The Prime Minister told the World Summit on Terrorism that – Terrorism will not be defeated until our determination is as complete as theirs, our defence of freedom as absolute as their fanaticism, our passion for the democratic way as great as their passion for tyranny.
Here is the full speech
First of all, on behalf of the United Kingdom, let me thank everyone for supporting this resolution. We should not under-estimate what we face.
This terrorism that today again has claimed the lives of innocent people, this time queuing for jobs in Iraq, that has now disfigured countries in every continent, at every stage of development, with ever conceivable mix of races and religions, this terrorism is a movement, it has an ideology and it has a strategy, and the strategy is not just to kill, it is by terror to cause chaos and instability and to divide and confuse us – the enemy of this terrorism.
It will not be defeated until our determination is as complete as theirs, our defence of freedom as absolute as their fanaticism, until our passion for the democratic way is as great as their passion for tyranny. It won’t be defeated until we unite not just in condemning the acts of terrorism, which we all do, but in fighting the poisonous propaganda that the root cause of this terrorism somehow lies with us around this table, and not with them. They want us to believe that somehow it is our fault, that their extremism is somehow our responsibility. They play on our divisions. They exploit our hesitations. This is our weakness, and they know it, and we must unite against this ghastly game with our conscience.
There are real injustices in our world: poverty, that it is our duty to eradicate; conflicts, not least that between Israel and Palestine, it is our duty to help resolve; nation building as in Iraq and Afghanistan that it is our responsibility to help deliver.
But none of this has caused this terrorism. Around this table two years ago we were divided over Iraq, but by June 2003 there was in place a new UN resolution, a new UN-backed political process to give democracy to Iraqis, which they want, as 8.5 million of them showed by voting for it. The obstacle is terrorism, the victims are largely Muslim. How obscene therefore for these terrorists to claim that their terror is in response to our aggression against Muslims in Iraq. They use Iraq to divide us, just as they use Afghanistan where again their terror is the obstacle to Afghan democracy, just as they use Palestine where terrorism does not create progress but destroys it.
And it is not these issues, and never forget September 11 had happened, just a short distance from here, was before Iraq or Afghanistan, and when there was an active attempt to bring peace to the Middle East. If not these, they will use Chechnya, they will use Kashmir or Bosnia, and if none of these it will be the western presence in Arab states. And when all of that fails, those states themselves will be blamed, or any state that is not Talibanised.
The root cause therefore is not a decision on foreign policy, however contentious, it is a doctrine of fanaticism, and we must unite to uproot it by co-operating on security, as people have said, by taking actionagainst those who incite, preach or teach this extremism, wherever they are, in whichever country, and also by eliminating our own ambivalence, by fighting not just the methods of this terrorism but their motivation, their twisted reasoning, their wretched excuse for terror.
At the same time of course, by contrast, we should fulfil our duty to act against injustice. We support, all of us, strongly the resolution for conflict prevention in Africa. We should show our own strength and belief in the values of democracy and tolerance, and above all we should demonstrate that the future, however hard the path to it is, does not, and never will, belong to fanatics but will be with those who believe that we should live in peace with each other, whatever our race, nation, colour or religion.
They do indeed have their strategy, but we have ours, and we should use it to defeat them.