British Prime Minister Mr Tony Blair today warned of the "mortal danger" of underestimating the threat from terror and said the war against it may be only just starting.
Mr Blair acknowledged that the row over the war - that has sent his once unassailable public trust ratings plummeting - would never go away but he insisted that what he called the most "divisive" decision of his political career had been right.
"We are in mortal danger of mistaking the nature of the new world in which we live," Mr Blair told an audience in his northeastern constituency of Sedgefield.
"The true danger is not to any single politician's reputation, but to our country if we now ignore this threat" from non-conventional weapons, he added.
Mr Blair's decision to back the US-led war on Iraq has been savaged by former government ministers, political opponents and former chief United Nations arms inspector Mr Hans Blix following the failure to find any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
The row over Iraq, he said, is "an elaborate smokescreen to prevent us seeing the real issue: which is not a matter of trust but of judgment".
The prime minister said his judgment - before the war and now - was that the risk of illegal weapons falling into the hands of rogue states could not be ignored, and he signalled he would take similar action in the future, if necessary.