UK faces ‘long haul’ fight against global terror
The head of MI5 has warned of the continued ‘high’ risk of a terrorist attack on UK soil.
Eliza Manningham-Buller, delivering the James Smart Lecture at the headquarters of the City of London Police last night, said the UK was in for the ‘long haul’ in the fight against global terror.
She said the UK faced the threat of ‘Islamic terrorism’ for the next five years at least.
Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda terror network had ‘sleepers’ in the UK. She said terror attacks could take the form of poisoning the food supply or launching homemade chemical weapons.
She said her organisation had increased counter-terror reconnaissance operations and was liasing with nuclear, domestic power, water and transport industries to bolster security.
‘But the changed nature of the threat has meant that we need to extend that advice to new sectors such as the chemical and the food industry, which today may present an attractive target for terrorists,’ Ms Manningham-Buller said.
She foresaw little prospect of the terror threat subsiding in the short term.
‘I see no prospect of a significant reduction in the threat posed to the UK and its interests from Islamist terrorism over the next five years, and I fear for a considerable number of years afterward. The effort to defeat the Islamist threat is going to be a long haul.’
She told the audience: ‘Western security services have uncovered networks of individuals, sympathetic to the aims of al-Qaeda, that blend into society, individuals who live normal, routine lives until called upon for specific tasks by another part of the network.
‘Some of these individuals are in the UK. Not all of them fit the stereotypical profile of a terrorist sometimes portrayed in the media. It is for this reason that we continue to believe that there is a threat of an attack here in the UK.
‘The threats of chemical, biological and radiological and suicide attacks require new responses and the Government alone will not achieve all of it; industry and even the public must take greater responsibility for their own security.’
Her speech was entitled: ‘Global Terrorism: are we meeting the challenge?’
