UK FIGHTS TERRORISM

Home Secretary David Blunkett brushed aside criticism from "airy-fairy" civil rights groups as he prepared to seek approval for unprecedented new powers to allow the internment without trial of suspected terrorists.
The Home Secretary placed on November 12, an order before the Commons to demand the derogation of Article Five of the Human Rights Act, which guarantees the right to liberty and prohibits detention without trial.
The new measures, which have incensed human rights organisations, come amid warnings from the US vice president, Dick Cheney, that Britain´s involvement in the campaign against the Taleban has left the country open to retaliatory strikes from Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda network.
However, David Blunkett , he admitted that it remained the British policy not to allow extradition to countries where the death penalty was law.
He confirmed he would not give up the 27-year-old extradition agreement with America that means no suspect can be sent there from Britain without a guarantee they will not face capital punishment.
Iain Duncan Smith, the Tory leader, suggested that in the long term the Government should seek further derogations from the convention, so that it could deport people to states in America that retained the death penalty.