Posted on 07/18/2005 12:15:38 PM PDT by WmShirerAdmirer
The opposition want to discuss the legislation with Charles Clarke
The three main political parties have agreed to reintroduce counter-terrorism legislation in the wake of the London bombings, Charles Clarke has said. The agreement came after talks between the home secretary, Tory David Davis and Liberal Democrat Mark Oaten.
The legislation covering offences of preparing, training for and inciting terror acts, will be reintroduced in the Commons and Lords from October.
The toll from the attacks has risen to 56, including the four bombers.
Mr Clarke said: "The central message from today is a determination by all of us to legislate on counter terrorism."
Proposals accepted
The three men also agreed to separate plans to introduce controversial control orders from the counter terrorism bill, which should become law by December.
Tory shadow home secretary Mr Davis said he was pleased with the outcome of the talks and especially that Mr Clarke had accepted a number of his proposals to the legislation.
He said the Tories "will co-operate with the government" to ensure the proposed law is as well drafted as possible.
Lib Dem home affairs spokesman Mark Oaten said the meeting had been "extremely constructive" with agreement in principle to the government's plans.
The talks came as a report says the UK's involvement in the Iraq invasion heightened the risk of attacks.
What are the kind of words that somebody would use which could then be implied to be incitement? This will be hard legislation to draft
Mark Oaten
Supporting the US-led invasion of Iraq put the UK more at risk from terrorist attack, the Royal Institute of International Affairs and the Economic and Social Research Council said.
The report also said the invasion boosted al-Qaeda's recruitment and fund-raising.
Mr Davis wants to look again at using phone tap evidence in court.
Consensus
Tory leader Michael Howard said his party would approach the consultative meetings "in a spirit of consensus".
Earlier Mr Oaten told the BBC that he was concerned about how incitement to terrorism will be defined.
The talks also coincide with the presentation of a fatwa, or religious decree, by Muslim leaders condemning the London bombings.
The document, signed by 500 Muslim scholars around the UK, was presented on Monday by members of the British Muslim Forum in Westminster.
Costly surveillance
On Sunday it emerged one of the London bombers was investigated by MI5 last year but was deemed not to be a threat.
Mohammad Sidique Khan, 30, was subject to a routine assessment by the security service because of an indirect connection to an alleged terror plot.
He was one of hundreds investigated but was not considered a risk by the security services.
Khan was deemed not a threat when investigated by MI5 last year
Fifty-two people were killed and 700 were injured in the blasts. The four bombers also died.
Khan, from Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, killed himself and six other passengers in the Edgware Road bombing on the London underground.
Hasib Hussain, 18, from Holbeck, Leeds was responsible for the Number 30 bus bombing, in which 13 people died; Shehzad Tanweer, 22, from Beeston in Leeds for the Aldgate Tube blast, which killed six, and Germaine Lindsay, 19, from Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, for the King's Cross Tube explosion in which 26 people were killed.
Former Scotland Yard Commander Roy Ramm told the BBC the news about Khan and MI5 was not surprising.
"It doesn't surprise me that this man has been identified in MI5's operation because this thing is like concentric circles, the further out they are the less likely MI5 are to have resources that they can apply to them in terms of surveillance, and surveillance is very costly."
"John Reid, defence secretary, last night defended the government's handling of the terrorist menace. "The terrorists want to kill anyone who stands in the way of their perverse ideology," he said.
"So when this report says that we have made ourselves more of a target because of our involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq and our efforts to tackle al Qaeda, what alternative is it proposing?
"That we should stand back while others take on the terrorists? I do not think this is what the British public would want. So we make no apology for working with our international partners, including the US, on operations which we judge to be in the best interests of the UK and the world."
"So when this report says that we have made ourselves more of a target because of our involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq and our efforts to tackle al Qaeda, what alternative is it proposing?
The struggle between the good and evil, conservatism and liberalism, conventional wisdom and common sense versus political correctness finally comes to a showdown. The heated debate lies at the feet of the Englishmen whose forebearers bore the wounds of many bloody struggles and died in many a bloody war. Britain has been first in so many historical contexts (eg.The Magna Carta, etc.), it is ironical that even now in the contemporary history of the world and lesser power that they are, they again have to grapple and come to grips and blows first with this moral crisis that clutches all the civilized world.
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