Tony Blair Gives Statement on Terrorist Acts

Tony Blair said that what has happened today is particularly barbaric, since the great countries of the world were discussing today the problems of poverty in Africa and those related to the environment.

"It's particularly barbaric that this has happened on a day when people are meeting try to try -- to try to help the problems of poverty in Africa and the long-term problems of climate change and the environment.

"Just as it's recently clear this is a terrorist attack or series of terrorist attacks, it's also reasonably clear that it is designed and aimed to coincide with the opening of the G8."

"It's my intention to leave the G8 within the next couple of hours and go down to London and get a report face to face with the police and the emergency services and the ministers dealing with this, and then to return later this evening."

"Each of the countries around that table has some experience of the effects of terrorism, and all the leaders, as they will indicate a little bit later, share our complete resolution to defeat this terrorism," Blair said.

"It's important, however, that those engaged in terrorism realize that our determination to defend our values and our way of life is greater than their determination to cause death and destruction to innocent people in a desire to impose extremism on the world."

"It's important however that those engaged in terrorism realise that our determination to defend our values and our way of life is greater than their determination to cause death and destruction to innocent people in a desire to impose extremism on the world.

Whatever they do, it is our determination that they will never succeed in destroying what we hold dear in this country and in other civilised nations throughout the world."