Even under the Raj there was no conceivable way Britain could conquer and hold the arc of territory to which Blair was referring. It stretches from the Persian Gulf through Iranian Baluchistan and Afghanistan to Pakistan. No central government has come near to controlling this region, and its aversion to outside intervention is ageless and ruthless, currently fuelled by the world's voracious appetite for oil and opium. But it poses no threat to world security.

The sole basis for Blair's statement is Mullah Omar's hospitality to the fanatic, Osama bin Laden, at the end of the 1990s. As we now know, this was never popular (an Arab among Pashtuns); after 9/11, when the Taliban had collaborated with the west over opium, either Bin Laden would eventually have had to leave or the Tajiks would have taken revenge for his killing of their leader, Sheikh Massoud. Even the Pakistanis were on his tail. Either way, Talib Afghanistan was no more a "threat" after 9/11 than were the American flying schools at which the 9/11 perpetrators trained.

So what is Blair getting at? He once confessed to his hero, Roy Jenkins, that he regretted not having studied history at Oxford. He never spoke a truer word. The concept of world security as holistic and vulnerable to incidents such as 9/11 is nonsensical. Politics is not a variant of the Gaia thesis, in which each component of an ecosystem depends on and responds to every other. There is no butterfly effect in international relations. For want of a victory in Helmand, the Middle East is not lost, nor for want of victory in the Middle East is western civilisation lost.

This is as well, since Blair's resumed war in Afghanistan is clearly not being won. We know from the former army chief Lord Guthrie that Blair, despite promising to "give the army anything it takes", has refused the extra troops and armour needed by the pathetically small expeditionary force of 7,000 in Helmand. He has already had to switch tactics from winning hearts and minds to American-style "search and destroy", blowing up villages with 1,000lb bombs (as we saw on TV last week). British commanders are describing "successes" in terms of enemy kills. They should recall that Victorian officers in the Punjab were told that such boasts would be treated as a sign of failure, not success. Such killings infuriated the population and presaged revenge attacks. Has the British army learned nothing?

Blair has not been able to persuade his Nato allies in Europe of his apocalyptic world-view. The use of the word terrorism to imply some grand military offensive against the west may sound good in White House national security documents and Downing Street speeches. But terrorism is not an enemy or an ideology, let alone a country or an army. It is a weapon, like a gun or a bomb. It is not something that can be defeated, only guarded against.

Nor can terrorism ever win. Blair's flattering reference to it was in reality to al-Qaida and to the Islamist jihadism whose cause he has so incessantly advertised. As the American strategist Louise Richardson points out in What Terrorists Want, al-Qaida has not the remotest chance of defeating the west or undermining its civilisation. Only a deranged paranoid could think that. Some group or other will always look for ways to commit random killings, against which national security services need to be vigilant. But this is not war. Richardson points out that these groups are being grotesquely overrated. They cannot plausibly deploy weapons of true mass destruction, and remain stuck with the oldest terrorist tool of all, the man with a bomb (and if we are really negligent, with a plane).

While terrorism can take on different guises, it is not new and is not a threat to human society to rank with a world war or a nuclear holocaust - as the home secretary, John Reid, has absurdly claimed. Terrorist incidents are the outcome of someone's mental pathology and are of no political significance - unless cynical leaders in a targeted community choose otherwise.

What is sad about Blair's statement is not its strategic naivety but the psychology behind it. Why have the leaders of Britain and America felt driven to adopt so wildly distorted a concept of menace? In an analysis of terrorism in the latest New York Review of Books, Max Rodenbeck offers plausible but depressing answers. They include the short-term popularity that war offers democratic leaders, the yearning of defence chiefs and industries to prove the worth of expensive kit and, in Iraq's case, "the influence of neoconservatives and of the pro-Israeli lobby, seeing a chance to set a superpower on Israel's enemies".

All this is true, but I sense a deeper disconnect. The west is ruled by a generation of leaders with no experience of war or its threat. Blair and his team cannot recall the aftermath of the second world war, and in the cold war they rushed to join CND. They were distant from those real global horrors. Yet now in power they seem to crave an enemy of equivalent monstrosity. Modern government has a big hole in its ego, yearning to be filled by something called a "threat to security".

