Gordon Brown speech at Lord Mayor's Banquet

Gordon Brown speech at Lord Mayor's Banquet; Gordon Brown speech continued SOT And day by day we are continuing to track a large number of suspicious individuals and potential plots. Make no mistake, al Qaeda has an extensive recruitment network across Africa the middle east, western Europe and in the UK. And we know that there are still several hundred foreign fighters based in the Fata area of Pakistan and travelling to training camps to learn bomb making and weapons skills. It is because of the nature of the threat, and because around three quarters of the most serious plots the security services are now tracking in Britain have links to Pakistan, that it does not make sense to confine our defence against terrorism solely to actions inside the UK. Al Qaeda rely on a permissive environment in the tribal areas of Pakistan and – if they can re-establish one – in Afghanistan. Al Qaeda has links to the Afghan and Pakistan Taliban. We must deny terrorists the room to operate which the Taliban regime allowed the 9/11 attackers before 2001. So that is why I say the Afghan campaign is being prosecuted not from choice, but out of necessity. So vigilance in defence of national security will never be sacrificed to expedience. Necessary resolution will never succumb to appeasement. The greater international good will never be subordinated to the mood of the passing moment. That is why 43 governments around the world now understand the importance of defeating al Qaeda and of preventing them ever again being able to flourish in Afghanistan. America with 60,000 and Britain with 9,000 are the largest troop contributors, but the rest of the international coalition has increased its numbers from 16,000 in January 2007 to over 27,000 today and I am confident that they will be prepared to do more. But this coalition does not intend to become an occupying army: it is building the capacity of Afghanistan to deal themselves with terrorism and violent extremism, it's ...