Posted on 04/09/2004 3:25:43 AM PDT by ejdrapes
GEORGE BUSH should open talks with Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda around a negotiating table, according to Mo Mowlam, the former Northern Ireland Secretary who presided over the peace process in the Province. She said that Britain and the US were only acting as a “recruitment officer for the terrorists” by carrying out military campaigns in the Middle East. In a television interview to be broadcast on Easter Day, Ms Mowlam says that the hardline approach to the war on terrorism was counter-productive and Tony Blair and Mr Bush should instead open a dialogue with their enemies. Asked if she could imagine bin Laden arriving at the negotiating table, she said: “You have to do that if you do not you condemn large parts of the world to war forever. Some people could not conceive of Gerry Adams or Martin McGuinness getting to the table, but they did. If you go in with guns and bombs, you act as a recruitment officer for the terrorists.” Ms Mowlam took a political gamble when she was Northern Ireland Secretary by holding talks with senior loyalist paramilitaries inside the Maze Prison in an attempt to save the peace process. Ms Mowlam, who now lives in Kent having given up her Redcar seat in 2001, said she was ready to criticise the Government she once served in her new one-woman show. Its policy on Iraq and the Middle East would come in for particular criticism. The Liberal Democrats criticised Ms Mowlam’s comments, saying that there was no point in negotiating with people whose aim was destruction. Sir Menzies Campbell, the foreign affairs spokesman, said: “What possible result would there be from sitting down with al-Qaeda? Their intention is to destroy the liberal values upon which our way of life is based. You cannot negotiate with those whose aim is your own destruction.”Bush is urged to talk to bin Laden
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