World must work together to fight terror: Straw

Straw, who flew into Istanbul several hours after the bombings on Thursday to visit the attack sites, reiterated that they appeared to be the work of the al-Qaeda network of Osama bin Laden.

"The fact that this is the second set of atrocities in the space of a week, following terrorist atrocities that have taken place across the world... that we in the civilised world are facing global threat and we have to deal with it in a global way," Straw said at a joint press conference with Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul.

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The attacks at the British consulate and the headquarters of Britain's biggest bank HSBC killed 27 people, including the British consul general, and came just days after suicide bombers drove explosives laden trucks into two synagogues in Istanbul, killing 25.

During a tour of the devastated bank site with Gul, Straw described the bombings as an "attack on civilisation, it is indiscriminate."

"We advise against all but essential travel to Istanbul and other cities in the light of information we have received," Straw said, following a British Foreign Office warning of more attacks in Turkey.

"It appears to have been perpetrated by al-Qaeda and its associates," he said. "More details about who precisely did this are coming from the investigations."

Straw also pledged Britain would work with Turkey, its ally in NATO, to fight the scourge of terrorism and said: "We want to seek Turkey coming into the European Union as a full member as soon as possible."

EU leaders will assess Turkey's progress on introducing democratic and human rights reforms in December 2004 before deciding when it may open accession negotiations with the predominantly Muslim country.