Rashmee Roshan Lall / TNN

London, Jul 27: Everyone applying to enter the UK for longer than six months will need to procure biometric visas from March, Britain's prime minister Gordon Brown has announced as part of his urgent new counter-terrorism strategy, unveiling a scheme that no longer makes a distinction between countries like Pakistan presumed to be "high-risk" and the rest of the world.

Less than a month after Britain suffered three separate, botched car-bomb attacks allegedly led by Bangalore engineer Kafeel Ahmed, his doctor brother Sabeel and other West Asian medics, Brown said recent experience indicated the UK urgently needed to double the 28-day period currently allowed to police to detain suspected terrorists without charge.

The changes to Britain's visa policy mean that Indians and other nationals of countries not currently classified as "high-risk" would need biometric or electronically-verifiable visas to enter.

In a nod to the ongoing prosecution of Sabeel and his alleged West Asian conspirators in the London and Glasgow attacks, even as Kafeel remains critically ill with 92 per cent burns, Brown pointed out that "during the recent period six people had to be held for 27 or 28 days."

Sabeel was charged a full 14 days after he was detained for questioning, thereby becoming the first Indian to be accused of overseas terrorist activities.

Another of the Ahmed brothers' alleged conspirators, Dr Mohammed Asha, was charged nearly three weeks after he was originally picked up by police.

Sketching out the global spread of the terrorist threats to Britain, reaching as far away as into India, Brown told parliament on Wednesday that the London and Glasgow attacks "were the 15th attempted terrorist plot on British soil since 2001"; that "the police and security services are currently having to contend with around 30 known plots, and monitor over 200 groupings or networks and around 2,000 individuals" and longer detention without charge of suspects was essential because "there may be huge quantities of material evidence to be analysed and there is a need for assistance from other countries."

The London and Glasgow attacks prompted British police and security services to launch an investigation spanning three continents and multiple countries, including India and Australia, where the Ahmed brothers' cousin Mohammed Haneef was detained and charged with "reckless" assistance to a terrorist conspiracy.

The British government's proposed change to detention without charge is highly controversial and considered a politically-sensitive counter-terrorism measure, with opposition parties and activist groups arguing it will curtail key civil liberties embedded in the British way of life.

But commentators agree that the recent London and Glasgow attacks may persuade the government's critics to agree to longer police incarceration of suspected terrorists without charge.

Brown, who revealed that British police and security forces had managed to convict 30 people so far this year for terrorist activity, said Britain and much of the world had to "confront a generation-long challenge to defeat Al Qaeda inspired terrorist violence" with long-term measures.

These included the so-called hearts-and-minds policy of winning over disaffected youth and marginalized hotheads in Britain, Brown indicated, promising a further injection of a whopping 70-million pounds over three years "to support local authorities and community groups in improving the capacity of local communities to resist violent extremism."

Pointing out that Britain had "perhaps as many as 1000 madrassas in Britain, educating between 50,000 and 100,000 young people in after school classes," he proposed citizenship education as a core curriculum subject for Muslim youths.

In a further ambitious, international, far-reaching and financially big-ticket hearts-and-minds measure, Brown said his government would provide funding for a new BBC Arabic television channel and an "editorially-independent Farsi TV channel for the people of Iran".

Britain is also to institute a new "unified border force" of immigration and customs officers to boost the fight against terrorism, the prime minister said.