Thanks for your reply, I was beginning to think I was a complete outsider. While believing the terrorists actions wrong, I could not accept the suggested responses.

Increasingly, the world gets smaller & we are forced to live side by side, we must start accepting that each others way of life may be equally valid. Though we may not have the same beliefs, there is (I hope & believe) some common way in which we can live in harmony.

This must require some amount of compromise on both sides & the only way this is going to be achieved is by talking, regardless of what has happened in the past, however painful this may be. Maybe in the UK, this is easier to understand, I don't know (we have Northern Ireland, this is amogst the first times you've had your enemies bring the fight to you), but amongst the people pushing us into this dialogue is your own government.