Transcript of William Hague Interview

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James Landale interviewed Foreign Secretary William Hague.

JAMES LANDALE:

Now let's return to events in Norway. This morning we're learning more about the potential motives of the killer and the full scale of the tragedy, but what are the international implications? The Foreign Secretary William Hague joins me now from his constituency. Good morning Mr Hague.

WILLIAM HAGUE:

Good morning.

JAMES LANDALE:

You've been talking to your counterpart in Norway. What have you been saying and what has Britain been offering?

WILLIAM HAGUE:

Well yes, I was in touch with the Norwegian Foreign Minister immediately after these events on Friday. Also the Prime Minister telephoned the Norwegian Prime Minister. The Home Secretary has been in touch with her counterpart. Our ambassador in Oslo of course has been in close touch with the Norwegian authorities and we have a British police officer based there in our embassy to coordinate any assistance. And of course in all of those conversations, we have expressed the deep condolences of the people of Britain to the people and the government of Norway and we've offered any practical assistance that can be useful to them - practical assistance in terms of police cooperation and in terms also of our experience in this country of coming to terms with tragedies of this kind. And we will keep in close touch with them of course over the coming hours and days as more information develops on this.

JAMES LANDALE:

How do you do that? How do you share that experience of incidents like Dunblane, the shootings in Cumbria and Hungerford with the Norwegian authorities?

WILLIAM HAGUE:

Well, as I say, we will be working on that over the coming days and weeks if the Norwegians want to take us up on that kind of assistance, but we have local authorities, police forces, individuals with immense experience - sadly immense experience of what we have been through in this country. And Norway doesn't have that experience, of course. This is one of the reasons why it is such a profound shock there. This is the worst event in Norway since the end of the Second World War. And so we can personally have that experience passed on. If necessary we will have people visit Norway and give the benefit of our advice and experience.

JAMES LANDALE:

As Foreign Secretary you are formally responsible for MI6. What is taking place at the moment to try and make our own assessments of further threats there may be out there as a result of what's happened in Norway?

WILLIAM HAGUE:

Well I can't ever go into details on intelligence matters, as you know, but I will say that the work that I see at first hand every day and that the Home Secretary sees of the work of our intelligence services shows that a tremendous job is done day by day for our country and in cooperation with our allies in keeping this country and our allies as safe as possible from terrorism - we have many, many successes in trying to keep this country safe from terrorism - and of course our allies include Norway. This of course on the face of it, at the moment, is not an event that has arisen from an international network or international conspiracy, but of course it is early days in looking into it. But across the countries of Europe and globally, we have extremely strong counter-terrorism cooperation, we're reinforcing that all the time; and our own counter-terrorism strategy (CONTEST) was published a couple of weeks ago saying that we must be ready to face all forms of terrorism. Of course the main terrorist threat, as Jacqui Smith was saying earlier, remains Al Qaeda or people inspired by Al Qaeda, but that is not the only kind of extremist or terrorist threat. These events are a sad reminder of that.

JAMES LANDALE:

But how do you respond to the charge that Western countries have focused too much on Islamist terrorism and not enough on the threat of right wing terrorism and terrorism from other areas in recent years?

WILLIAM HAGUE:

Well really there are two answers to that. First of all, we must not think because of this event that Al Qaeda inspired terrorism is not a threat. It remains in all assessments the single biggest terrorist threat to the United Kingdom and to our European allies. That remains the case. But the other answer to that is that in our counter-terrorism strategy, it's very clear that that's not the only form of threat that we may face. The National Security Council will meet tomorrow in London and we will look at the lessons to be learned from this. We will check that enough attention is being given to all forms of terrorism. And of course we've put in place over the last few years - in the last government and the current government - strong defences. We have tight firearms controls in Britain and we have very tight controls on the sale of material needed to manufacture a bomb, and we have the most highly professionally trained firearms officers in the world and we have the police and intelligence agencies I think working well together in making sure - as best as we can - that the country is safe from terrorist or extremist attack.

JAMES LANDALE:

Isn't there a bottom line though that however good your strategy is, however good your law enforcement is, you can't stop a lone individual carrying out something like this unless he's got some trace, unless there's a network which he's part of that you can break into?

WILLIAM HAGUE:

Of course it's much harder in the case of a lone individual or a couple of people. That is much harder than combating a terrorist network, and that's why you have to have those other things - the firearms legislation, the controls on material needed to manufacture a bomb. You have to have as many defences in place as you possibly can. But even then of course - and it's important to stress this - you cannot guarantee being able to prevent every attack or every kind of attack. That is why we have levels of terror… of warnings about terrorist attack that we publish openly. That level in this country is currently rated as substantial and that there is a possibility of an attack and an attack without warning. And so it always requires vigilance from members of the public and it always requires us to think of a new situation or a new kind of threat, and it's exactly to make sure that we are preparing ourselves for that, that we will be discussing it in the National Security Council tomorrow.

JAMES LANDALE:

William Hague, Foreign Secretary, thank you very much indeed for joining us.

INTERVIEW ENDS

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