Putin, Blair Agree on Terror Cooperation

Wednesday October 5, 2005 3:01 PM - By JILL LAWLESS Associated Press Writer - LONDON (AP) - Prime Minister Tony Blair on Wednesday showed Russian President Vladimir Putin the underground command center where he coordinates Britain's response to disasters and emergencies, and the two leaders pledged to increase joint efforts to combat terrorism.

They were briefed by top British officials in the high-security meeting room of the civil contingencies committee, known as COBRA - an acronym for Cabinet Office Briefing Room A.

``Russia and the Russian people, like Britain and the British people, know the threat which global terrorism poses. But we also share the same determination not to be defeated by it,'' Blair told reporters after the meeting.

Putin is the first foreign leader to be invited to the COBRA meeting room. He and Blair issued a joint statement saying they had ``resolved to continue to strengthen our partnership, in particular by increasing practical cooperation between our security agencies.''

Putin said the Russian delegation was pleased with the talks. ``We both understand the global challenges and threats of today, including that of terrorism,'' he said.

Human rights groups allege that Putin's government uses the battle against terrorism to cover abuses in the restive Russian republic of Chechnya. Amnesty International last week said Russian forces in Chechnya were responsible for ``gross human rights violations,'' including torture and forced confessions.

Blair said Tuesday that Russian and European leaders had discussed Chechnya during a one-day summit in London, but gave no specifics.

Putin said Wednesday he was grateful for the candor of British officials, especially in ``sensitive'' areas of their discussions.

Trade and energy issues also were discussed on the second day of Putin's trip to London, a day after Blair headed the European Union delegation at the EU-Russia summit.

On Wednesday, the two leaders stressed Russia's importance as an energy supplier to Britain. Oil accounts for much of energy-hungry Europe's imports from Russia, a major producer eager for Western investment.

Blair said Britain valued Russia ``as a stable and effective partner for us in the energy policy of the future.''

Putin said at a news conference Tuesday that ``Russia has constantly been augmenting her supply of oil, helping the world economy, including Europe, by constraining prices.''

In a ceremony at No. 10 Downing Street, Putin also bestowed medals on the British team that used a remote-controlled Scorpio underwater robotic vehicle to free a Russian mini-submarine and save its seven-member crew after the vessel became entangled in cables in the Pacific in August. It was the first time Russian service medals have been awarded to foreign military personnel.

``I would like to thank you for the work done, for the mission accomplished in the rescue of the Russian seamen,'' Putin said, before pinning medals on the lapels of each of the five men.

Royal Navy Commander Ian Riches, who led the rescue, received the Order for Maritime Services, as did Stuart Gold and Peter Nuttall, operators of the vehicle.

Capt. Jonathan Holloway, the British naval attache in Moscow, and Royal Air Force pilot Keith Hewitt, who flew the rescuers to Russia, received the Order of Friendship. - guardian.co.uk

Russia

Blair defends extending detention without charge

By Emmeline Ravilious Published: October 11 2005 - Tony Blair on Tuesday defended plans to give the police the power to detain terror suspects for up to three months without charge. Speaking at his monthly press conference in London, the UK prime minister said the powers had been requested by the police.

The plans, which would extend the current detention period from its current 14 days, are set to be published later this week and the government hopes they will become law by the end of the year.

The prime minister said that the police had presented a “compelling“ case for the extension in the wake of the July 7 terrorist attacks in London.

Mr Blair added that any such detentions would be subject to a weekly review by a judge and did not mean the police would “simply bang up anybody they wanted to bang up.“

Ian Blair, the UK's most senior policeman, has called for the measures to allow security forces to liaise with their counterparts abroad and go through suspects' electronic records.

The plans have been criticised by the opposition Conservative party and human rights groups as curbing civil liberties. - ft.com

Summary justice needed to fight crime says Blair

JAMES KIRKUP AND GERRI PEEV

12 Oct 2005 - TONY Blair yesterday threatened to impose "summary justice" on people accused of offences including terrorism, organised crime and neighbourhood yobbery.

