"British Troops Deploy at London Airport Over Fear of Attack"

Tuesday, February 11, 2003

British Troops Deploy at London Airport Over Fear of Attack
By ALAN COWELL
The New York (NY) Times

 
LONDON, - Hundreds of British troops backed by armored cars took up position
at Heathrow Airport today to guard against what the police called a
potential Al Qaeda attack related to a major Islamic festival.

The deployment, the first of its kind in the nine years since Irish
republican guerrillas launched a mortar attack on the same airport,
coincided with a growing sense of alienation between Britain and some of its
major European partners over what is depicted in many parts of the Continent
as Washington's headlong rush toward war with Iraq.

Britain is Washington's biggest and most vocal European ally with tens of
thousands of troops set to join American forces in the Persian Gulf region.
But its alignment with the United States has left it on the pro-American
side of a widening European divide. Only Monday, France, Germany and Russia
urged an enlargement and expansion of United Nations weapons inspections in
Iraq before conflict is contemplated, while France, Germany and Belgium
blocked NATO attempts to begin planning for a war.

Foreign Secretary Jack Straw of Britain dismissed the French and German
counter-proposals today as "impossible to achieve unless and until you have
the complete disarmament of Iraq."

Coming just four days before United Nations inspectors make a key report on
President Saddam Hussein's compliance with their scrutiny of his weapons,
the deepening European rift and the alert in London combined to provoke a
sense of gathering crisis.

The British police said in a statement: "From time to time it is necessary
to raise levels of security activity. We think it is prudent to do so now.
The current strengthening of security is precautionary and is related to
action being taken in other countries and the possibility that the end of
the religious festival of Eid may erroneously be used by Al Qaeda and
associated networks to mount attacks."

The Islamic festival of Eid al-Adha, which started today, celebrates the end
of the hajj, or annual Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca. But the police decision
to link the occasion with potential terror attacks angered some Muslims.

"It is like suggesting that Christians would use Christmas to bomb Jewish,
Muslim or Buddhist communities," said Massoud Shadjareh, chairman of the
Islamic Human Rights Commission here.

But, after a string of arrests of North African Muslims in Britain linked to
an alleged conspiracy to produce the toxin ricin, other Muslim leaders
stirred a renewed furor with veiled threats that Britain faced a new wave of
terrorism.

Sheik Omar Bakri, the London-based head of Al Muhajiroun, an Islamic body
once accused of recruiting young Muslims to travel to Afghanistan during the
rule of the Taliban, said in a radio interview that he believed radical
Muslims in Britain were prepared to make suicide attacks.

"So I would warn people to take precautions," he said. "Do not go into
government buildings, do not be in any financial institutions, keep away
from these locations." 

Contacted later, he modified the warning, saying he had not been referring
to his own followers as potential terrorists. "It is not allowed for them to
attack anybody physically," he said. "That is completely against Islam." 

Sheik Bakri was one of a number of radical Islamic figures who, last August,
issued a statement calling an attack on Iraq an attack on all Muslims.

The police did not go into detail about what had inspired today's alert at
Heathrow, west of London, but witnesses said the police and army had also
been sent to search rivers and other locations on the airport's flight path.
Some 400 soldiers in camouflage uniform and armed with assault rifles took
part in the deployment, the police said.

Some security experts suggested that the aim may have been to forestall an
attack from the airport perimeters, similar to the Irish Republican Army
attack on the Heathrow runways in 1994. 

"It doesn't take an Einstein to work out that you can park around the
perimeter and launch something like a missile," said Chris Yates, of Jane's
Airport Review, a specialist publication.

Whatever its cause, the deployment could well be cited by British officials
as further evidence of a heightened Al Qaeda threat as the United States and
its allies enter what Mr. Straw called "the final, decisive phase in this
long crisis" in Iraq.

In a speech to the International Institute of Strategic Studies in London,
Mr. Straw went out of his way to rebut proposals either made publicly by
France and Germany or reported to be under consideration in Paris and
Berlin. 

Mr. Straw said the European counter-proposals included calls for intensified
weapons inspections, the extension of the current no-flight zones in north
and south Iraq to cover the entire country and the deployment of United
Nations "blue-helmet" troops to help and protect weapons inspectors.

The British official said an increase in the number of weapons inspectors
would not help resolve the crisis unless Mr. Hussein showed a readiness to
comply with their mission, while an extension of the no-flight zone or the
deployment of United Nations troops were "simply not feasible in the absence
of complete Iraq cooperation and not necessary if we had complete Iraqi
cooperation."

"They are a recipe for procrastination, indecision," Mr. Straw said.


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