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Analysts say attacks may stoke Brits' support for Iraq war, Blair

WASHINGTON — Last year, train bombings in Madrid prompted the Spanish government to pull troops from Iraq.

Don't expect a similar reaction in Great Britain.

In this case, analysts said, the blasts may have the opposite effect, dampening British public opposition to Iraq and drawing them even closer to their longtime allies in the United States and the European continent.

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It may also strengthen President Bush's hand with Iraq and the overall war on terrorism.

"There's no chance you'll see a reaction in Britain similar to what happened in Spain," said Charles Kupchan, international relations specialist at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. "This strengthens Blair, and, by analogy, Bush."

Bush, speaking from the G-8 summit in Scotland, said: "We will not yield to these people."

British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who lost domestic political support over the Iraq invasion, said just after the attacks: "Whatever they do, it is our determination that they will never succeed in destroying what we hold dear in this country and in other civilized nations throughout the world."

Several analysts saw the attack as another attempt to isolate the United States from western allies, much as the 2004 attack in Madrid.

A group claiming responsibility for Thursday's carnage cited British support for military action in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Yet, analysts pointed out that the Madrid bombings preceded Spanish elections, and that voters turned out the government there because of its response to that attack, as opposed to Iraq.

Blair, meanwhile, won re-election in May, and British voters will likely rally around him now, even those who object to his support of the Iraq war.

"It will reinforce the tendency of the western world to cooperate more on anti-terrorism activities," said Walter Russell Mead, author of "Power, Terror, Peace, and War: America's Grand Strategy in a World At Risk."

As for the American president, Mead said: "Anything that makes people afraid probably enhances Bush's position; it reminds people that the war on terror is not just something that happens in Iraq."

There are indications that anti-war activists, at least in Europe, will redouble their objections to Iraq in response to the attacks.

George Galloway, an outspoken Blair critic whose victory in the May parliamentary elections made him a leader of Britain's anti-war left, argued Thursday that he and supporters had warned "that the attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq would increase the threat of terrorist attack in Britain."

"Tragically," he added, "Londoners have now paid the price of the government ignoring such warnings."

Kupchan, however, predicted those would be minority views, as the London bombings "make clear that all western capitals are vulnerable to terror attacks."

In the United States, meanwhile, opponents of the Iraq war stressed solidarity against terrorism.

"The actions of cowards against innocent people will not prevail," said House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.


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