London Mayor Ken Livingstone today blamed Western foreign policy in the Middle East for creating the conditions for terrorist attacks such as the July 7th bombs in the British capital.
London Mayor Ken Livingstone
Mr Livingstone said that Western interventions to maintain control of oil supplies in Arab countries, dating back to the First World War, had produced the Islamist terrorism of extremists including Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network.
He said that a lot of young people in Britain were outraged by the double standards in Western foreign policy, reflected in America's support for Israel and detentions without trial in the Guantanamo Bay prison camp in Cuba.
The mayor said he condemned all suicide bombings, but indicated that he understood why Palestinians may resort to the tactic in Israel.
He defended a photograph published in today's press, showing him with Omar Bakri Mohammed and Anjem Choudary of the militant al-Muhajiroun group, insisting that posing for a picture with them did not imply he agreed with their opinions.
Asked what he blamed for the rise of Islamist radicalism and terrorism, Mr Livingstone did not specifically mention Britain's involvement in the Iraq War, which he opposed.
But he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "I think we have just had 80 years of Western intervention in predominantly Arab lands because of the Western need for oil.
"We have propped up unsavoury governments, we have overthrown ones that we didn't consider sympathetic.
"And I think the particular problem we have at the moment is that in the 1980s the Americans recruited and trained Osama bin Laden, taught him how to kill, to make bombs and sent him off to kill the Russians in Afghanistan and they didn't give any thought to the fact that once he had done that, he might turn on his creators.
"I have not the slightest doubt that, if at the end of the First World War we had done what we promised the Arabs, which was to let them be free and have their own governments, and kept out of Arab affairs, and just bought their oil, rather than feeling we had to control the flow of oil, I suspect this wouldn't have arisen.
London Mayor Ken Livingstone
"I have watched Western governments, so terrified of losing control of their fuel supplies, that all my life there have been interventions in the Middle East by Western governments.
"It is the double standards that flow from that. We initially welcomed Saddam Hussein to power, our intelligence services gave him lists of trade unionists and communists - as did the CIA - that we wanted killed, and he then turned on us.
"You have also got this running sore of the Palestine/Israeli conflict. A lot of young people see the double standards, they see what happens in Guantanamo Bay, and they just think that there isn't a just foreign policy."
PA