WASHINGTON, Aug 15: United States President George W. Bush urged his nation on Tuesday to prepare for a long fight against terrorism which might continue “for years to come”.

“America is safer than it has been but it is not yet safe,” President Bush told reporters at the National Counter-terrorism Centre (NCTC) in Virginia.

“The enemy has got an advantage when it comes to attacking our homeland. They’ve got to be right one time and we’ve got to be right a hundred per cent of the time to protect the American people,” he said.

He thanked the people involved in counter-terrorism for their help in last week’s arrests of more than two dozen people in England and Pakistan in what officials say was a plot to blow up planes between Britain and the US.

“Because of the good work in Great Britain and because of the help of the people here at the NCTC, we disrupted a terror plot, a plot where people were willing to kill innocent people,” he said.