The former British ambassador to the United States, delivering yet another political blow to Prime Minister Tony Blair at the end of a turbulent week, said the war in Iraq had fuelled home-grown terrorism in Britain. Christopher Meyer, who was heavily involved in the planning that led up to the war, said he disagreed with Blair’s view that joining the US in the 2003 invasion of Iraq had not exposed Britain to terrorist attacks. “There is plenty of evidence around at the moment that home-grown terrorism was partly radicalised and fuelled by what is going on in Iraq,” Meyer told Saturday's Guardian newspaper. “There is no way we can credibly get up and say it has nothing to do with it. Don’t tell me that being in Iraq has got nothing to do with it. Of course it has,” Meyer said. Meyer’s damaging critique appeared on the front page of the newspaper alongside an interview with Blair himself who conceded that his ruling Labour government faced a critical time. Meyer, ambassador in Washington from 1997 to February 2003 but now retired from the diplomatic service, said he still felt the war was right in principle. But he criticised how the aftermath was handled, telling the paper: “I don’t believe the enterprise is doomed necessarily though, God, it does not look good.” —Reuters Three held in London targeted key US sites NEW YORK: Investigators in the US and Britain have been probing information suggesting three men recently arrested in London may have been planning to blow up prominent landmarks, including Capitol Hill and the White House, a Newsweek report has said. Officials in both countries are concerned that the three—Younis Tsouli (22), Waseem Mughal (22), and Al-Daour (19)—could be part of a terror network stretching from the US to Britain to Bosnia, Newsweek said. PTI
