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| Livingstone blames UK foreign policy,defends Muslim cleric |
| Thursday, July 21, 2005 |
 London Mayor Ken Livingstone, left, seen with Sheikh Youssef al-Qardawi
Western "double standards" as well as decades of British and American interference in the oil-rich Middle East led to July 7 bombings,London Mayor Ken Livingstone said.Mr Livingstone told BBC radio on Wednesday that the attacks would not have taken place if Western powers left Arab states free to decide their own fate after World War I.While denouncing the London attacks that left at least 56 killed,Mr Livingstone said that Western countries have been interfering in the Middle East over fears of losing their fuel supplies.
"I think you've just had 80 years of western intervention into predominantly Arab lands because of the western need for oil. We've propped up unsavory governments, we've overthrown ones we didn't consider sympathetic.
"And I think the particular problem we have at the moment is that in the 1980s... the Americans recruited and trained Osama Bin Laden, taught him how to kill, to make bombs, and set him off to kill the Russians and drive them out of Afghanistan.
"They didn't give any thought to the fact that once he'd done that he might turn on his creators," he said.The London Mayor also criticized the "double standards" by Western powers. "A lot of young people see the double standards, they see what happens in Guantanamo Bay, and they just think that there isn't a just foreign policy,"he said. read more
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