Britain intends to boost the size of its domestic intelligence service MI5 by hiring 1,000 new staff to counter the threat of terrorism, British news media reported Saturday.
Home Secretary David Blunkett, the cabinet minister responsible for MI5, is to announce the ambitious recruiting drive in the coming week, according to the news reports.
The extra staff, to be hired over several years, will mean a 50 percent increase in the size of MI5, taking it back to the manning levels it had during World War II, the domestic Press Association news agency said.
"It is understood that the recruitment drive will include linguists, surveillance desk officers and staff involved in providing security advice to British business and industry," it said.
Britain sees itself as a front-line state in the US-led campaign against global terrorism, launched by US President George W. Bush after the September 11 attacks in New York and Washington in 2001.
MI5 is one of the pillars of British intelligence, the others being the foreign spy agency MI6 and the electronic eavesdropping agency GCHQ.
Criminal investigations of suspected terrorist activity within Britain are led by the anti-terrorist branch of London's Metropolitan Police.
"It is clear that terrorists are willing and able to attack British interests both at home and overseas," the Press Association quoted one unidentified source as saying on Saturday.
"As Eliza Manningham-Buller (MI5 director general) and Sir John Stevens (Metropolitan Police commissioner) have said, the threat from international terrorism remains high and is likely to do so for the foreseeable future."
Blunkett is expected to make a formal announcement about MI5 hiring on Wednesday when parliament debates the renewal of the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act (ATCSA) 2001.
Both jobs come with starting salaries of around 20,100 pounds (29,850 euros, 37,425 dollars), according to the website (www.mi5.gov.uk).
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