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Iraq and Guantanamo fuelling terrorist threat, says report

Hasan Suroor

LONDON: The way the "war'' on terror is being conducted has further fuelled extremism and increased the threat from Al-Qaeda, according to a high-level committee of British MPs.

The Foreign Affairs Committee has identified the invasion of Iraq and the continued existence of the Guantanamo Bay detention centre as among the major factors contributing to the terrorist threat.

It warned that Al-Qaeda posed "an extremely serious and brutal'' threat to Britain with extremist groups using the situation in Iraq to bolster their activities.

Iraq had become a crucial training ground for international terrorists, it said. The committee wanted the Government to set out its exit strategy from Iraq arguing that the continued presence of foreign troops was helping extremist groups.

Concept turns a threat

"It increases that sense that those terror groups have, that this is a war against Islam by the West, something not shared by pretty well every member of the Islamic faith in Great Britain and most of Europe.

"But that's the way they feel, that's the proposal they put forward and of course Iraq just makes that worse," said Fabian Hamilton, Labour MP and a member of the committee.

Mike Gapes, Labour chairman of the committee, said that Al-Qaeda as a "concept'' posed a bigger threat now than before because the organisation had broken up into smaller groups which were more difficult to trace.

"We feel that there is a problem that, although there's been some successes, Al-Qaeda as a concept is actually more of a threat now than it was before," he said.

The committee said the continuance of the controversial U.S.-run detention centre in Guanatanamo Bay diminished America's moral authority.

The committee warned against any military action in Iran to deal with the stand-off on Teheran's nuclear programme.

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