British Press Conference

TONY BLAIR:

I think that everyone is … is canny enough to know what these people are trying to do — I mean, whoever is responsible for this latest incident — and that is to intimidate people, and to scare them, to frighten them, to stop them going about their normal business.

Now, obviously people will be concerned and anxious. Of course they will. And that's why it's important we give as much information as we can. But on the other hand, it's important also that we respond by keeping to our normal lives and doing what we want to do, because to do otherwise is in a sense to give them very thing they're looking for.

JOHN HOWARD:

Can I just add that one of the difficulties that all societies face here is that essentially the laws dealing with the behavior of terrorists were framed at a time when terrorists didn't have available to them the technology, access to how to make a bomb from the Internet, mobile phones, text messages.

To, I hope, not oversimplify it, we have 19th century legal responses to potentially 21st century technological terrorist capacity. Now, you don't want to rush these things, but you do want to recognize that there is a case for looking at whether the laws are adequate, and we're going to do that.

REPORTER:

Prime Minister, you've appealed for people to stay calm, but do you feel any sense of responsibility at all for the fact that ordinary people here in London now seem to be in the front line in the war against terror?

TONY BLAIR:

Well, I think what is important is that people do stay calm and react in the way that they have reacted so far. And the very purpose of the people who are doing this type of thing, their purpose is precisely in order to make people worried and frightened and taking responsibility off the shoulders of the people who engage in these types of act. To react in any other way, I think, is to engage in the game they want us to engage in.

JOHN HOWARD:

Can I remind you that the murder of 88 Australians in Bali took place before the operation in Iraq? Can I remind you that the 11th of September occurred before the operation in Iraq? Can I also remind you that the very first occasion that bin Laden specifically referred to Australia was in the context of Australia's involvement in liberating the people of East Timor?

Are people, by implication, suggesting we shouldn't have done that? When a group claimed responsibility on the Web site for the attacks on the 7th of July, they talked about British policy not just in Iraq, but in Afghanistan. Are people suggesting we shouldn't be in Afghanistan?

TONY BLAIR:

What they want us to do is to turn around and say, "Oh, it's our fault." The people who are responsible for terrorist attacks are the terrorists. And, you know, this combination of this evil, bankrupt ideology based on a perversion of Islam with terrorism, this is something that is built up over a period of time. It will have to be dismantled over a period of time, but I've got no doubt at all that in the end, the values that we represent are the values that will triumph.

And you know why I say that? I say that because every time people in somewhere like Afghanistan or Iraq or Palestine, these causes that they try to prey upon, every time the ordinary people in those countries are given a chance to vote, they vote. And they actually prefer the democratic way of life, too. And that's why in the end we'll win.