Claiming that the criminal justice system was "passing through a watershed," the Prime Minister suggested a radical and far-reaching shift in legal practice, hinting that many traditional legal protections could be swept away. Mr Blair identified terrorism, brutal, violent, organised crime and antisocial behaviour as "new types of crime" that require new rules.

"You can't do it by the rules of the game we have at the moment, you just can't," he told a Downing Street press conference.

Mr Blair's increasingly hardline stance on legal matters has drawn criticism from civil rights groups. Yesterday appeared to put the Prime Minister at odds with Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary, over the new Terrorism Bill which would give police sweeping new powers to detain suspects. Going beyond that proposal, Mr Blair suggested that police could get more powers to impose fines on suspected offenders, or expel people accused of drug crimes from public rented housing. Only after the penalty had been imposed would the accused have the right to mount a legal appeal to prove their innocence.

"Now that is summary justice," Mr Blair told journalists in Downing Street. "It is tough and it is hard, but in my judgment it is the only way to deal with it, and that comes first."

Hinting at a shift away from the presumption of innocence as the foundation of the legal code, Mr Blair said: "You have got to put the ability to protect the law-abiding citizen at the centre of it."

Mr Blair said he had lost patience with the traditional judicial process, because it made convictions too hard to secure.

While Mr Blair gave no details of his plans for organised crime, he admitted that "some people" will find them "difficult" because they will change long-established rules. New rules for organised crime and anti-social behaviour will come in the next few months, but the government's immediate project is the Terrorism Bill published yesterday. The bill's most contentious clause would allow police to detain suspects without charge for up to three months.

Mr Blair insisted there could be no compromise on that plan, which is based closely on a request to government from senior police officers. Mr Blair insisted that he was not simply doing everything he was told by the police. "If they are right, then how can I responsibly refuse to do something that will actually protect, the most basic civil liberty, which is the right to life?"

The apparent split in the Cabinet over the measure was exposed when the Prime Minister said there was a "compelling" case for police to be granted the powers. The detention clause remains the main stumbling block to reaching cross-party consensus on the Terrorism Bill, and despite Mr Blair's stance, many MPs expect the government will eventually water down the proposal.

* Mr Blair also signalled that a controversial plan to dock the housing benefits of so-called neighbours from hell is back on the government's agenda. The measure, floated and dropped two years ago, could re-appear in a government paper on welfare reform later this year, the Prime Minister said.

"There's nothing that is ruled out," he said when asked if the plan could be resurrected. - scotsman.com -

Judges liken terror laws to Nazi Germany

By Marie Woolf, Raymond Whitaker and Severin Carrell - Published: 16 October 2005

A powerful coalition of judges, senior lawyers and politicians has warned that the Government is undermining freedoms citizens have taken for granted for centuries and that Britain risks drifting towards a police state. One of the country's most eminent judges has said that undermining the independence of the courts has frightening parallels with Nazi Germany.

Senior legal figures are worried that "inalienable rights" could swiftly disappear unless Tony Blair ceases attacking the judiciary and freedoms enshrined in the Human Rights Act.

Lord Ackner, a former law lord, said there was a contradiction between the Government's efforts to separate Parliament and the judiciary through the creation of a supreme court, and its instinct for directing judges how to behave. He cautioned against "meddling" by politicians in the way the courts operate.

"I think it is terribly important there should not be this apparent battle between the executive and the judiciary. The judiciary has been put there by Parliament in order to ensure that the executive acts lawfully. If we take that away from the judiciary we are really apeing what happened in Nazi Germany," he said.

Lord Ackner added that the Government's proposals to hold terrorist suspects for three months without charge were overblown. "The police have made a case for extending the two weeks but to extend it to three months is excessive."

Lord Lester QC, a leading human rights lawyer, expressed concern that the Government was flouting human rights law and meddling with the courts.

"If the Prime Minister and other members of the Government continue to threaten to undermine the Human Rights Act and interfere with judicial independence we shall have to secure our basic human rights and freedoms with a written constitution," he said.

Lord Carlile, a deputy High Court judge, warned against the whittling away of historic civil liberties. "We have to be acute about protecting what is taken for granted as inalienable rights. In the United States the Patriot Act included a system whereby a witness to a terrorist incident can be detained for up to a year. This is in the land of the free."

