Hague fleshes out Britain’s role in the decades-long response to terrorism

The Prime Minister’s two statements on the Algerian hostage crisis on Friday and Sunday set some tongues wagging about what sort of a role he saw Britain playing in the ‘global response’ that was ‘about years, even decades’ to the terror threat in North Africa.

William Hague fleshed that out a little bit more in his Today programme interview, arguing that the West couldn’t resolve all the world’s problems:

‘It is a complete illusion to think that we are omnipotent in all of these respects. Of course there are many, many factors at play. I’m describing to you what the United Nations have been doing, what Western countries have been doing. We’ve also been increasing our counter-terrorism co-operation with western African countries – Nigeria and Mauritania and so on.’

He added that ‘a whole variety of political and economic instruments’ were needed ‘as well as, where necessary, the military power’.