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The Al-Qaeda terror network wants to acquire technology that will allow it to carry out a nuclear attack on a Western country, a spokesman for the British foreign ministry told AFP.
“The aspiration is there. That's something that we will continue to operate safeguards against,” the spokesman said, when asked whether Al-Qaeda hoped to acquire nuclear technologies.
He stressed, however, that the Foreign Office did not believe that Al-Qaeda had acquired such technology. He could not comment on how far the terror network had gone in attempting to get hold of the technology.
A report in the early edition of The Guardian daily's Tuesday newspaper said that British officials detected “an awful lot of chatter” on jihadi websites expressing the desire to acquire weapons of mass destruction, citing an unnamed senior official within the foreign ministry.
The same official said that within the past two weeks both the United States and Russia had signed an agreement to toughen nuclear non-proliferation measures.
The foreign ministry spokesman's comments followed warnings last week from the head of Britain's domestic intelligence agency MI5 that future terror attacks could involve weapons of mass destruction.
Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller said on Friday that while homemade, improvised explosives may be used now, future terror attacks could involve chemical, bacteriological, radioactive and even nuclear material.
Her assessment came after Muslim convert Dhiren Barot was jailed for life last week for plotting to kill thousands of people in devastating attacks in Britain and the United States.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair late on Tuesday described Islamic terrorism as a “new and unconventional enemy” and proposed to combat it, and help support democracy in the Middle East with a “whole Middle East” strategy.
In a keynote speech in London, Blair said that a major part of the answer to the struggles of Britain and the United States in Iraq lies “in the whole of the region where … the roots of this global terrorism are to be found, where the extremism flourishes.”
Britain has been on high alert since the July 7, 2005 bombings on London's public transport network killed 52 commuters and the four Islamist extremist suicide bombers.
