Talk to al Qaida, says ex-PM aide

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Jonathan Powell, a long-term Downing Street chief of staff, said if he was still in the job he would be pushing for a channel to be opened with the terror group.

It was comparable with the secret contact established with the IRA in the 1970s, he told the Guardian newspaper.

That helped pave the way decades later for the Good Friday Agreement, which Mr Powell was central to securing.

"It's very difficult for democratic governments to do - talk to a terrorist movement that's killing your people," he said.

"[But] if I was in government now, I would want to have been talking to Hamas, I would be wanting to communicate with the Taliban and I would want to find a channel to al Qaida."

A spokesman for the Foreign Office told the newspaper: "It is inconceivable that Her Majesty's Government would ever seek to reach a mutually acceptable accommodation with a terrorist organisation like al Qaida."