The senior barrister remarked that judges had now replaced MPs as the defenders of basic human rights.

"People used to look to their MPs as the first port of call to deal with any perceived injustice by the executive. Now there is an increasing tendency for people to look to the judges to protect their liberties," he said.

Mark Oaten, the Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman, said Tony Blair was transforming Britain into an authoritarian state. "In eight years he has dismantled centuries of judicial protection. Britain's reputation as the world's most tolerant nation is now under threat," he said.

If Mr Blair's proposed terror legislation was unamended, said Anthony Scrivener QC, "Britain would be a significant step closer to a police state". The Prime Minister spoke of "summary justice", said the lawyer: "It would be better named street justice."

This week the Law Lords will consider whether evidence obtained under torture abroad should be admissible in British courts. Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, said admitting such evidence would undermine one of Britain's basic freedoms.

"The Prime Minister is trying in his own words to try to tear up the rules of the game," she said. "The rules of liberal democracy are about no torture, free speech and fair trials. Every time he denigrates these he undermines the fabric of our society." - independent

read the New anti-terror bill

Government kills Short's war bill

Matthew Tempest, political correspondent - Friday October 21, 2005

A bill proposed by former cabinet minister Clare Short to force a vote in parliament before sending troops to war hit the parliamentary buffers today.

Downing Street earlier said the legislation would have been impractical.

After four hours of debate, the bill was "talked out" by Commons leader Geoff Hoon, meaning there will not be a vote on whether to refer it to the committee stage, the next step in a bill's progress. This in effect means the bill now stands no chance of becoming law.

The Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman, Sir Menzies Campbell, said: "Parliament missed a rare opportunity to assert its authority over the executive. "To send British troops into battle is the ultimate responsibility and it should be one for members of parliament."

Ms Short, who resigned shortly after the start of the Iraq war, today brought in a private member's bill that would have curtailed the power of the prime minister to declare war without the backing of the House of Commons. Under the bill, both the Commons and the Lords would have had to be shown the case for war and its legal justification before voting on whether to give the go-ahead. But before MPs even finished debating the bill, No 10 said such a law could stop the government acting quickly and rob it of the crucial element of surprise.

The prime minister's official spokesman also made clear there had been a vote ahead of action in Iraq. "As the prime minister and the foreign secretary have both said on the record in the past, what you do not want to do is put yourself in a position where, for some reason you can't foresee at the moment, action has to take place very quickly," he said. "Therefore you may not want to commit yourself to a position where you rob yourself of the element of surprise and give the enemy advance notice."

But in the chamber Ms Short insisted under her bill the PM would still have been allowed to take urgent action without approval but would be forced to pull the troops back if parliament then rejected the move. She said her move had the backing of a large number of MPs from all parties as well as the families of soldiers killed in the conflict. Ms Short said it was ridiculous that the power to wage war still officially lay with the monarchy as a royal prerogative - today exercised by the prime minister of the day.

The MP for Birmingham Ladywood pointed out that even if a prime minister decided to allow parliament a vote - as Tony Blair did over Iraq - he was free to ignore its decision. Ms Short said her bill would have prevented the "machinations and shenanigans" over the withholding of the attorney general's legal advice about the Iraq war. She suggested that the powers in the hands of the prime minister could be used to justify moves to "exaggerate" a threat.

"Given the powers he has, the prime minister could argue that he was entitled to secretly commit us to war in April 2002 by giving his word to president Bush as has now been revealed by the leaking of the Downing Street memo.

"Similarly he could insist that he was entitled to exaggerate the intelligence and the threat of WMD, manipulate the legal advice and misreport the French position on the possible use of their veto in the security council because if the power to make war belongs to him and requires no approval from parliament, then he was entitled to do what he thought was right and then set out to persuade, in the way he found best, the cabinet, parliament and country to support the decision he had already made."

The bill's sponsors included former Tory leader William Hague and Tory former chancellor Ken Clarke - although neither was in the chamber to hear the debate. Backing the bill, the Liberal Democrat David Heath said: "It is our right as a parliament to disagree with the executive.

"If the executive cannot command the support of the house then it has no business sending forces into conflict."

