BRITAIN: Political leaders in Britain have reacted with anger and outrage to the videotape of suicide bomber Mohammad Siddique Khan, who is believed to have led the July 7th attacks on the London Underground and bus system in which 52 people died.
Conservative shadow home secretary David Davis said: "People across Britain will be sickened by this video. Nothing can justify the murder of innocent people."
Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said he was awaiting a police assessment of the video, which was shown on the al-Jazeera network on Thursday night. At an informal meeting of EU foreign ministers in the Welsh town of Newport, Mr Straw said: "There is no excuse, no justification for terrorism of any kind."
Liberal Democrats home affairs spokesman Mark Oaten said Britain's involvement in Iraq was no excuse for "Muslim extremism". He added: "However, it would be wrong for the government to deny that Muslim communities feel a sense of unease about our involvement in Iraq."
Home Office minister Baroness Scotland challenged the suicide bomber's attempt to link his actions with the Iraq war. "I know he says that what happened in Iraq is responsible for these actions, but I don't think it is," she said.
Terrorists had struck in Africa and elsewhere before the Iraq conflict. "It's one of the most dreadful things that people have distorted issues for justification for acts of terrorism," she said.
She told the BBC's Today programme there would be no relaxation in security. "We are constantly vigilant. That is absolutely going to continue," Baroness Scotland said.
Labour MP Shahid Malik, from the Dewsbury constituency where Khan lived, said he was "shocked and disturbed" by the video. He said: "Khan accuses 'westerners' of being responsible for the London bombings, but we must be clear that the only people responsible for these heinous acts were him and his twisted associates.
"We must not allow the evil few to hijack issues such as Palestine or Kashmir or Iraq. Defending just causes with evil acts serves only to malign those causes. The large-scale indiscriminate killing of innocents can never be a viable solution, and those that believe otherwise must know that they will feel the full brunt of the law in this country."
Security experts were quoted as saying that the tape was not conclusive evidence that al-Qaeda had directly ordered the attacks. The video showed 30-year-old Khan blaming the British government's policy on Iraq for the attacks. "Until you stop the bombing, gassing, imprisonment and torture, we will not stop this fight," he said.