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ISLAMABAD: Senior Pakistani sources have accused Britain of failing to do enough to tackle home-grown terrorists and maintain they are falsely being blamed for harbouring extremists plotting to attack the UK.

A senior Pakistan diplomat told the Guardian that his country was being treated as a ‘whipping boy’ by Britain. The terrorists, including those convicted on Monday for the airlines plot, were ‘born and brought up’ in Britain, not Pakistan, he said.

The diplomat also stressed the Pakistani intelligence tipped the UK off about the plot, saving 1,500 lives aboard seven transatlantic jetliners and thwarting al-Qaeda's biggest attack on the west since 9/11.

British and US counter-terrorism officials believe that terrorists in Pakistan played a central role in the airlines plot. On Monday, three people were convicted of conspiring to explode liquid bombs on planes heading from London to North America, and a fourth was found guilty of conspiracy to murder.

Counter-terrorism officials in the UK believe the plot was put together on Pakistan's border with Afghanistan, with a fixer linking al-Qaeda with the terrorist cell based in London and High Wycombe. Some belonging to the cell went to Pakistan for training.

In a calculated move, a senior Pakistani diplomat in London hit back, saying: ‘Sometimes, for our British friends the truth is bitter. We have somehow turned out to be a whipping boy; there is a long history to that. The British need to search their own house. Britain has to take responsibility and they have to look into the issues which are driving these youth to extremism, which is third-generation British – they weren't born and bought up in Pakistan.’

In December, the prime minister, while on a trip to Pakistan, expressed in public Britain's fear of terrorists being seemingly out of the reach of Islamabad. ‘Three-quarters of the most serious plots investigated by the British authorities have links to the al-Qaeda in Pakistan. Our aim must be to work together to do everything in our power to cut off terrorism,’ said Gordon Brown. His claim, however, angered Pakistan. The senior diplomat said that in all seven plots no Pakistani person was involved. ‘Yes, a Briton of Pakistani origin, but a third-generation born and bought up in Britain. We don't agree with Brown's claims that three-quarters of these plots originate in Pakistan. We don't have a magic wand to turn these people into extremists. These people were born in Britain, taught here, bred here.’

The diplomat also claimed the plotters would have succeeded in blowing up the planes if it had not been for Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency: ‘It was Pakistan that informed Britain about this plot…we tipped them off, it was our security agency that tipped off the British…the British authorities are very much indebted to Pakistan. We had a major role in unearthing this plot. Had it not been for Pakistan [it] would not have been unearthed.’

Britain has to take responsibility and they have to look into the issues which are driving these youth to extremism, which is third-generation British – they weren't born and bought up in Pakistan.’

‘Yes, a Briton of Pakistani origin, but a third-generation born and bought up in Britain. We don't agree with Brown's claims that three-quarters of these plots originate in Pakistan. We don't have a magic wand to turn these people into extremists. These people were born in Britain, taught here, bred here.’

THE Deputy Prime Minister of Iraq has claimed mosques in Blackburn are more extreme than in his home country, according to an MP.

The shock comments were allegedly made by Dr Barham Salih, who visited the town as a guest of Jack Straw in 2005.

He is reported to have told a Conservative MP: "I am not surprised that you British are facing so many problems with extremists after what I saw in those mosques in Blackburn.

"What I saw...would not be allowed here in Iraq - it would be illegal."

The comments have angered mosque leaders in the town, who have branded them "a load of rubbish".

The Lancashire Telegraph has sent a fax to Dr Salih via the Iraqi Embassy in London asking him to explain his views.

Shadow culture minister Tobias Ellwood said Dr Salih was speaking to him at a dinner party in Baghdad in November.

Mr Ellwood made the claims during a Westminster debate about terrorism.

Speaking after the debate, Mr Ellwood said: "I know Jack Straw well, but my eyebrows raise when you have a very senior Iraqi leader make comments like that.

"I do not believe these comments can be dismissed out of hand.

"I was absolutely shocked.

"He went inside the mosques, and said literature he saw would be illegal.

"He was quite clear.

"The comments are only directed at a very small proportion of mosques in the UK - the vast majority of Muslims wouldn't want to be labelled."

Salim Mulla, of the Lancashire Council of Mosques, reacted furiously to the comments.

He said Dr Salih spoke positively about what he had seen when they spoke during his visit.

Mr Mulla said: "We are going out of our way to bring the community together.

"Nobody is working harder than us at breaking down barriers.

"For Dr Salih to make these sort of comments is not very helpful at all.

"I don't know where he's coming from.

"He was very co-operative when he visited, and took lots of photographs.

"How many incidents have we had in Blackburn?

"He is talking a load of rubbish."

Dr Salih, a Sunni Muslim, was elected in January 2005 to Iraq's first democratically-held elections in 50 years.

During his visit to Blackburn, in the run up to the 2005 general election, he told an audience at Audley Community Centre not to vote against Mr Straw, then foreign secretary, because of the war in Iraq.

Coun Mulla said he could not remember which mosques Dr Salih had visited.

Mr Straw could not be contacted for comment.

and they have to look into the issues which are driving these youth to extremism, which is third-generation British – they weren't born and bought up in Pakistan.’

...

The senior diplomat said that in all seven plots no Pakistani person was involved. ‘Yes, a Briton of Pakistani origin, but a third-generation born and bought up in Britain.

event horizon wrote:I guess one must choose who to believe - an official from a country widely regarded as a haven for Islamic terrorists or the Pakistani diplomat.

Matthew 7:3-5 (New International Version)
Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye.

event horizon wrote:Are you sure that quote isn't from Moses?

But I do happen to know what I'm talking about when I give quotations and don't tend to post extracts which contradict my arguments (eg quoting Kung who says the Bible has contradictory verses to support your opposite view)

You never did get round to explaining this - but then again, perhaps you still think you are right despite it being only a figment of your imagination.

event horizon wrote:

But I do happen to know what I'm talking about when I give quotations and don't tend to post extracts which contradict my arguments (eg quoting Kung who says the Bible has contradictory verses to support your opposite view)

Ooops, my mistake then.

event horizon wrote: I guess that you never claimed that Paul 'persuaded' Peter to convert Cornelius in Acts 10 even though Paul is not even mentioned (and even though Peter's ministry to Gentiles begins earlier in Acts, but I think that's too complicated for this discussion)???

event horizon wrote:Curiouser and curiouser.

You never did get round to explaining this - but then again, perhaps you still think you are right despite it being only a figment of your imagination.

Yes, I agree. Someone has some splainin to do.

event horizon wrote: Why don't you start first and I'll try t remember the answer I gave to you the first time around?

Another notable quote from Kung - page 15 of Women in Christianity:

For today we know that the history of theology and the church, too, was predominantly written by the victors at the expense of the losers - along dogmatic or church-political lines. The losers in this kind of traditional church history are not just individual 'heretics' who have been rehabilitated by more recent histiography.

Whole areas of Christianity were losers, like the Jewish Christians who, as we saw, for the most part were already being regarded as heretical in the second and third centuries.

and said I had mixed up that even with James the Just's opposition to Paul's teachings relating to Gentiles.

event horizon wrote:If you recall, I acknowledged I confused one massacre for another. I'm more than happy to fess up to a somewhat trivial mistake

event horizon wrote:I see that shafique has confused two different historical events (similar to how he confused passages clearly written in Paul's epistles and thought they must have been the writings of another apostle, etc). Perhaps shafique can clarify what he meant by his comment that the massacre of a village was 'a small skirmish'?