TONY Blair has issued a direct message to Muslims throughout the Arab world that Britain and America's war against terrorism was not directed against them.
He used Osama bin Laden's favourite media outlet - the Al-Jazeera satellite television station - to warn Arabs that if the man the West blames for the September 11 atrocities had his way, he would impose fundamentalist Islamic regimes across the Middle East.
The Prime Minister said that bin Laden's al Qaida network represented as much of a threat to moderate Arab states as it did to the West.
"This is not about the West versus Islam. Decent Muslims, millions of them in European countries, have condemned these acts of terrorism in New York and elsewhere in America with every bit as much force as any of the rest of us.
"Let us be clear, when we listen to the words of Osama bin Laden, if he has his way, the regimes that he would replace regimes in the Arab world with would be like the Taliban regime in Afghanistan."
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