 |
||||||||
 |
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
Blair speaks out to uplift allied cause
©Associated Press, LONDON -- The al-Qaida terrorist group will kill again unless it is stopped, Prime Minister Tony Blair said Tuesday in a speech urging Western nations to support the war in Afghanistan. Blair issued a rallying cry amid signs of public unease over the air campaign against Afghanistan, saying evidence linking Osama bin Laden to the Sept. 11 terror attacks on the United States was "a flood confirming guilt." Bin Laden's al-Qaida group and the Taliban regime in Afghanistan are "virtually a merged organization," he said. "We have a group of people in Afghanistan who are the sworn enemies of everything that the civilized world stands for, who have killed once on a vast scale and will kill again unless stopped," Blair told the Welsh Assembly in Cardiff before leaving on a diplomatic tour of the Middle East. Blair's tour, shrouded in secrecy due to security concerns, came as British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw was to hold talks in Poland and Russia this week on the global situation. While a majority of Americans and Britons still back the war, opinion polls have shown a dip in support amid reports of stray U.S. bombs killing Afghan civilians. Islamic countries have also warned that Muslim support could wane if the war is continued through the holy month of Ramadan, which begins in mid November. Blair acknowledged public concerns over civilian deaths, the plight of refugees as winter approaches and what will happen after the conflict is over. "All these concerns deserve to be answered," he said. "No one who raises doubts is an appeaser or a faint heart. We are a democracy, strong enough to have doubts raised even at a time of war, and wise enough, I hope, to be able to respond to them." Blair said a failure of resolve among allied governments and their citizens was the only thing that could lose the war. "They have one hope," he said. "That we are somehow decadent, that we lack the moral fiber or will or courage to take them on; that we might begin, but we won't finish; that we will start then falter; that when the first setbacks occur, that we will lose our nerve. And they are wrong."
 © 2006 • All Rights Reserved • St. Petersburg Times
490 First Avenue South • St. Petersburg, FL 33701 • 727-893-8111 
|
From the Times wire desk
From the AP |