After 1990 many hoped that an age of stable peace might dawn. Rich nations might disarm and combine to help the poor, advancing the cause of global responsibility. Instead two of history's most internationalist states, America and Britain, have returned to the trough of conflict, chasing a chimera of "world terrorism", and at ludicrous expense. They have brought death and destruction to a part of the globe that posed no strategic threat. Now one of them, Tony Blair, stands in a patch of desert to claim that "world security in the 21st century" depends on which warlord controls it. Was anything so demented?

"Iran has condemned the Al-Qaeda and Taliban terrorism as well as all other terrorist acts and has fulfilled its responsibility of respecting UN resolutions against the evil of terrorism by arresting scores of Al-Qaeda terrorists venturing into Iran, presenting lists of their names to the United Nations and turning them over to their respective governments," the letter said.

It also pointed out to the newspaper that in December 2004 the chairman of the UN Security Council Committee on Al-Qaeda, the Taliban and Associated Individuals and Entities in a report praised the "sincere commitment of the Islamic Republic of Iran to work with the committee."

"The writer of the article continues to ignore Iran's important role as a pillar of peace and stability in the region by

misrepresenting Iran's steadfast fight against terrorism," the embassy said.
This, it said, was "notwithstanding the fact that Iran has been a victim of terror and has lost a president, a prime minister and more than 70 lawmakers at the hands of terrorists since the revolution, not to mention the Taliban's massacre of scores of Iranian diplomats in Afghanistan."

The daily was asked to publicize the refutation with "as much coverage and prominence as was accorded to the original" false article that coincided with Prime Minister Tony Blair supporting calls to open talks with Iran to help bring peace in Iraq.

In August, the paper's sister weekly edition, the Sunday Telegraph, was castigated for reporting unsubstantiated allegations orchestrated by the terrorist organization MKO to distract attention from the catastrophic situation in Iraq.

The report, again smearing Iran, was condemned by the embassy for using baseless allegations that have "no other aims than deviating public opinion from Iran's positive approach to the nuclear issue." The Telegraph group of newspapers has been commonly described as the voice of Zionism in Britain.
Last year, the daily edition went as far as calling in its editorial for support for MKO elements based in Iraq to overthrow Iran's elected government.

"We do not respect your son. We do not respect what he's doing all over the world," a woman in the audience bluntly told Bush after his speech.

Bush, 82, appeared stunned as others in the audience whooped and whistled in approval.

A college student told Bush his belief that U.S. wars were aimed at opening markets for American companies and said globalization was contrived for America's benefit at the expense of the rest of the world. Bush was having none of it.

"I think that's weird and it's nuts," Bush said. "To suggest that everything we do is because we're hungry for money, I think that's crazy. I think you need to go back to school."

The hostile comments came during a quesion-and-answer session after Bush finished a folksy address on leadership by telling the audience how deeply hurt he feels when his presidential son is criticized.

"This son is not going to back away," Bush said, his voice quivering. "He's not going to change his view because some poll says this or some poll says that, or some heartfelt comments from the lady who feels deeply in her heart about something. You can't be president of the United States and conduct yourself if you're going to cut and run. This is going to work out in Iraq. I understand the anxiety. It's not easy."

Bush also told the audience its derisive hoots were mild compared to the reaction he got in Germany in the 1980s, after persuading the country to deploy U.S. nuclear missiles.

He told the audience - including dozens of women in black robes and head scarves - he was extremely proud of his sons, President George W. Bush and Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.

He said the happiest day of his life was election day in 1998 when George and Jeb were elected to the governorships of Texas and Florida, but he also described the pain he feels when his sons are attacked.

"I can't begin to tell you the pride I feel in my two sons," Bush said. "When your son's under attack, it hurts. You're determined to be at his side and help him any way you possibly can."

One audience member asked the former president what advice he gives his son on Iraq.

Bush said the presence of reporters in the audience prevented him from revealing his advice. He also declined to comment on his expectations for the findings of the Iraq Study Group, an advisory commission led by Bush family friend and his former Secretary of State James A. Baker III and former Rep. Lee Hamilton. The group is expected to issue its report soon.

"I have strong opinions on a lot of these things. But the reason I can't voice them is, if I did what you ask me to do - tell you what advice I give my son - that would then be flashed all over the world," Bush said.

