Blair TV plea to muslims

Tony Blair today went on TV to make an impassioned plea to British Muslims to support the Allied attacks on Afghanistan - but left some Muslim callers to the show unconvinced.

His appearance on breakfast TV reflects the Prime Minister's concern that the West is still struggling in its campaign to convince Muslims in Britain as well as around the world that the attacks on Osama bin Laden's terror network and the Taliban regime are in a "just cause".

He is also seeking to counter "propaganda" coming from Afghanistan. His words seemed to indicate that the Allies are no nearer finding the terrorist leader. He also implied the Government has not yet decided on the numbers and timing of deployment of British ground troops.

The Prime Minister pledged that Bin Laden will be "stopped" from carrying out further attacks on the West, saying: "We will get him in the end."

Mr Blair added the Allies are not fighting a "conventional ground war" and added: "We are considering now what troops Britain would want to put into the conflict in Afghanistan - I can't obviously go into the details of what that might be."

He also said that the US-led strikes against the Taliban regime have "effectively achieved" one of their objectives - the destruction of Bin Laden's network of al Qaeda training camps.

His most heartfelt comments came when he was put under pressure by a Muslim caller to GMTV to justify the West's actions and to defend a minister who had likened rebel Labour MPs opposing the war to appeasers of Hitler and the Nazis. Mr Blair, whose aides are worried the propaganda war against Bin Laden is being lost despite the Prime Minister's constant efforts to reassure the worldwide Muslim community, was put on the defensive by Nur Muhammad of Edinburgh. The Prime Minister claimed: "I can really reassure you that no one has compared the Muslim religion to the Nazis at all. That is complete nonsense.

"We are taking action against Bin Laden not because he's a Muslim. I don't believe that the terrorism he represents is anything to do with the true spirit of Islam and I'm sure you would agree with that. Three years ago we took action to protect Muslims in Kosovo against ethnic cleansing by Serbia - a Christian orthodox country. No one should ever allow the lie to get about that this is to do with West versus Islam. It is to do with people, decent people everywhere, including Muslims, who are victims of terrorism, against the terrorists.

"Don't fall for this propaganda that it's anything to do with a battle against Islam - it's not."

A measure of Mr Blair's problems was shown, however, when Mr Muhammad said he remained "totally unconvinced" by the Prime Minister's reply. A later Muslim caller berated him for falsely trying to occupy the "moral high ground" on the issue.

The Prime Minister, who referred to his own habit of reading the Koran, used his interview to make a deliberate attempt to demonise Bin Laden - referring to his "evil" terrorist attacks and warning that he would do more and worse if he was not stopped by military force.

He argued that Britain would have been a Bin Laden target "in any event" - even it had not launched military action against the Taliban. He added: "This guy doesn't discriminate."

He claimed: "In respect of Bin Laden himself, we know that he is on the move inside Afghanistan.

"We have considerably destroyed a lot of the military installations of the regime in Afghanistan, the Taliban regime, and we have got to carry on until that regime is changed or yields Bin Laden up. We will get him in the end. Now when the end is, that is the question we need to ask."