BLACKBURN'S former MP who was Foreign Secretary at the time of the September 11 terror atrocities says the world is 'still feeling the reverberations' of that fateful day.

Speaking to the Lancashire Telegraph, Jack Straw, who was the town's MP from 1979-2015, recalled the moment when he found out about the Al Qaeda attack.

He said: "On 11th September 2001 early in the afternoon (UK time) I was having a meeting in my room in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office with Geoff Hoon, Defence Secretary, and the Chief of the Defence Staff, about troop deployments in the Balkans.

"One of my Private Secretaries, Mark Sedwill (now Lord Sedwill) came into my room, to say something serious was going on in New York, and we needed to watch the TV.

"We speculated when we saw the result of the first plane that this might have simply been some terrible accident.

"When the second plane hit the Twin Towers we knew it was terrorism.

"I made the obvious comment at the time that ‘this changed everything’.

"Quite soon there was the news of the attack on the Pentagon, and the attempted attack on the White House.

"Sometime that afternoon I spoke with US Secretary of State Colin Powell, who said that they were convinced that this was the work of Al Qaeda –‘no other terrorist organisation has this capability, Jack.’ "The Prime Minister Tony Blair was in Brighton at the TUC.

"He made a brilliant impromptu speech about all this; came back to London for a Cabinet meeting.

In the hours after the attack, the Government started to formulate its response to help the UK victims and their families.

Mr Straw said: "In the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, we first had to get organised in New York to deal with the families of the UK nationals who’d been bereaved – which happened rapidly. "I think there were about 67 UK citizens who were killed, but plenty others who knew friends who’d been killed."

Mr Straw went to New York City in November 2001 for the resumed meeting of the UN General Assembly which had been postponed because the atrocity.

He said: "I visited what by then had become ‘Ground Zero’. It was truly shocking.

"I visited City Hall for a meeting with the Mayor, Rudy Giuliani, and saw senior police and fire officers. Everyone had a chilling tale to tell.

"It needed solidarity not only with US diplomats but the US as a whole.

"Tony Blair did a magnificent job in reassuring the American people that they were not alone.

"They felt peculiarly vulnerable – the most powerful nation on earth, attacked in this way.

"Aside from the US Civil War, this was the first loss of life by foreign military action on the US mainland since we Brits had taken Washington DC in 1812.

"We are still feeling the reverberations of 9/11. It has dominated all strategic thinking since then. Neither Afghanistan, nor Iraq would have happened but for 9/11.

"My feelings were that the world had changed, and so had the expectations on me as British Foreign Secretary.

"For my first three months in that job, all had seemed pretty quiet, especially after the turmoil of the Home Office.

"9/11 literally came out of nowhere – certainly taking me by surprise.

"Another such outrage could happen again – but the chances of it are reduced as a result of the west’s involvement in Afghanistan and elsewhere."