Meyer said the US and British troops in Iraq "are on the horns of an absolutely impossible dilemma." (Courtesy the Guardian).

CAIRO, November 5, 2005 (IslamOnline.net) – The former British ambassador to Washington, a key aide of Prime Minister Tony Blair, said Saturday, November 5, that the Iraq war has fuelled home-grown terrorism in Britain, in comments likely to cause more trouble to Blair.

"There is plenty of evidence around at the moment that home-grown terrorism was partly radicalized and fuelled by what is going on in Iraq," Sir Christopher Meyer told the Guardian in an interview ahead of publication of his memoirs.

"There is no way we can credibly get up and say it has nothing to do with it. Don't tell me that being in Iraq has got nothing to do with it. Of course it has," he stressed.

Meyer, ambassador in Washington from 1997 to February 2003, was a key aide to Blair in crucial talks between London and Washington in the months and weeks leading up to the US-led invasion.

Four young British Muslims attacked three London underground trains and a bus on July 7, killing 52 people.

An apparent bid to repeat the attacks on July 21 failed and police have arrested four people they say were behind it.

Blair has repeatedly denied that the Iraq invasion has led to an increase in extremism and that it played a part in the London attacks.

A leaked secret memo written by Foreign Office Permanent Secretary Michael Jay warned Blair a year ago that the Iraq war was fuelling extremism at home and making Britain seen as a crusader state.

The London-based Royal Institute of International Affairs, known as Chatham House, has also said that the Iraq war gave a momentum to Al-Qaeda's recruitment and fundraising and made Britain more vulnerable to terror attacks.

A report from Britain 's Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre (JTAC) further said that events in Iraq "are continuing to act as motivation and a focus of a range of terrorist-related activity in the UK".

Meyer, who was heavily involved in the planning that led up to the war, now retired from the diplomatic service, said he backed the war.

"One of the things that came to me when writing was how political the war was," he told the Guardian.

"This wasn't just a war, it was a political war."

Meyer, currently chairman of Britain's Press Complaints Commission, criticized the mishandling of the situation after the invasion and the lack of a coherent strategy.

"I don't believe the enterprise is doomed necessarily though, God, it does not look good. A lot of people think what we are going to end up with is precisely what we did not want."

He said the US and British troops in Iraq "are on the horns of an absolutely impossible dilemma."

Meyer said the continued US-British presence in the Gulf was aiding Iraqi resistance fighters.

Yet, he opposed pulling troops out early from Iraq, saying this would leave "the relatives of at least 2,000 American servicemen and 98 British servicemen with a legitimate question about what they died for".

Meyer's damaging critique appeared on the front page of the mass-circulation alongside an interview with Blair himself who conceded that his ruling Labour government faced a critical time.

The interview marks the publication of his memoirs, DC Confidential, the first account by an insider of the decision-making that led to war.

It will be serialized in the Guardian and the Daily Mail newspapers from Monday, November 7.

The book singles out Blair and a number of British cabinet members for criticism, and reveals that in the build-up to war the Foreign Office, which raised doubts about the wisdom of the war, had been marginalized by Downing Street.

Meyer said he dealt almost exclusively with Downing Street in the 18 months before the war and could recall few, if any, phone calls with the Foreign Office in that time.

Click to read the interview in full