Al-qaida's Hatred Will Burn Out

Nearly 6m shipping containers arrive in the US every year from scores of ports overseas, and any one of them could contain a potentially devastating bomb, chemical or biological toxins, or even terrorists themselves to place and discharge the weapons. The Italians arrested an Egyptian who had set himself up in a container on its way to Canada as if it were a caravan - with food, water, a toilet, and also maps of North American airports and other worrying documents. Whether he was a migrant, fantasist, or bomber is not yet established.

Robert Bonner, t the US had placed its "regime change" policy on ice.

British diplomats embarked on a frantic damage limitation exercise, claiming that Sir Jeremy's remarks had been taken out of context at a lunch of the 10 rotating members of the security council who lack the power of veto.

Officials, who insisted that Sir Jeremy was not rewriting American foreign policy, was attempting to win round waverers by saying that a successful inspections regime would put off the poeen five and 10% of the container flow.

The heart flutters at these odds. However much the numbers and capacities of what are sometimes called "unconditional" terrorists may have been exaggerated, and however effective intelligence agencies may become, the odds do not appear to be good, if by "good" you mean that nothing bad will ever happen. Even very good odds are not good enough in this situation, in which the standards are curiously akin to those which the American public thinks ought to apply to missile defence, which is that it should be perfect.

One has to realistically fear that, unless there are other factors, somewhere in the US or perhaps in Europe, where container flows are of the same order, a "bad" container will someday reach its target. The motto of the early advocates of air power, that the bomber will always get through, now has a new meaning. Add to this that containers are only one of many fronts in the campaign against terror, and the chances of catastrophe increase in proesolution, which is non-existent".

France

French officials yesterday denied rumours that France had already prepared a draft United Nations resolution on Iraq, insisting that Paris was not even convinced of the need for a new resolution. "We consider that the most important thing now is that the weapons inspectors are allowed in and have complete freedom to do their job," one source said.

But the officials said that France would "not object" to a supplementary resolution, providing it merely reiterated past requirements and "reminded Baghdad of itsas known only in the very dilute and geographically restricted form represented by Europe's small separatist insurgencies. Although there was earlier terrorism that reached into or originated within the rich world, there was a difference, felt in the bones, between safe and dangerous places. This distinction now narrows, obviously.

One of the professions best equipped to understand the shift is that of war correspondent. For decades such men and women sent news of terrible things happening in unlucky countries to readers in lucky ones. If they sometimes felt vulnerable themselves, there was always the sense that, back home, family and friends and society were intact and fortunate. Tiziano Terzani, one of the most distinguished European reporters of his generation, describes in his recent book, Letters Against The War, how the fading of that distinction came to him in Kabul as he watched a one-legged young woman limping after an older man. "She might be his daughter," Terzani writes. "I too have a daughter, and only now, for the first time in my life, does it occur to me that she too might step on a mine."

Terzani's book is a plea for peace from a man who has seen a lot of wars, and understands how one succeeds another, but who wants to ask, with Gandhi: " Why does the same old story have to be repeated? Why not try and start a new one ?" He does not advocate a complete pacifism, recalling at one point how Buddha, in one of his previous lives, committed a murder to save innocent passengers on a boat threatened by a bandit. He underlines, too, the way war has become a mission for some young Muslims. But he urges a concentration on peace as the only way in which the odds on war can be reduced. His book had its origin in an exchange with Oriana Fallaci at her most intemporate in Corriere della Sera. Terzani tells her: "There's no salvation in your burning anger." Surely he is right to say that anger is the measure of our future, whether it is our own fury at being attacked or that of those who launched the attacks, since anger drives people beyond limits they had previously recognised. And limits still obtain.

Even the al-Qaida planners, according to recent reports, had qualms about sending hijacked aeroplanes into nuclear power stations, fearing that things "might get out of hand". Is it impossible that some limits, at least, still matter to those who might be considering turning one of those shipping containers into a weapon? We had better hope they do and we ought to explore whether they do, since without such a concept on the "other" side, the chances of coming out unscathed seem remote.

If defensive measures by their nature are an imperfect guard, then the standard reaction is to turn to the offence. The offensive may be a mission to search out and destroy terrorists, at the core of which, a recent Washington Post article by a former Special Forces officer chillingly explained, is the "sensor to shooter loop". Get the information, get the kill. Or it may be to reach out and change the nature of regimes, which the US and Britain are contemplating in Iraq and perhaps elsewhere. The wisdom of such measures is what Terzani questions, because without being able to say how in practice the situation could be made better, he is clear that these are ways of making it worse. Those who cannot accompany him to his literally Himalayan vantage point - his final letter is from his remote place of refuge and contemplation in the mountains - must nevertheless share his unease.

Missing in most of the thinking about this enormous problem is an awareness that conflicts involving terrorism have, historically, subsided after a process involving both fighting and talking. A painful evolution from early eagerness to fight through to weariness with violence and a recognition that the ends are no longer attainable in the way originally envisaged has been normal. The difference now is that the weapons available are potentially too dreadful to allow these long lessons in the transition from war to peace, and that is the change that Terzani marks so well.

Letters Against The War by Tiziano Terzani, India Research Press