US News
Extra: Rice dismisses Iraq/Afghan angle to London attacks
By DPA
Jul 7, 2005, 19:00 GMT

Washington - U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Thursday that the deadly bombings in London will strengthen British resolve to defeat terrorism and dismissed suggestions that the attacks were in retaliation for Britain's role in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Four bombs went off on London's commuter rail system, killing at least 33 people. with the death toll at one of the blast sites unconfirmed. Hundreds of people were hurt.

A group claiming to be al-Qaeda's operation in Europe has claimed responsibility on a website for the attacks, and said Britain was targetted for assisting the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In an interview from Washington with BBC, Rice said terrorists were targeting western countries long before the fighting in Iraq or Afghanistan.

"I don't think that anything is being fuelled here except the fact that the terrorists are finally being confronted," Rice said.

"Let's remember that if indeed extremism is to blame for what is going on in London, it is a part of a long line now of attacks that come out of an ideology of hatred that led people to fly airplanes into buildings," Rice said.

Rice cited terrorist attacks in Beirut in the 1980s as well as the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Centre in New York and the U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya in 1998.

"This has been going on for a while," she told BBC.

She said she believed that the attacks will strengthen "the resolve of countries like Great Britain and of the people who suffer these attacks because you realize that there is no reasoning with people who would try and destroy innocent lives of people on their way to work".