Downing Street Says » Prime Minister’s Speech

» Tuesday, March 21, 2006

Prime Minister’s Speech

Asked what the key message in this speech was, the Prime Minister’s Official Spokesman (PMOS) said that the speech was titled "Not a Clash of Civilisations, But Rather a Clash About Civilisation." The Prime Minister’s argument was that we had to be prepared to take on extremism both at home and overseas and first and foremost confront the ideas behind it. We had to confront the absurd anti-Americanism, confront the feudal view of governance, confront anti-feminism and confront hostility to other religions and so on. At the same time whilst we had to do all we could to take on those issues, we also had take on, politically, issues such as Palestine, environmental degradation, injustice and poverty.

Asked what motivated the speech now, the PMOS said that the Prime Minister was making a series of three speeches. This one was about global terrorism, Iraq and Afghanistan, the second speech, which would be delivered in Australia, would be about the importance of global alliances, and the third one would be primarily focussed on the need for institutional reform. He would also talk about the Middle East in the second and third speeches. So this was a foreign policy overview and the reason for it was that he saw the need to spell out to people that these weren’t just random issues, but were part of a collective theme and spelled out his approach to that collective theme.

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