Britain would not be able to cope with a terrorist bombing on the scale of this month's atrocity in Madrid, the British Independent newspaper reported on Sunday.  

According to the paper, it would be even less able to deal with the aftermath of the chemical, biological or nuclear attacks predicted by ministers and the security services.

"It is absolutely unbelievable ... We are concerned that our own emergency plans are not going to meet public expectations. It just does not make sense," Patrick Cunningham, chairman of the Emergency Planning, was quoted as saying by the paper.

Local authority planners would be able to offer little more than "a token gesture of support" in the aftermath of a major disaster, he said.

Iain Hoult, Emergency Planning's chairman in southern England, added his voice to the debate, claiming Britain was "very, very badly prepared" for an attack on the scale of the March 11 Madrid bombings that killed more than 200 people and wounded hundreds others.

The report came less than a week after British Metropolitan police commissioner John Stevens said a terror attack on London was "inevitable."

The top police officer made the remarks after a statement claiming to come from the al-Qaeda was e-mailed to Arab news organizations last week and warning of imminent terrorist attacks in Britain and other countries.

In another development, Stevens on Sunday called for wider cooperation among European countries to share intelligence in the fight against terrorism.

"There needs to be a structure which is useful, which analyzes on a pan-European way some of the information we get, and the forensics," Stevens said in an interview with BBC's program of Breakfast with Frost.

While there are organizations like Europol which plan to tackle criminal activities, Europe lacks a unified anti-terror body, he added.

(Xinhua News Agency March 22, 2004)