U.S.

Blair: Osama Is Clearly Guilty

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

October 30, 2001 / 10:47 AM EST / CBS

Prime Minister Tony Blair issued a rallying cry Tuesday against public unease over the Afghanistan war, saying the allies' cause was just after a "flood" of evidence linking Osama bin Laden's to the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

In a speech to the Welsh Assembly, Blair invoked the memory of the attack on the World Trade Center and urged Britons not to let the grim realities of war shake their resolve in the fight against international terrorism.

"It is important we never forget why we are doing this, never forget how we felt watching the planes flying into the Trade Towers," Blair told the Welsh parliament in Cardiff.

"Never forget how we felt imagining how mothers felt telling children they were about to die, never forget the guts of the firefighters and police ... who died trying to save others."

The U.S.-led campaign is morally just, he said, adding that the body of evidence against prime terror suspect bin Laden and his al-Qaida network for the attacks on New York and Washington was now overwhelming.

"The intelligence evidence, a flow when I first drew attention to it on the third of October, is now a flood confirming guilt," Blair said, in reference to a dossier of evidence his office released more than three weeks ago.

Blair's speech came amid reports of mounting civilian casualties in Afghanistan caused by stray U.S. bombs, shaking some Western public support. He acknowledged public concerns over civilian deaths, the plight of refugees as winter approaches and what will happen after the conflict is over.

"All these concerns deserve to be answered," he said. "No one who raises doubts is an appeaser or a faint heart. We are a democracy, strong enough to have doubts raised even at a time of war, and wise enough, I hope, to be able to respond to them."

While a majority of Britons still back the military effort, an ICM poll in The Guardian newspaper Tuesday showed a 12 point drop in support since Oct. 10 Â— from 74 percent to 62 percent.

The Taliban deserve the wrath of the United States and its allies, Blair said. The ruling militia sheltered bin Laden and al-Qaida, refused to give the terrorist suspects up after Sept. 11, and the two groups were now "virtually a merged organization."

The evidence leads "to one inescapable conclusion," he said, "that if we do not act against al-Qaida and the Taliban, then al-Qaida will have perpetrated this atrocity, the Taliban will have sheltered them, and we will have done nothing."

He said al-Qaida intends to commit further attacks, mirroring a warning from the FBI on Monday that terrorists could soon strike in the United States or abroad.

"We have a group of people in Afghanistan who are the sworn enemies of everything that the civilized world stands for, who have killed once on a vast scale and will kill again unless stopped," he said.

Blair said a loss of resolve among allied governments and their citizens was the only thing that could lose the war.

"Thy have one hope," he said. "That we are somehow decadent, that we lack the moral fiber or will or courage to take them on; that we might begin, but we won't finish; that we will start then falter; that when the first setbacks occur, that we will lose our nerve. And they are wrong."

The speech set the tone for a week of concerted diplomatic activity, which will see senior British ministers crisscrossing the globe in an effort to buttress the international coalition against terrorism.