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Straw denies links between Iraq war and Istanbul bombings

IRNA

London, Nov. 21, IRNA - Foreign Secretary denied Friday that the 
bombing of British targets in Istanbul were linked with the Iraq war 
and played down the coincidence that the attacks being carried out 
during US President George W. Bush`s state visit to the UK. 
"Iraq is used as an excuse, but the idea that what has happened 
today is some kind of consequence, is utter and palpable nonsense," 
Straw said. 
He insisted that everyone were victims of terrorism months and 
years before a separate and distinct decision was made to invade 
Iraq. 
"Had we not taken military action against Iraq, I am clear that 
the same level of incidents, of terrorist atrocities, organized by 
al-Qaeda and its associates would have gone on," the Foreign Secretary
argued. 
In an interview with BBC Radio, Straw said he accepted the point 
that Thursday`s attacks, including on the UK consulate in Istanbul, 
seemed to be a coincidence that they aimed at British interests when 
Prime Minister Tony Blair was playing host to Bush. 
"But I think the truth is that so vile and ruthless are these 
terrorists that they will use any excuse or none for what they did," 
he said. 
The British foreign secretary said that the people needed to 
remember that the 9/11 attacks in Washington and New York "were 
planned not under the presidency of President Bush but under the 
presidency of President Clinton, and yet executed in 2001 not in 2003.
"We`ve faced a whole series of attacks by these ruthless 
terrorists which go back at least six or seven years to the attacks on
the United States embassies in Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam in 1998," he 
said. 
Straw further argued that the implication of any links with the 
Iraq war was wrong because Iraq was not attacked because of the war 
against terrorism and that al-Qaeda and its associates were also 
bombing targets in Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and Morocco. 
He also defended the use of military means in response, by 
controversially claiming that it worked in the case of the IRA, who 
became "weakened to the point where they recognised they had to come 
to the negotiating table." 
/HB/NA/210 
End