Blair takes on ′obscenity′ of terrorism

Tony Blair has pledged not to give "one inch" to the terrorists behind the London bombings.

Speaking in Number 10, the prime minister set out a damning indictment of both the terrorists and the current failure to confront the arguments used to support their violence.

Blair said he was not ruling out any link between the Iraq war and the London bombings.

"Of course people are going to use Iraq and Afghanistan," he said.

"But I think most people understand that the roots of this go far deeper.

"And in any event where does this argument take us in the end?

"I want to make one thing very clear to you, whatever excuse or justification people use, I do not believe we should give one inch to them.

"Not in this country and the way we live our lives here, not in Iraq, not in Afghanistan, not in our support for two states, Israel and Palestine, not in our support for the alliances we choose including with America.

"Not one inch should we give to these people.

"And I want to say this to you - I may offend people when I say this, but I am going to say it nonetheless - September 11 for me was a wake-up call.

"Do you know what I think the problem is? A lot of the world woke up for a short time and then turned over and went back to sleep again.

"We are not going to deal with this problem, with the roots as deep as they are, until we confront these people at every single level.

"And not just their methods but their ideas."

Iraq

The prime minister slammed the "obscenity" of people saying it was "concern for Iraq" that drives them to terrorism.

"If it is concern for Iraq, why are they driving a car bomb into the middle of a group of children and killing them?" he asked.

"What is happening in Iraq is that ordinary decent Iraqis are being butchered by these people with the same terrorist ideology that is killing people in different parts of the world."

Blair said there should be no compromise with the "warped logic" of terrorists.

"We shouldn't even allow them a vestige of an excuse for what they do."

Evil

In his media briefing, the prime minister also warned against the "complete nonsense" of saying there is equivalence between coalition actions in Iraq and the work of terrorists.

"It is time we stopped saying 'ok, we abhor their methods but we kind of see something in their ideas or maybe they have got a sliver of excuse or justification'.

"They have got no justification for it.

"And one other thing I want to say while I'm on this subject, neither have they got any justification for killing people in Israel either.

"There is no justification for suicide bombing whether in Palestine, Iraq, London, Egypt, Turkey, in the United States of America. There is no justification for it, period.

"And we will start to beat this when we stand up and confront the ideology of this evil. No just the methods but the ideas."