military stand was essential.

But it was only part of the strategy.

We did not defeat communism on the military battlefield.

We defeated communism in the battle of ideas.

Equally, we are today facing an enemy which ultimately will not be defeated by military force, but by moral force.

We must therefore present to the world a genuine and attractive alternative to the fanaticism of terror and dictatorship.

We must not merely be stronger than our enemy, but better than our enemy.

CONCLUSION

The problems we face are unique to our times.

But for centuries politicians have had to grapple with the issue of when and whether to intervene in the affairs of the world.

I have said I am a liberal conservative.

Let us remember the words of the perhaps the greatest Liberal Prime Minister, and the great Victorian advocate of moral interventionism abroad.

WE Gladstone's famous Midlothian campaign was founded on the proposition that, and I quote, "the foreign policy of England should always be inspired by a love of freedom."

But he also warned against imperial hubris and international arrogance.

As he said, "even when you do a good thing, you may do it in so bad a way that you entirely spoil the beneficial effect."

In short, we must be wise as well as good.

This is a struggle which requires all our might and all our conviction.

But it is a long struggle, and it also requires our intelligence, our patience, and our humility.

I have set out today the principles according to which I would conduct that struggle:

Passionate support for the Atlantic Alliance within a rebalanced special relationship.

Retaining the strengths of the neo-conservative approach while learning from its failures.

And basing our actions on a new approach to foreign affairs - liberal conservatism, which I believe is right for our times and right for the struggle we face."

September 13, 2006 at 08:52 AM in UK | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

DAVID CAMERON will criticise, in a speech today, a soundbite approach to foreign policy

I'm no neocon, says Cameron on 9/11 anniversary - Britain - Times Online

By Philip Webster, Political Editor
DAVID CAMERON will criticise, in a speech today, a soundbite approach to foreign policy that sees only lightness and darkness in the world.

In remarks that are certain to be seen as an attack on the conduct of foreign policy by the Bush Administration, supported by Tony Blair, the Tory leader will say that humility and patience have been absent from the making of foreign policy in recent years.

In a reference to elements of the US Administration, Mr Cameron, speaking on the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on America, will say pointedly that he is a liberal conservative, not a neoconservative.

In his most substantial address on security policy, Mr Cameron will make a fierce attack on anti-Americanism, which he will say is an “intellectual and moral surrender”. Sources close to the Tory leader said that his words did not mark any weakening in his support for the Iraq war, but they are nevertheless controversial after recent efforts to build bridges with the Republicans.

Mr Cameron will say that the international security challenges are greater today than five years ago. “I find it extremely troubling how many people, not just in countries affected by war and instability, but here in the West, here in Britain, regard America as the world’s worst power. Anti-Americanism represents an intellectual and moral surrender. It is a complacent cowardice born of resentment of success and a desire for the world’s problems simply to go away.”

Mr Cameron will say that he and his party are instinctive friends of America, and passionate supporters of the Atlantic alliance. “We believe in that alliance for emotional, historical and rational reasons . . . So when it comes to the special relationship with America, Conservatives feel it, understand it and believe in it.”

He will add: “We do not have to worry about a divided party at home. It is precisely this strength of feeling that gives us the confidence to speak freely to any American Administration. I believe that it is now vital for our strategic and security interests that we challenge anti-Americanism. That means reviving the best traditions of the special relationship. And it means developing with America a tough and effective foreign policy for the age of international terrorism: a policy that moves beyond neo conservatism, retaining its strengths but learning from its failures.”

He will say that humility and patience have been missing from foreign policy in the past five years. “These are not war-like words,” he will say. “They are not so glamorous and exciting as the easy soundbites we have grown used to in recent years. But these soundbites had the failing of all foreign policy designed to fit into a headline. They were unrealistic and simplistic. They represented a view which sees only light and darkness in the world and which believes that one can be turned to the other as simply as flicking a switch. I do not see things that way. I am a liberal conservative, rather than a neoconservative.”

Sir Menzies Campbell, the Liberal Democrat leader, said: “The sense of unity reflected by the headline in Le Monde stating ‘We are all Americans now’ was unique. The campaign against terrorism has unfortunately not been characterised by that same spirit.

“Our thoughts are with those who perished in New York and all of those who have been a victim of terrorism since. I remain firmly convinced that concerted international action based upon the rule of law and in the name of the UN remains our best defence.”

September 11, 2006 at 12:06 AM in UK | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Appalling British weather blew out early settlers

Appalling British weather blew out early settlers - Sunday Times - Times Online

Jonathan Leake, Science Editor
BRITAIN has had one of the most volatile climates on earth with up to 10 ice ages forcing early settlers into exile, leaving the land uninhabited for periods of up to 110,000 years, researchers have found.

A study — led by the Natural History Museum — of 700,000 years of human attempts to settle in Britain found that the Gulf Stream, which keeps the British Isles warm, kept collapsing, plunging them into Arctic cold. The lurches from temperate to freezing sometimes took as little as 10 years, says Professor Chris Stringer, head of human origins in the museum’s paleontology department, in a new book, Homo Britannicus, to be published in October.

