Britain:The UK security minister says the terror threat is long-term, writes Frank Millar, London Editor.
Britain's new security minister has warned that the threat posed by Islamist terrorists could take 10 to 15 years to eliminate. Former head of the navy Alan West has also described efforts to prevent the radicalisation of young Muslims as the most important component of the British government's core anti-terrorism strategy.
His warning underlined a stark assessment by former MI5 chief, Eliza Manningham-Buller, that the radicalisation of teenage Muslims "from first exposure to extremism, to active participation in terrorist plotting" is now worryingly rapid.
Their analysis of an increasing terror threat to the UK came as one man was charged in connection with the attempted car bombings in London and Glasgow, while police were granted more time to question five other suspects - four men and a woman - also arrested in connection with the attacks.
Iraqi doctor Bilal Abdullah (27) appeared at Westminster Magistrate's Court on Saturday charged with conspiracy to cause explosions. A seventh suspect is still being questioned in Australia, while the eighth remains in hospital in Glasgow with severe burns.
With growing questioning of Britain's "open-door" policy, prime minister Gordon Brown yesterday suggested that the current security "watchlist" system might be expanded to provide better information about the potential or actual recruitment activities of terrorist groups.
"Then we may have a better idea about people coming into different countries, whether as professional recruits or in other ways, and about what the dangers and the risks that we face are," he told Sky News. "I think it's very important that we tighten this up and it's something that we are looking at as a matter of urgency."
However, there will be embarrassment in 10 Downing Street and at the Home Office over a claim that Britain is failing to check would-be immigrants against a global Interpol database of terrorist suspects.
Ronald K Noble, secretary general of the policing organisation and a former official in then US president Bill Clinton's administration whose responsibilities included oversight of the US secret service, said this failure was putting UK lives at risk. "We have the passport numbers, fingerprints and photos of more than 11,000 suspected terrorists on our database," he said. "But the UK does not check it against immigrants coming into the country or foreign nationals it has arrested. The guys detained last weekend [over the London and Glasgow attacks] could be wanted, arrested or convicted anywhere in the world and the UK would not know."
Following Mr Brown's promise last Monday to extend a shared "watchlist" to alert other countries about potential terrorists, Mr Noble was also quoted as saying: "British citizens might be surprised to find that this watchlist has not been sent to Interpol."
Describing Britain as a centre of intense plotting now, Dame Eliza said the UK faced a terrorist threat of "unprecedented scale, ambition and ruthlessness", and repeated her previous warning that an attempted chemical, biological, radiological or even nuclear attack at some point in the future remained "a very real possibility".
In an article written before she stepped down as director general of the security service in April and published only last week, Dame Eliza also confirmed that police and intelligence chiefs were battling an estimated 1,700 terrorists in 200 networks "scattered across the country" thought to be plotting up to 30 attacks at any one time. This, she said, created a "pressing demand" for police to create a secret network of Muslim spies capable of improving intelligence-gathering.
In his interview with the Sunday Telegraph, Sir Alan also urged people to act in a way he described as "a little bit un-British" by "snitching" to the authorities.
"Britishness does not normally involve snitching or talking about someone. I'm afraid, in this situation, anyone who's got any information should say something because the people we are talking about are trying to destroy our entire way of life," he said.
After what was described as a "deeply significant" meeting on Saturday, the Muslim Council of Britain told Muslims it was their "Islamic duty" to co-operate with the police to ensure Britain's safety.
The media was excluded from the meeting, attended by more than 200 people, including imams, community activists and representatives from the police. It had been called to consider ways in which to combat the terrorist threat. Inayat Bunglawala of the council told the BBC the meeting also discussed the effects of British foreign policy in relation to fundamentalism.
"Some naturally raised the issue of foreign policy and we agreed our actions overseas have inadvertently helped the spread of extremist ideas," he said. The problem, Mr Bunglawala said, was with a small number of extremists who shared "a violent world view" and were "killing civilians for what they believe is an interpretation of Islam". One of the key factors to emerge from the meeting, he said, was that they were agreed "that there is an Islamic duty to co-operate with the police to ensure the safety of British citizens - Muslims and non-Muslims".
Confirming a change in the government's use of language to describe the threat facing Britain, Sir Alan attacked the phrase "war on terror", saying: "I hate that expression. When I first heard it - I think it came over from the States - I thought it was totally the wrong thing. It's not like a war in that sense. It demeans the value of a war and it demeans the value of a lot of things." The admiral also added: "I do not like the fact that we talk about 'the Muslim community' and this sort of thing. I have a lot of Muslim friends and they see themselves as British. We've got to be very careful. The threat is to our British way of life and all of our British people."