Britain:Gordon Brown, the UK's prime minister in waiting, yesterday signalled his determination to match Tony Blair's hardline stance on terrorism.
To this end he advanced a series of controversial measures. Moreover, parts of these proposals will be laid out in more detail on Thursday, when outgoing home secretary John Reid will announce a consultation on the terrorism bill due this autumn. They include detaining suspects for more than four weeks without charge, allowing questioning after charge and the use of intercept evidence.
The government suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of rebel backbenchers in 2005 when it tried to extend the detention period to 90 days, and was forced to compromise on 28 days. Senior Labour MPs, including deputy leadership candidate Harriet Harman, said compelling evidence would be needed to push through another extension.
The civil rights campaign Liberty warned that an extension to three months would amount to internment. Mr Brown, who will become prime minister on June 27th, is also proposing to make support for terrorism an aggravating factor when judges pass sentence for other crimes.
Speaking at a Labour hustings in Newcastle, he said he was ready to be "tough in the security measures that are necessary to prevent terrorist incidents in this country". But he said he would protect civil liberties. "There has got to be independent judicial oversight. There has got to be proper parliamentary accountability."
He is also planning to hold cross-party talks in the privy council on the use of phone-tap evidence in court. The security services have resisted such a change because they fear it will expose their surveillance methods.
But David Davis, opposition Conservative party spokesman on home affairs, said: "It is extraordinary that the chancellor has chosen to publicise these proposals five days before John Reid announces his counter-terrorism plans in parliament. It does not augur well for cross-party attempts to build a consensus for the new counter-terrorism measures the whole country needs to get behind."
The Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman, Nick Clegg, said: "At least [ Mr Brown] appears a little more concerned about parliamentary accountability than his predecessor. It remains to be seen whether this is a procedural fig leaf for more authoritarian measures or part of a genuine shift in guaranteeing, and not undermining, our civil liberties."
Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, said it had supported the use of intercept evidence and post-charge questioning as alternatives to extending detention before charge, not in addition to it. "Twenty-eight days is already the longest period to hold a person without charge in the free world," she said. "If you go beyond 28 days it is internment."
Mr Brown, who will today speak at a conference on Islam and Muslims in the World, added: "We cannot win this [ battle against terrorism] militarily or by policing or intelligence alone . . . What we've got to do is not too dissimilar to the cold war in the 1950s and 60s - we've got to . . . reach out to all those members of other faith communities . . . so together we can isolate those people who are preaching extremist ideas." He cited projects such as the online publication of Arabic translations of liberal thinkers such as Edmund Burke and JS Mill.
Writing in the Sunday Times yesterday, Tory leader David Cameron, wrote: "A serious, long-term approach to this challenge cannot rest on a security response alone. We have to recognise the depth of the alienation felt by many Muslims in Britain today." - (Guardian service)