Mr Tony Blair has stressed the urgent need for a United Nations presence in Kabul to help fill "the power vacuum" left by the fleeing Taliban regime. While that regime was now "in disarray and retreat", the Prime Minister also cautioned that the American-led coalition had yet to achieve its mission of bringing Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda terror network to account.
However, as Mr Blair saluted British troops who had assisted the dramatic advance by the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, he was being warned not to grant terrorists "the victory they seek" by curtailing at home the liberties for which Britain was fighting abroad.
The warning came from Lady Williams, the Liberal Democrat leader in the Lords, as civil libertarians condemned the proposed renewal of internment powers and other detailed measures in the Home Secretary's Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Bill as "generally alarming and ill-conceived". Mr Blair said the Taliban's flight from Kabul enabled two crucial next steps: the stepping up of humanitarian relief, and a further push in the efforts of the UN's Mr Lakhdar Brahimi to lay the basis for a broadly-based alternative government in Afghanistan.
Clearly placing heavy responsibility for the next political steps upon the UN, Mr Blair told reporters: "I believe we can make real progress towards filling the power vacuum in Kabul but we need a UN presence as quickly as possible."
Mr Blair believed the Northern Alliance accepted that a successor government must include representatives of the Pashtuns, the country's largest ethnic grouping.
"It has to include all the various groupings and it must obviously have a Pashtun element," he declared. And while the Taliban retreat had vindicated the military strategy, Mr Blair said: "Our forces know, and I know, that this is only setting the conditions in place for our objectives to be achieved." As expected, the centrepiece of Mr David Blunkett's Bill published yesterday is the power to intern foreign nationals suspected of terrorist involvement who cannot be deported to another country without risk of torture or death.
The quasi-judicial proceedings proposed by the Home Secretary will allow persons detained to be represented by a lawyer, appointed to act on their behalf by the Attorney General, appearing before the Special Immigration Appeals Commission. The commission will review detention decisions on a six-monthly basis, and the legislation allowing internment will be reviewed after an initial 15-month period and renewable annually by parliament.
In making a detention order Mr Blunkett will be able to consider "in the round" evidence from foreign as well as the British security services, and to make a detention order against any foreign national who has been granted asylum or extended leave to stay in the United Kingdom.
The Home Office indicated that the new power was expected to be used selectively and rarely, saying that only 16 cases in which its use might have been appropriate had arisen in Britain since 2000.
The Home Secretary again dismissed civil libertarian concerns, telling BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "Because we are only talking about a handful of people, we are not threatening the civil liberties of this country, we are ensuring those handful don't threaten those liberties."
However, Lady Williams warned that "detention in Northern Ireland was a disaster", insisting that evidence against detainees should be subject to independent scrutiny, and arguing that other provisions in the Bill - specifically those permitting telecommunications companies to retain data relating to telephone calls, faxes and e-mails - threatened the liberty of every citizen.