Former intelligence officer: UK vulnerable to terror attacks

Friday, 10, Nov 2006 12:00

The former chairwoman of the UK joint intelligence committee has praised the MI5 chief who warned of "growing" terror threat, saying she was "precise about what she knows".

Given that Eliza Manningham-Buller was "painting a fairly striking picture, I think she was at pains to give it real substance," Pauline Neville-Jones told Today.

But Dame Pauline warned: "What she is also saying of course are the things that we don't know about."

She added that the government could not tell people to "rest secure" and not to worry about terror, saying: "We can't rest secured and indeed the situation is sufficiently vulnerable, we are sufficiently vulnerable."

Dame Pauline stressed: "It is very, very important we don't treat the roots of this issue as being something where it is for the Muslim communities…to conform themselves somehow to a settled community that has its own ideas."