"If it happened to deviate one iota, one little inch, from what the president's doing or thinks he ought to be doing, it would be terrible. It'd bring great anxiety not only to him but to his supporters," he added.

Bush said he'd spoken with Baker recently - the two are neighbors in Houston - but preferred to reminisce about old times than discuss what America ought to do in Iraq.

"In the early 1960s, Jim Baker and I were the men's doubles champions in tennis in the city of Houston," Bush said with a grin. "If I were to suggest what they ought to do, it just would not be constructive and certainly would not be helpful to the president. It would cause grief to him."

Bush said he was surprised by the audience's criticism of his son.

"He is working hard for peace. It takes a lot of guts to get up and tell a father about his son in those terms when I just told you the thing that matters in my heart is my family," he said. "How come everybody wants to come to the United States if the United States is so bad?"

"Some bullying countries impose their illegal demands on independent and free countries while enjoying the support of some international organisations, which they founded for defending their own interests," said Ahmadinejad, lashing out at the US and the United Nations, where Security Council members have deliberated imposing punitive measures on Iran for its nuclear programme.

The Iranian president's launched his latest tirade against the United States as Iran's request for assistance to build a heavy water reactor appeared that it would be rejected.

Diplomats at a 35-nation meeting of the UN nuclear watchdog agency on Tuesday said that many of Tehran's allies favoured denying the request.

Ahmadinejad predicted that opponents of the program would fail to force Iran to abandon it. "Enemies express scattered words, they pose and humiliate but surely they will not go far."

He also claimed that Iran was close to reaching the "peak of peaceful nuclear technology."

In October, Iran announced it had expanded its capacity to enrich uranium, which can be used to produce electricity for a nuclear reactor or to make an atomic bomb. It began injecting gas into a second cascade of 164 centrifuges.

Iran says it plans to install 3,000 centrifuges by year's end, but it would take 54,000 centrifuges to fuel a reactor.

Iran claims its nuclear activities have peaceful goals, but the US and several of its Western allies believe otherwise because of the lack of transparency surrounding the program.

"They are going to bomb WMD facilities next summer," he added, referring to nuclear facilities Iran says are for peaceful uses and Washington insists are really intended to make nuclear bombs, or weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

"It would be a limited military action to destroy their WMD capabilities" added the analyst, believing a US military invasion of Iran is not on the table.

US journalist Seymour Hersh also said at the weekend that White House hawks led by Vice President
Dick Cheney were intent on attacking Iran with or without the approval of the US Congress, both houses of which switch from Republican to Democratic control in January after the November 7 legislative elections.

The New Yorker weekly published an article by Hersh saying that one month before the elections, Cheney held a meeting on Iran in which he said the military option would never be discarded.

The White House promptly issued a statement saying the article was "riddled with inaccuracies."

Joseph Cirincione, Senior Vice President for National Security and International Policy at the Center for American Progress, a Democrat-friendly think tank, also believes the US government could decide to attack Iran.

"It is not realistic but it does not mean we won't do it," he told AFP in an interview. "It is less likely after the elections but it is still very possible."

"If you look at what the administration is doing, it seems that it is going to inevitably lead us to a military conflict," he said, adding that no alternative solution was being sought, including discussions with Iran on
Iraq, which could lead to talks on Iran's nuclear program and role in the region.

"Senior members of the (Bush) administration remain seized with the idea that the regime in Iran must be removed," Cirincione said.

"The nuclear program is one reason, but their deeper agenda is this belief that American military power can be used to fundamentally transform the regimes in the Middle East," he added.

With the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, hardliners in the government have lost one of their leading advocates, and his replacement, former former
Central Intelligence Agency chief Robert Gates, has in the past favored direct talks with Iran, said the expert.

"But they remain within the administration at the highest level, the office of the vice president, the national security council staff, perhaps the president himself," Cirincione added.

He also accused neoconservative circles of promoting the military option against Tehran.

In a Sunday op-ed piece in the Los Angeles Times, Joshua Muarvchik, resident scholar at the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute, called for getting tough with Iran.

"We must bomb Iran," he said. "The path of diplomacy and sanctions has led nowhere ... Our options therefore are narrowed to two: we can prepare to live with a nuclear-armed Iran, or we can use force to prevent it."

Israel has also been pushing Washington to get tough on Iran.

