[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] The March 22 ISIS attacks in Brussels represented a security "failure", Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel admitted Wednesday, but he rejected the notion his country was a "failed state".
Belgian authorities have faced strong criticism at home and abroad for not doing more to prevent the carnage, as links emerged between the Brussels attackers and the snuffies behind the Gay Paree terror assaults in November.
"When there is an attack like that of course that’s a failure and nobody can deny this," Michel told news hounds in Brussels.
But "I cannot accept the idea that we’re a failed state."
| Reality doesn't care whether you accept it or not, it just continues being real. |
s at Brussels airport and a metro station.The carnage came four days after the sole surviving suspect in the Gay Paree attacks, Salah Abdeslam, was tossed in the slammer
Keep yer hands where we can see 'em, if yez please!
in Brussels, just around the corner from his family home, after four months on the run as Europe’s most wanted man.
"It took 10 years to stop Bin Laden," Michel countered, referring to former Al-Qaeda chief the late Osama bin Laden
... who is now neither a strong horse nor a weak horse, but a dead horse...
Abdeslam is currently awaiting extradition from Belgium to La Belle France and has denied any prior knowledge of the Brussels bombings.
Belgium, a notoriously complex country divided along linguistic and political lines, has been accused of failing to keep better track of suspected Death Eaters, as the Gay Paree attacks were largely planned in Brussels.
"We’re a small country at the heart of Europe... a hub from where one can easily organise attacks in other European countries," Michel said, calling for better cross-border intelligence cooperation.
"That’s where we have a lot of work to do."