Pursue war on terror with common sense and sensitivity: David Cameron

New Delhi

6 September 2006

Conservative Party leader David Cameron believes Britain has made certain mistakes in the war on terror and it was time countries, including his own, employed "a mix of common sense and sensitivity and knowledge" to retain community cohesion while combating the threat posed by terrorists.

"All terrorists are not Asians," the Conservative Party leader on Wednesday said in a freewheeling interview to this newspaper. "It is possible to be both Muslim and repeat and Briton or Indian ... India is a good example [of this]," he said, extolling the virtues of pluralism and secularism he observed here.

The Opposition leader said he was for maintaining "maximum cross-party support and consensus" on foreign policy but maintained that Britain needed to "look back and make a candid assessment" of where it went wrong. "Inevitably, mistakes have been made," he said when asked about Britain's role in the war on terror.

There were lessons to be learned, he said, echoing a speech he delivered in Mumbai a day earlier. In that spech, he mentioned how the world admired the calm and measured way in which India has coped with terrorism and the role it can play in helping to resolve problems and in "rebalancing [a] changing world".

The 40-year-old Tory leader, who hopes to become Prime Minister in the next elections, felt open societies should resist the tempation of racial profiling of ethnic minorities or stereotyping a community as being fanatical or harbouring extremist tendencies. "Richard Reid was not an Asian," he wondered aloud.

(Reid, a British national, was arrested on December 22, 2001 for attempting to destroy American Airlines Flight 63 from Charles De Gaulle International Airport in Paris to Miami International Airport in the United States by igniting explosives hidden in his shoes. He is serving a life term in an American prison.)

"Britain is a tolerant country [but we need] to do more in that regard. There is a high level of threat to Britons from Islamist terrorism. Policing is needed to separate the terrorists from the communities in which they swim [for which] we need the help of the vast majority of moderates to weed out the extremists," he said.

He said India was an important ally in the war on terror but insisted that Britain would want to to work with Pakistan and "encourage [it] to come to grips with the problem". "Britain has an important role in Afghanistan's Helmand province ... Taliban insurgents are crossing over from Pakistan and this needs to be controlled."

Cameron clarified that his party welcomed immigration but it needed to be "controlled" and "measured". "I am pro-controlled immigration," he replied when asked about his position on the issue. He welcomed the "huge contribution" made by people of Indian origin living in Britain, both economically and culturally.