Israeli Deputy Defense Minister Ephraim Sneh did not rule out preventive military action to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, in a recent interview with the English-language Jerusalem Post.

However, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad seems unperturbed. On Monday he said Israel was incapable of launching a military attack on Iran's nuclear sites and called Israeli threats "propaganda."

Bush and President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono held "frank" and "sometimes critical" discussions on those issues, the Indonesian leader said, and also talked about ways the US could help fight a spiraling bird flu outbreak, set up a tsunami early warning system and improve education.

Security was tight amid reports that al-Qaida-linked militants could try to disrupt Bush's six-hour visit to the sleepy city of Bogor, just south of the capital, Jakarta, with thousands of rifle-toting soldiers patrolling the streets, mobile phone signals jammed, and water cannons deployed.

Demonstrations by Islamic hard-liners, students, housewives and taxi drivers have been staged every day this month and nearly 10,000 turned out to meet the US president on Monday, some holding banners that said "Bush is a terrorist!" and "Go to Hell."

Others called him a war criminal and chanted "Allah Akbar" or "God is great." Students in at least two cities tried to seal off American-owned restaurants, sometimes clashing with police.

But Bush, wrapping up an eight-day Asia tour that also took him to Vietnam and Singapore, was unruffled.

"I applaud a society where people are free to express their opinion," he said at a joint news conference at the Bogor Palace, a graceful presidential retreat surrounded by vast gardens. "People protest. That is a good sign of a healthy society."

Indonesia is a secular nation with 190 million mostly moderate Muslims, but Islamic fundamentalists are quickly gaining a foothold.

The Jemmah Islamiyah militant group has carried out a series of suicide bombings targeting Western interests since 2002, including two on the resort island of Bali and two others in Jakarta.

The attacks have killed more than 240 people, many of them foreign tourists.

"American people and Indonesian people have both suffered from acts of violence from extremists," Bush said, holding Indonesia up as an example of how democracy and modernization can provide an alternative to extremism.

"Our nations are determined to take effective action against terror network that plot new attacks against innocent people."

Bush also said he was happy receive advice from Yudhoyono on global issues, including the North Korean and Iranian nuclear disputes.

The Indonesian leader called on other nations to do more to help find ways to end the conflict in Iraq, saying it was not just up to Washington to come up with a solution. He also urged Bush to speed up a timeline for the establishment of an independent Palestinian state.

"The people of Indonesia should know that when their elected leader speaks, other leaders listen, as do I," the US president said.

The White House said it was comfortable with security arrangements despite warnings by Bogor's police chief on Monday that authorities were investigating unconfirmed reports that a man wearing a suicide vest would try to infiltrate protests on Monday.

The terror threat never materialized.

When Bush last visited in 2003, talks with were focused primarily on Islamic extremists.

Happy with Indonesia's response - hundreds of terror suspects have been arrested and put on trial - Washington ended an arms embargo last year that was imposed in 1999 over human rights concerns.

Bush this time was seeking to broaden relations with Indonesia, offering help in everything from finding ways to alleviate poverty and develop alternative sources of energy, to battling illegal logging and corruption.

"It's important to our nation that we have good, strong relations with Indonesia," said Bush, who left Indonesia Monday night for Hawaii, his last stop before heading home. "It's a relationship that should last for decades to come."

Yudhoyono, meanwhile, conducted an elaborate balancing act by welcoming Bush in such grand style.

He needs US help combatting a bird flu outbreak that has killed 56 people - a third of the world's total - and in improving economic growth in his country which remains desperately poor eight years after former dictator Suharto's was ousted amid street riots.

But Indonesia's first directly elected leader risked further angering Muslim parties and his political rivals who already accuse him of being subservient to the West.

Lavrov said that if the Iranian leadership did not clear up outstanding questions regarding its nuclear program - which Western countries fear is aimed at developing weapons - then Moscow would be within its rights to work further within the UN Security Council.

"We would like every blank spot uncovered by the IAEA (the International Atomic Energy Agency) in the Iranian nuclear program to be clarified," Lavrov was quoted by the ITAR-Tass and RIA-Novosti news agencies as telling Russian reporters on a flight back from Vietnam.

