"U.K. Faces Terror Risk Over U.S. Alliance"

Britain's close alliance with the United States has put it at particular risk of terrorist attack, two leading think tanks said Monday, but a government minister said the nation would not have been safer by staying out of wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

But,

"Defense Secretary John Reid, however, argued that terrorism had to be confronted.

The idea that somehow by running away from the school bully, then the bully will not come after you is a thesis that is known to be completely untrue by every kid in the playground and it is also refuted by every piece of historical evidence that we have," Reid said in a British Broadcasting Corp. radio interview.

"The time for excuses for terrorism is over," British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said at an EU meeting in Brussels, Belgium. "The terrorists have struck across the world, in countries allied with the United States, backing the war in Iraq and in countries which had nothing whatever to do with the war in Iraq."

On Sunday, Britain's largest Sunni Muslim group issued a binding religious edict, or fatwa, condemning the suicide bombings as the work of a "perverted ideology."

The Sunni Council said the Quran, the Muslim holy book, forbade suicide attacks.