Gordon Prentice, a Labour MP, claimed the chancellor, Gordon Brown, was in favour of the bill. The Tory MP Roger Gale also spoke up in favour of the bill, reminding MPs that the prime minister of the day was neither commander-in-chief nor head of state, as is the case with the US president.

But the Tory former shadow defence minister James Gray - who opposed the Iraq war - said he did not support the bill because "only popular wars will be waged" rather than "unpopular but necessary" wars. - guardian.co.uk

Full text - Armed forces (parliamentary approval for armed conflict) bill

New UK citizenship testing starts

British citizenship tests are being launched across the UK. The 45-minute test - covering government, society and practical issues and costing £34 - comes into force on Tuesday. People seeking to become British will take the test at one of 90 centres across the country, before taking part in a formal citizenship ceremony.

The number of people granted citizenship reached a record 141,000 in 2004 - a rise of 12% on 2003.

The "Life in the UK" test is the last of a series of changes to how people become British brought in by the former Home Secretary David Blunkett.

Potential citizens must answer 75% of the questions correctly to pass, but they are allowed to retake it until they pass.

'Not Britishness test'

The Home Office said it wanted to create a new, more meaningful, way of becoming a citizen in an effort to help people integrate and share in British values and traditions. Immigration Minister Tony McNulty said: "This is not a test of someone's ability to be British or a test of their Britishness.

"It is a test of their preparedness to become citizens, in keeping with the language requirement as well. "It is about looking forward, rather than an assessment of their ability to understand history."

Prospective new citizens already need to demonstrate sufficient working knowledge of English to help them get on.

Citizenship applications

Among the 24 questions in the test are:

Where are the Geordie, Cockney, and Scouse dialects spoken?;
What are MPs?
What is the Church of England and who is its head?

The number of people granted British citizenship in 2004 rose by 12% to 140,795 in 2004, the highest annual figure. Almost 6,000 of these new citizens had taken part in special citizenship ceremonies which had recently come into force. Applications for citizenship ran at about 40,000 a year during the mid-1990s until, in line with migration trends, they began rising in 1998.

While the number of people granted citizenship grew, the rate of new applications fell slightly during 2004, probably due to the new English language requirements causing some people to wait. Just under half of all applications were granted on the basis of residence in the UK.

Some 29% of new citizens were accepted on the basis of marriage to a British resident, while about a fifth were children.

People born in Asian or African countries accounted for 40% and 32% respectively of all applications, the principal nationalities being Pakistani, Indian and Somalian. Almost 60% of people born abroad living in the UK take British citizenship within six years, according to figures from 2004.

The Life in the UK citizenship guide for prospective new citizens includes information on British history and society, its institutions and political system - but also practical issues key to integration such as employment, healthcare, education and using public services like libraries.

Keith Best, chief executive of the Immigration Advisory Service, said his organisation welcomed the tests but said they needed "a light touch" as there was a "danger" of their being "seen as a way of excluding people from British citizenship". - bbc.co.uk

Former MI6 chief warns of 'dreadful' terror threat

By Robert Verkaik Published: 03 November 2005

Britain faces a much greater terrorist threat than the attack carried out by four suicide bombers that killed 52 people in London in July, the former head of the intelligence services has warned.

The former MI6 chief Sir Richard Dearlove said that we must now expect a biological, chemical, radiological or even nuclear attack because intelligence showed that was what al-Qa'ida and its linked organisations had developed an interest in.

He said that the July 7 bombings were "locally" planned and executed, and that we were "misleading ourselves" if we thought this was the worst we could expect.

The greater threat, said Sir Richard, was a "strategic event" in which terrorists would make use of technology available on the internet.

"There's some complacency about the nature of the threat and we are misleading ourselves if we think this is the worse it can be ... There are much more dreadful events that could occur."

He told a seminar on the Government's counter-terrorism measures, organised by international law firm Ashursts, that rapid advances of genetic manipulation of viruses meant we "had to believe that they will do something extremely frightening". But he believed a nuclear attack, such as a dirty bomb, was "low risk" because of the difficulty for terrorists to obtain fissile material.

He told the audience of lawyers and human rights experts the measures in the Terrorism Bill were necessary because "we have to give the Government the best chance of preventing such an event".

- independent