euro|topics - Terrorist alarm in the UK

Main focus of Monday, July 2, 2007

Terrorist alarm in the UK

Just a few days after Britain's new Prime Minister Gordon Brown assumed office, a burning car crashed into Glasgow's airport terminal and two car bombs were defused in London. The UK is at its highest state of alert. Europe fears further terrorist attacks.

Hospodářské noviny - Czech Republic

"The attacks were mainly intended to put the new prime minister, Gordon Brown, to the test - to see whether he would let himself be intimidated and withdraw his troops from Iraq and Afghanistan," writes Tomáš Němeček on the subject of the failed terrorist attacks in Great Britain. "But there's no point deluding ourselves: the Islamists would attack the West even if there were no war in Iraq. They have plenty of other reasons, such as its support of Israel or Europe's 'ungodliness'." He adds that the radicals find it amusing that the West constantly blames its own foreign policy for the attacks. "The objective is a different one entirely: to build a revolutionary Islamic state that will change the whole world." (02/07/2007)

Aftonbladet - Sweden

Joakim Jakobsson praises new British Prime Minister Gordon Brown's reaction to the terrorist attacks in London and Glasgow: "To counter violence with violence and restrict rights would be to adopt the terrorists' logic. The bombs were intended to prompt Great Britain and international politics to take a harder line with terrorists. Nothing could serve the purpose of fundamentalists and terrorists better than a Europe that adopts Bush's policies. Brown, on the other hand, appears to be reacting calmly to the attacks. There's no sign of an overreaction along American lines. Back in 2005 the British response to the London bombings was also above all one of openness and respect for human rights." (02/07/2007)

The Irish Times - Ireland

The Irish daily devotes its editorial to the UK attacks and writes, "terrorism, it seems, is the price we have to pay for an open society, the price that comes with rightly putting first the freedoms to move, to associate, to speak as the defining priorities of our society. It's not just that such values are anathema to Islamist terrorists, but that there is a perception they do make their apprehension that much more difficult. There is already talk in Britain of new [anti-terror laws], but the danger is that succumbing to such temptations may undermine precisely that which democrats are trying to defend. ... New PM Gordon Brown correctly went out of his way to stress that such attacks were no more a reflection of the Muslim community's values than of those of the majority ... [and that] the challenge of Islamist terrorism was a 'long-term and sustained' one involving a broader conflict of values and he spoke of a long term battle 'for hearts and minds'. The truth is that both statements are true". (02/07/2007)

The Independent - United Kingdom

"As they wake up to news of the foiled car-bomb attack on Glasgow Airport, I know what millions of my compatriots will be saying ...: 'What's wrong with these crazed Muslims?' ... What these aggrieved Britons don't realise is that exactly the same conversations are taking place in most Muslim households too", writes Yasmin Alibhai-Brown. Speaking as a British Muslim, she continues, "when bloodthirsty Islamicists strike, we experience a collective intensification of our attachment to Britain. ... Sane, ordinary British Muslims are even less forgiving of such nihilists, whose barbarism undermines our fundamental right to belong to this country as absolute equals. These are hobby terrorists with screwdrivers and screwed heads; they appropriate legitimate concerns, turn them into excuses on their own violent reality shows, sure to be broadcast again and again on screens around the world." (02/07/2007)

Le Temps - Switzerland

According to Richard Werly, the EU is caught up in questions raised by the failed British attacks. "Portugal, which this Sunday took over the presidency of the EU for six months, finds itself ... at the centre of a tornado. The extension of the domains of judicial and police co-operation is part of the 'mandate' that the 27 gave, during the recent summit in Brussels, to the future Intergovernmental Conference (CIG) which must produce a 'corrected' European Treaty. This subject is that much more sensitive for Lisbon because the United Kingdom had, in Brussels, insisted on different exemptions in this matter. The Eurosceptic Gordon Brown ... thus finds himself confronted by this new menace. One lesson has already been learned: the security of the 500 million citizens of the 27 member countries is due, more and more, in the fields of prevention as well as repression, to the development of a European police jurisdiction, the only thing capable of responding to the free circulation of people". (02/07/2007)

» To the complete press review of Monday, July 2, 2007

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