The foreign minister said that Russia remained opposed to tough sanctions against Iran, but his comments appeared to indicate impatience with Iran's refusal of an international package of incentives to give up sensitive uranium enrichment.

Abbas opened the discussion by reporting he had received a proposal from Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz for a mutual cease-fire. He said that as opposed to previous cease-fire initiatives, in which Israel made unilateral demands of the Palestinians, Israel would agree this time to stop the fighting from its side, as well. "I told Peretz that Israel must also stop firing," Abbas said of his response to Peretz's request that the Palestinians halt their Qassam attacks.

Abbas conceded, however, to those present that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's position on the cease-fire was still unclear, in light of media reports yesterday that the prime minister had prohibited Peretz from meeting with Abbas.

Palestinian sources said Hamas representatives Hiya and Abu Hashem expressed willingness to stop firing Qassams at Israel. However Abbas also demanded a commitment from Hamas to stop attacks in the West Bank. In response to this, the two men said they would need additional time to consult with senior members of the organization before coming to a final decision on the matter.

The head of the Hamas parliamentary faction, Salah Bardawil, told Haaretz yesterday that his organization was prepared to engage in an immediate cease-fire with Israel, on the condition that it be mutual. Bardawil said Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh had proposed returning to an agreement on a tahadiyeh - a temporary cease-fire, before, "but now the problem is on the Israeli side."

He added, "Peretz and Olmert are divided in their opinions and it is not clear to us what Israel's position is on stopping the fighting. Peretz asked Abu Mazen [Abbas] for a cease-fire, the chairman asked for an Israeli commitment to stop the firing on its side, but Peretz cannot give an Israeli answer on this subject."

Meanwhile, individuals involved in negotiations to free kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit yesterday denied reports by a number of representatives of Palestinian organizations that talks on Shalit's release had come to a standstill. According to the sources, talks are still ongoing and significant progress has been made. They added they believed that by Id al-Adha (the feast of the sacrifice) in late December, a deal would be complete.

Palestinian sources revealed that Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman is expected to arrive in Israel tomorrow for talks on Shalit's release. The sources declined to go into detail on the points so far agreed upon in the negotiations on a comprehensive prisoner exchange.

Meanwhile, an Israeli aircraft hit a car yesterday in which two Hamas activists were traveling in the Sajaiyeh section of Gaza City. The two, senior activists in the Hamas military wing, Abdel Khader Habib and Basel Obeid, were killed. Six passersby were also killed in the attack.

Now the Pentagon is in the process of drawing up its follow-on request for the remainder of fiscal year 2007.

Reports indicate that the Pentagon could ask for 120 billion to 160 billion dollars, which would be its largest funding request yet for the global war on terror.

The drain of continued fighting in Iraq has meant that the global war on terror has steadily moved up the list of the most costly conflicts in the U.S. history.

In 2005, it passed the Korean War's inflation-adjusted cost of 361 billion dollars.

Next year it will almost certainly pass the Vietnam War's 531 billion dollars, making it the second most expensive U.S. war ever, behind World War II.

Using a scenario in which levels of deployed U.S. troops fall to 73,000 by 2010, and then stay at that figure, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that the cumulative cost of the global waron terror could reach 808 billion dollars by 2016.

However, after winning the midterm elections, Democrats will certainly look for ways to increase pressure on the White House to control war costs.

The UN bases its figures on data collected by the Iraqi Health Ministry.

Unknown bodies

"The civilian population of Iraq continues to be victims of terrorist acts, roadside bombs, drive-by shootings, cross fire between rival gangs, or between police and insurgents, kidnappings, military operations, crime and police abuse," the report said.

It also made reference to the growing numbers of unidentified bodies which turn up in various areas around the capital.

During September and October, some 3,253 such corpses were found, many thought to be the victims of death squads operating with the collusion of the police.

And it noted the deteriorating plight of women, whom it said were increasingly targets of religious extremists and so-called honour killings.

"Kidnappings associated with rape and sex slavery have also occurred."

Getting facts

Last month, one US survey estimated that some 655,000 Iraqis might still be alive but for the US-led invasion of 2003.

The figures were vigorously disputed by supporters of the war in Iraq, including US President George W Bush, but there is backing for the methodology used among some statisticians.

The collation of data is an immense challenge in a country where anti-US insurgents and sectarian death squads pose a grave danger to researchers.