Miliband's swipe at 'war on terror'

Painting the threat posed by hugely different groups as a simple battle between "good and evil" may have done more harm than good, he wrote in the Guardian.

Mr Miliband's thinly-veiled swipe at outgoing American president George Bush comes ahead of a speech in one of the hotels at the centre of the deadly Mumbai terror siege.

It will mark the final day of his visit to India where he has been continuing efforts to defuse tensions between the country and its neighbour Pakistan over the November attack which killed 179 people.

In a preview of the message he will deliver at the Taj Mahal hotel, Mr Miliband wrote of the "war" on terror: "Historians will judge whether it has done more harm than good.

"The more we lump terrorist groups together and draw the battle lines as a simple binary struggle between moderates and extremists or good and evil, the more we play into the hands of those seeking to unify groups with little in common.

"We should expose their claim to a compelling and overarching explanation and narrative as the lie that it is. Terrorism is a deadly tactic, not an institution or an ideology."

The phrase, informally dropped from use by the UK Government several years ago, "implied a belief that the correct response to the terrorist threat was primarily a military one - to track down and kill a hardcore of extremists", he said.

Instead "democracies must respond to terrorism by championing the rule of law, not subordinating" - pointing to the example of Guantanamo Bay and welcoming incoming president Barack Obama's pledge to close the highly-controversial detention camp.

India has blamed Pakistan militants backed by some official Pakistani agencies for the November attacks - a claim firmly rejected by Islamabad.