A former British cabinet minister has told a Middle Eastern newspaper that the IRA never targeted civilians and compared insurgents in Iraq to French resistance fighters.
Clare Short
Ms Clare Short, the outspoken former-international development secretary, told the Dubai-based newspaper Gulf Newsshe "understood" the anger of Arabs who embraced Islamic militancy.
Ms Short said: "I think the killing of civilians is always wrong . . . but I think the cause is just." She added: "I understand their anger completely.
"My father came from Northern Ireland . . . and I understand why people think 'I can't get justice in any other way. . . . I think it's always wrong to target civilians . . . because, even when you understood the IRA, they never targeted civilians.
"That's a terrible moral deterioration that's taken place. . . . But I understand the anger and the demand for action and it's not good enough for the world to say state violence is OK and non-state violence is not OK.
"The American public fought against British colonialism with violence, the free French fought against German occupation with violence, the Palestinian people are entitled to resist occupation, I mean, it's in international law . . . the Iraqi people are entitled [to resist occupation]."
Ms Short also claimed Prime Minister Tony Blair had "engaged in a whole series of half-truths and deceptions" to get support for the invasion of Iraq.