TODAY, Blackburn MP and Foreign Secretary Jack Straw writes in-depth for the first time about his visit to New York's devastated Ground Zero site.

Here he gives his account of his visit to the rubble in New York.

"I HAD seen it so many times, on the television and in the newspapers, but there still is nothing which can prepare you for what it feels and smells like, as well as what it looks like.

The only similar sense I've had before, and then from sight alone, is in the bombed-out shell of the old Coventry Cathedral.

I'm talking of Ground Zero, the site of the World Trade Centre. I went there with my wife Alice, while in New York for the annual meeting of the United Nations General Assembly.

It is a modern vision of hell. All that remains of those two great towers is rubble, still smouldering and giving off an acrid smell.

For anyone who ever visited the World Trade Centre, as we did with our children several years ago, the first impression as you approach the site is the gap in the familiar New York skyline.

It brings home the scale of the tragedy - and the monstrosity of this terrorist act - to look at that skyline with the towers missing. As you come close, you see cranes where once the twin towers stood.

A wooden platform has been set up from which visitors - relatives of the victims, and others - can view the site without hindering the work that still goes on. Down among the rubble, the clearance continues, lorries coming and going with piles of wreckage.

Above this hellish scene stands the shattered framework of the fallen buildings, which is now a familiar symbol of September 11.

As you look up at the sky where the World Trade Centre used to be, you cannot help but imagine the suffering of those trapped inside as it fell, nor feel deeply for their families.

My visit was a reminder to me of the rightness of the action we have taken alongside the United States and our coalition partners in response to this unparalleled act of cruelty by the terrorists of the Al Qaida network. The word 'evil' is sometimes over-used, but in this case it is the precise term to describe those who planned and executed this act of destruction.

'Evil' is the right word for people who utterly reject the respect for human life which people of all faiths share.

I have nothing but admiration for the way New Yorkers have responded. There is still a buzz about Manhattan, which is in itself a rejection of the terrorists' challenge. The spirit of New York - a great cosmopolitan city home to people of many nations - is a remarkable thing. It faced another blow while I was there this week, when Flight 587 came down on the suburb of Queens. For a horrible moment, we all wondered if this might be another act of terrorism. Thankfully, it appears not.

That tragic news was quickly followed by the retreat of the Taliban from Kabul. Although nothing can console the relatives of those murdered by Al Qaida, it is enormously encouraging to see those who shelter Osama bin Laden and his associated being driven back.

There may be difficulties ahead as we pursue this campaign, but having visited Ground Zero I am clearer than ever that we must not rest until the challenge posed by Al Qaida is completely defeated."