Updated on Saturday, November 22, 2008, 00:00 IST

New Delhi, Nov 22: Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair on Saturday said that Iraq war was not responsible for growth in terrorism and the thought came from within Islam and its culture and has to be dealt within that religion

Blair said terrorism was one global movement based on a "perversion" in Islam.

"We have to stop believing that we have created it or sustained it. September 11 happened before the Iraq war or Afghanistan happened," he said in an interactive session at the Hindustan Times Leadership Summit.

"This is a worldwide movement, its roots are deep and it has been growing for a lot of time," he said responding to a comment that terrorism had grown worldwide after the invasion of Iraq.

"We have to take out all this notion that it is caused by us. It is not. It comes from within that religion, culture and in the end it can be uprooted only from within that religion and culture," Blair, who backed US President George W Bush in the invasion of Iraq in the aftermath of the attack on the World Trade Center in New York, said.

He underscored the need to partner moderate voice within Islam to deal with the issue of terrorism.

"As such, it must, naturally, be subject to military means where it poses a military threat," he said, adding that its ultimate defeat can only come not through force of arms but force of ideas.

"Against its narrative of victimhood, exclusion and division, must be set one (narrative) of peaceful co-existence, universal values and common destiny," Blair said.

Bureau Report