British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said in comments published Monday that Britain and Spain have not put themselves at risk from revenge attacks because of their involvement in the Iraq war.
"If al-Qaeda is proved to be behind the Madrid bombings there will be some who rush to that conclusion," Straw told The Financial Times newspaper, referring to the bomb attacks on the Spanish capital last week that killed 200 people. "But they will be completely wrong."
"There are some people who have convinced themselves that the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 took place after the Iraq invasion in 2003," Straw stated.
"And they have forgotten, too, how al-Qaeda was involved in the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993 or the attacks on U.S embassies in 1998 in which hundreds of people died.
"One thing I am clear about is that al-Qaeda will go on and would have gone on irrespective of the war in Iraq, until they are firmly stopped."
Straw warned that countries that did not back the war in Iraq should not feel that they are immune from any attacks by al-Qaeda or other "Muslim extremists."
"Nobody, nobody should believe that somehow we can opt out of the war against Islamic terrorism," the Britain's top diplomat said.
Straw also backed the military action against Iraq. "Faced with the information that we had 18 months ago about Saddam, we judged that the only sensible and safe course for the British people was the course that we embarked on ... we did that for the best of motives and I believe that history will have proved us to be correct," he said.
© 2004 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
