Downing Street Says » Hilary Benn

» Monday, April 16, 2007

Hilary Benn

Put that Hilary Benn had talked about "soft force" in his recent speech, which appeared to be the opposite of the Prime Minister’s speech a couple of months ago where he had spoken about "hard force", the PMOS replied that if people read the Prime Minister’s speech in Los Angeles, it said that where necessary, people had to be prepared to use military force to protect democratic governments, as in Iraq and Afghanistan, against terrorism. At the same time, they had to recognise that politics had to be used to win the battle of ideas, and that had been a key theme in the Prime Minister’s speech for quite some time.

Asked if the Prime Minister or Downing Street supported what Hilary Benn had said about the "war on terror", the PMOS replied that he did not see any contradiction between what the Prime Minister had consistently said, which was that people had to be prepared to use both "hard power and soft power". The Prime Minister had consistently said that, and had said so about the Middle East and elsewhere as well, and in fighting terrorism, military strength was not enough, but there were times where it had to be used.

Asked about the phrase "war on terror", the PMOS replied that his attitude was that people used whatever phrases they felt comfortable with, and what was important was what did they actually mean. For example, if people looked at what the US Administration was doing in the Middle East at the moment in trying to get the peace process going again, they were pursuing a political agenda. Similarly, this could be seen in terms of our approach to the Middle East.

Put by the Independent that although the Prime Minister very rarely used the words "war on terror", President Bush had used "war on terror", so what people had deduced was that we were treading carefully, the PMOS said that what he was saying was that people used phrases that they were comfortable with. The Independent used phrases that the PMOS would not use, and vice versa.

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» Monday, April 16, 2007

Hilary Benn

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