QUANTICO (Virginia), July 11: US President George W. Bush said on Monday that deadly bombings in London showed the need to stay on the offensive in the global war on terrorism and finish the job in Iraq. “The terrorists know they can’t defeat us on the battlefield. The only way the terrorists can win is if we lose our nerve. This isn’t going to happen on my watch,” Mr Bush said in a speech at the FBI academy here.

The White House said the address, which came amid a sharp drop in support for the war in Iraq, had been planned before as-yet unidentified terrorists carried out a wave of bombings on public transportation in the British capital.

Speaking after British Prime Minister Tony Blair told a hushed House of Commons that “Islamic extremist terrorists” probably carried out the attacks, the president said “We don’t know” who was behind the bombings.

But “the attack in London was an attack on the civilized world. And the civilized world is united in its resolve. We will not yield,” he said, adding: “In this difficult hour, the people of Great Britain can know the American people stand with you.”

“This week, there’s great suffering in the city of London, but Londoners are resilient; they have faced brutal enemies before. The city that survived the Nazi blitz will not yield in the face of thugs and assassins,” he said.

“And just as America and Great Britain stood together to defeat the totalitarian ideologies of the 20th Century, we now stand together against the murderous ideologies of the 21st Century,” he said.

“We will keep the terrorists on the run until they have no place left to hide,” said President Bush, who called Iraq “the central front” in the global war on terrorism.—AFP