The New Nation - Internet Edition

AFP, Madrid

Nobel prize winning author Doris Lessing said in an interview published Sunday that the September 11 attacks had not been "so bad" when compared to Irish Republican Army action. "September 11 was terrible, but if one re-examines the history of the IRA, what happened in the United States wasn't so bad," Lessing, who captured this year's Nobel literature prize told Spain's leading El Pais daily. The IRA waged a lengthy armed struggle against British rule in Northern Ireland. It declared an end to its armed campaign in 2005. "Some Americans believe I'm crazy. Many people died, two prominent buildings fell, but it was neither as terrible nor so extraordinary as they think," Lessing said of the 2001 attacks in New York and Washington in which about 3,000 people were killed. In similarly pointed remarks in the Spanish translation, she described former prime minister Tony Blair as a "little showman" who proved disastrous for Britain and US President George W. Bush as a "world calamity."