Blair: Terror Attempts A Certainty

Prime Minister Says Al Qaeda Will Try To Attack; Cites Poison Case

(CBS)  It is inevitable that Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda terrorist network will try to attack Britain, Prime Minister Tony Blair said Tuesday.

During a lengthy question and answer session with senior legislators, Blair said no amount of contingency planning by his government could completely defend the country against terrorists.

"I believe it's inevitable that they will try, in some form or other, and indeed I think we can see evidence from the recent arrests that the terrorist network is here as it is around the rest of Europe and the rest of the world," the prime minister said.

"We have to make every preparation that we reasonably can but there are no limits to the potential threats that you could imagine," he told the House of Commons' influential Liaison Committee.

Blair's government has issued several general warnings that Britain could be a target for terrorists in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks in the United States. Blair told Parliament last month that "barely a day goes by" without some new piece of intelligence warning of threats to British interests.

In November the government issued — and then hurriedly withdrew — a statement warning that al Qaeda might be prepared to use a radiological device known as a "dirty bomb," or some kind of poison gas. It was replaced with a more general warning of terrorist threats.

Anti-terrorist police have staged a series of raids following the discovery of traces of the deadly poison ricin in a London apartment on Jan. 5.

The prime minister said Britain's "first line of defense" was "security and intelligence."

"For the rest, we do what we reasonably can and do it without alarming people," said Blair, adding that no amount of money could safeguard Britain wholly from attack.

"We are spending hundreds of millions of pounds on trying to prepare ourselves for any potential terrorist threat, in relation to vaccines, protective clothing, and new procedures and so on.

"We could spend tens of billions of pounds doing it, and we could still not identify where the attack was actually going to come from."