A war with Iraq could help to boost al-Qa'ida and destabilize the Arab world, MPs warned the Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, yesterday.

He was criticized for being "surprisingly unconcerned" by the potential terrorist threat facing Britain and the West that would arise from an attack on Saddam Hussein.

The powerful all-party Commons Foreign Affairs Committee said it was not convinced that Britain and America could justify taking a war to "the Arab street" and warned that military action against President Saddam "could increase the pool of recruits to al- Qa'ida and associated terrorist organizations".

Their remarks echoed concerns expressed by Syria's President, Bashar al-Assad, on his visit to London this week that war against Iraq would encourage terrorism.

The committee warned that al-Qa'ida still posed a "grave threat" to Britain and the rest of the world and there was no evidence linking Iraq to the terror network. The MPs said: "The Foreign Secretary has presented a case for robust action to enforce Iraqi disarmament, which seems reasonable enough to many British citizens but which will appear less so to disaffected young people in Egypt, Yemen or Saudi Arabia, especially if, as is likely, images of Iraqi civilian casualties are broadcast by the al-Jazeera television station and other pan-Arab news services."

MPs also criticized Mr Straw's apparent decision to pre-empt the UN inspectors' assessment of Iraq's 12,000-page weapons dossier, despite the UN report noting that "compelling" evidence existed that Iraq maintained and had in the past developed weapons of mass destruction. Mr Straw dismissed President Saddam's claim to have destroyed Iraq's weapons of mass destruction as an "obvious falsehood".

© 2002 lndependent Digital (UK) Ltd

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