LONDON: Home secretary, Jacqui Smith has expressed serious concerns about the impact in Britain of the deteriorating situation in Pakistan where al Qaida and groups affiliated to the Taliban are rapidly gaining influence in the federally administered tribal areas.
The home secretary while briefing the media here on Tuesday following the publication of the UK government’s updated counter-terrorism strategy said that the strategy had noted in some cases terror cells in the UK have had training and direction from Pakistan-based groups, and in many of the important attempted operations conspirators have travelled to and from Pakistan as part of the preparations.
Home Office counter-terrorism officials are to travel to Islamabad, next week to discuss further potential measures.
The updated strategy said that changing technology meant the prospect of a chemical or biological terrorist attack in Britain was now more realistic.
It also disclosed that serious preparations are under way in the UK to protect against the use of roadside bombs and other ‘novel homemade explosives’ imported from Iraq and Afghanistan.
The document confirmed that the government intended to challenge radical views that ‘reject and undermine our shared values and jeopardise community cohesion’ and it would do this by supporting groups and projects through the £70m-a-year Preventing Violent Extremism (PVE) programme.
The home secretary, Jacqui Smith, said the government had no intention of outlawing such views or criminalising those who hold them, but she added: ‘We will not hear these views in silence. We should all stand up for our shared values and not concede the floor to those who dismiss them.’
The document defined those who reject ‘shared values’ as scorning the institutions and values of parliamentary democracy, dismissing the rule of law, and promoting intolerance and discrimination on the basis of race, faith, ethnicity, gender or sexuality.
Smith said those who publicly voiced homophobic views would be open to challenge. The home secretary said the measures would ensure that local authorities understood the risk to community cohesion posed by some organisations.
Senior Whitehall officials was quoted by the Guardian on Tuesday saying that the warning about the increased likelihood of a chemical or biological attack rests on changing technology, and increased theft and smuggling of such materials which makes the aspirations of contemporary terrorist groups ‘more realistic than they have been in the past’.
The Home Office said it was also ‘working to ensure’ that the lessons learned in Iraq about dealing with roadside bombs and other improvised explosive devices were being reflected in domestic counter-terrorism work.
Dawn (Pakistan)
