Threat: bin Laden

Israel's former prime minister has warned Tony Blair that destroying the al Qaeda terror group will not be enough to end the threat of Islamic fundamentalists.

Benjamin Netanyahu, speaking at a Friends of Israel meeting on Wednesday, said if the allied coalition saw through its mission it would buy 20 or 30 years of peace and warned that Iraq is close to having its own nuclear arsenal.

He described the events of September 11 in stark terms to a cross-party audience and called for "moral clarity" in the fight against terrorism.

"We have received a wake-up call from Hell. The question now is what do we do about it?"

Netanyahu warned against pushing a "collective snooze button".

He claimed there were 12 major international terrorist groups that were inter-linked and were supported by a core of nations including Syria, Iran, Iraq, Sudan, Afghanistan and the Palestinians.

The former premier argued al Qaeda would have needed the support of at least one of these countries for training and finance in order to have carried out its attacks in the US.

"You have to have invaluable home bases to co-ordinate these kinds of assaults," he said.

Netanyahu claimed Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan were financing Islamic terror groups due to blackmail from fundamentalists. He drew the historical parallel with the Shah of Iran saying Jordan had only remained stable because it had bought peace.

He warned the government that the war against bin Laden would have to be just the beginning.

"If you just take out the al Qaeda network you would have done an important thing but not a sufficient thing," he said. "The terrorists will come back and strike again and again and again."

The former anti-terrorist commando said Islamic fundamentalists ultimate goal was the destruction of Western democratic values.

"They want to reverse the 1000 years of history, nothing less. Fantasy it is but it's a deadly fantasy."

The current Palestinian dispute over land and settlers was being used as a smoke screen to hide their real agenda.

"There wasn't a single Israeli settler there in the Six Day War when the Arabs placed a noose of death around us," Netanyahu said.

He claimed Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat had "chucked out" an offer of half of Jerusalem and all the land concessions that he had wanted, that he had made while prime minister.

"There is an existential opposition to the Israel's existence," he said. "Arafat is not bin Laden. Bin Laden wants to destroy America. Arafat wants to destroy Israel. Militant Islam is out to destroy America. America is the big Satan, Israel is the little Satan and Europe is the middle Satan."

Two key events had kindled fundamentalism; Ayatollah Khomeini's revolution in Iran and Mujaheddin victory over USSR in the 1980s. This led to a belief of invincibility, he claimed.

"They can overcome any power because they have a superior will," he said.

He warned Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was on the verge of developing nuclear weapons and would support the efforts of bin Laden.

"Does anyone doubt that if they had nuclear weapons...if they had biological weapons that they would use them?"

He compared the new threat of the 21st century with the communist threat that dominated the previous century, noting the Eastern Block knew its limits.

"They pursued their irrational goals rationally. They always acted with systematic rationality. They always had the ability to calculate cost and benefit."

Muslim extremists such as bin Laden were "pursuing an irrational creed irrationally"."It is instructive to see the communism did not produce a single suicide bomber yet Islam has produced hundreds," he said.

Paraphrasing Shakespeare he described the current crisis as something that had been in incubation for decades.

"Now we can see the demons that lurk in mankind hatching out," Netanyahu said.

He said the coalition governments needed to clear moral aims if they were to achieve their objectives and guard against appeasers.

"It's important that we have to be armed with moral clarity because they fight back. They already are."

He defined terrorism as equivalent to 19th century piracy and said in order to win it was vital to root out domestic cells in West and neutralise the regimes that support them. Governments needed clear justification with which they could defend their actions.

"If this moral clarity is undermined we will lose this battle. It is the foundation of everything," he said. "This is war for God's sake. Do away with legalisms. If you have bin Laden in your sights, shoot."

He added: "The terrorists have the will to destroy us but they don't have the power. We have the power to destroy the terrorists but we must have the will."