David Cameron: North African terror fight will take decades That attitude is now being reconsidered in Whitehall in the wake of the Algerian hostage crisis and the military conflict in Mali. In both cases, the British government has struggled for reliable information about events, hampering its response. The Prime Minister will this week convene his National Security Council for a "strategic" overview of Britain's engagement with the region. Speaking at Chequers, Mr Cameron acknowledged that the terrorist threat in North Africa has grown, and predicted a prolonged struggle to meet it. "It will require a response that is about years, even decades, rather than months, and it requires a response that is patient, that is painstaking, that is tough but also intelligent, but above all has an absolutely iron resolve; and that is what we will deliver over these coming years," he said. It will also require countries to work together, and I will use our chairmanship of the G8 this year to make sure this issue is right at the top of the agenda where it belongs. Speaking on Sky News, Mr Hague accepted that the extremist problems the region had been "gathering for some years" and said that part of the answer is to support the economic and political development. He said: "There is no military only solution to all of this and that is why now we have to work with all the countries in that region to try to improve their political stability and their economic prospects as well as working with them closely on counter intelligence to deal with the sorts of people who have launched this attack." British officials believe that one of the root causes of instability in the region is the fragility of Mali, where the northern Toureg people are not reconciled to the southern-based government. France has sent troops to help the Malian government drive extremists from the north of the country, part of a vast area that Mr Cameron has described as "ungoverned space." Britain has provided transport planes, and will send troops to an EU training mission in the country. Mr Hague said the UK will consider any French request for more help, such as aircraft, but will not deploy ground forces because the British Army is already stretched. Some analysts have suggested that the fall of Muammar Gaddafi in Libya has contributed to instability in the region, by dispersing large numbers of fighters and weapons previously controlled by his regime. Mr Hague admitted that there have been "spin-offs" from the British backed intervention in Libya, but insisted that the consequences of inaction would have been worse. "Fighting was going on in Libya and if we hadn't intervened more people would have been killed, that fighting would probably have gone on longer," he said. If there are unhelpful spin offs from that I think those could even have been worse had we not intervened.