After the last ice age humans returned to Britain only 11,500 years ago. Stringer said: “We might think that the roots of the British people lie deep in British soil but they can be traced back less than 12,000 years, far more shallow than those of our continental neighbours.”

His book summarises the findings of the Ancient Human Occupation of Britain (AHOB) project, a six-year study of thousands of artefacts and other remains left behind by prehistoric man during successive colonisations. Thirty archeologists, paleontologists and geologists from institutes across the country worked together to construct a detailed calendar of early humans’ arrivals and departures.

They concluded that the present temperate climate is an anomaly and steamy heat or bitter cold are far more typical.

Stringer said: “We have evidence that between 500,000 and 12,000 years ago humans were only in Britain for about 20% of the time. Between 180,000 and 70,000 years ago Britain was abandoned, completely empty of people.”

Such findings imply a major rewriting of British prehistory. It has long been known that climatic changes forced early humans out of Britain but not so many times.

There were other surprises, too. Until recently it was thought that the first humans arrived in southern Europe about 800,000 years ago but that none made it to Britain until 500,000 years ago. But Stringer says: “We have remarkable new evidence from East Anglia showing that humans arrived here 700,000 years ago, earlier than anyone believed. They lived in an environment with a balmy climate like that of southern Europe.”

Their stay was, however, not destined to last because about 470,000 years ago a huge ice cap spread across northern Europe, reaching the outskirts of what is now north London.

That glaciation was to be the first of many. By the time it receded, about 400,000 years ago, Neanderthals had evolved in Europe and it was they who recolonised Britain.

However, they too were driven out when the ice returned 380,000 years ago, a pattern that was to be repeated many times.

The most prolonged and enigmatic evacuation of Britain began with a new ice age that peaked about 140,000 years ago. When it finished, about 20,000 years later, many animals quickly returned to Britain, including deer, rhinoceroses, hippopotamuses and hyenas — but no humans. They remained absent for more than 100,000 years, says Stringer.

Eventually, about 60,000 years ago, Neanderthals did return to Britain, only to become extinct 30,000 years later.

Modern humans have proved better than Neanderthals at withstanding climatic changes but they, too, were driven back from Britain as a mile-thick ice-cap built up over Scotland 25,000 years ago, returning only 10,000 years later. The last ice age began 13,000 years ago and lasted 1,500 years.

August 27, 2006 at 05:54 PM in UK | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Why I believe David Kelly's death may have been murder, by MP

Why I believe David Kelly's death may have been murder, by MP | the Daily Mail

By DAN NEWLING, Daily Mail 11:17am 24th July 2006
David Kelly did not commit suicide and may have been the victim of a murder and subsequent coverup, according to a campaigning MP.

Norman Baker has spent six months investigating the death of the Government weapons expert, found dead in an Oxfordshire wood three years ago.

Mr Baker - who stepped down from the Liberal Democrat front bench to carry out his investigation - published his preliminary results and called for a new public inquiry.

His concerns begin with the method of Dr Kelly's supposed suicide, cutting a minor artery with a blunt gardening knife.

He would have been the only person that year to have successfully killed themselves that way in the UK.

The scientist's family and friends insist he had shown no sign of feeling suicidal. Emails and the minutes of meetings he attended also showed him behaving perfectly normally - and he was looking forward to his daughter's wedding.

Mr Baker also questions the painkillers Dr Kelly is said to have taken, not least because the levels found in his stomach were incompatible with his supposed consumption.

There are also basic questions about the police investigation - including the appearance beside Dr Kelly's body of a bottle of water, knife and watch which the people who found him say they did not see.

On the Hutton Inquiry itself, Mr Baker - whose conclusions were outlined in the Mail on Sunday - says Lord Hutton was completely out of his depth.

He had never chaired such an important inquiry and had a history of making pro-Government decisions as a judge. The MP claims Hutton was personally selected for the job by Tony Blair's close friend Charles Falconer, the Lord Chancellor.

The tragic story began in May 2003 when BBC radio journalist Andrew Gilligan alleged that the Government had deliberately 'sexed up' a dossier on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction to justify an invasion.

The Government went on the offensive and eventually exposed Dr Kelly as the BBC man's source, a move which thrust the publicity-shy scientist into a media storm.

Days later, the 59-year-old father of three was found slumped under a tree five miles from his home in Abingdon, Oxfordshire.

'More than enough cause to reopen the inquest' - Baker

The Government immediately set up an inquiry under Lord Hutton to investigate the death. The two-month probe concluded that the scientist had taken his own life.

Mr Baker has consistently been a thorn in the Government's side. He previously revealed former minister Peter Mandelson's links to the Hinduja brothers, who were granted British passports shortly after investing money to the Millennium Dome.

He claimed that since the Hutton Inquiry concluded, there has been 'growing public disquiet' about Dr Kelly's death.

He said: "Any reasonable person looking at the evidence would, at the very least, agree that further i