UN chief Ban Ki-moon deplored the terrorist attack on Glasgow's airport and the foiled car bomb plot in London.

'The secretary-general expresses his strong support for the government and the people of Great Britain at this time of heightened security threats in the country,' said a statement released Sunday by the United Nations in Geneva.

The statement quoted Ban as saying that no cause or belief can justify such acts of terrorism.

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Ban is looking forward to meeting new British Prime Minister Gordon Brown in London next week, the statement said.

Ban and Brown, who replaced Tony Blair last week, will discuss how the international community can best implement the global strategy against terrorism adopted last year by the General Assembly.

The UN strategy focuses on dissuading people from supporting or resorting to terrorism, denying terrorists the means to carry out an attack, deterring states from supporting terrorism, developing the ability of states to defeat terrorism and defending the rights of both terror suspects and victims.

British police detonate car outside Glasgow-area hospital
British police carried out a controlled explosion on a car outside the Glasgow-area hospital where a suspect from a fiery attack on Scotland's busiest airport was being treated for severe burns.

Police carried out raids near Glasgow and in central England, and made a fifth arrest Sunday in connection with the airport attack and a foiled car bomb plot in London.

British police arrested a fifth person Sunday after a fuel-filled Jeep was rammed into Scotland's busiest airport in what police said was a terrorist attack linked to failed car bombings in London.

The arrests included a 26-year-old man and a 27-year-old woman seized on a major highway in northern England on Saturday night and another man, 26, who was detained in Liverpool, in the northwest of England, on Sunday.

Those arrests were in addition to two men, who witnesses described as Asians, who were taken into custody on Saturday immediately after they slammed a Jeep Cherokee into Glasgow airport and set the vehicle ablaze.

One of the men was badly burned in the attack, and is in critical condition. Six other people were taken to hospital following the attack.

Police said the man arrested in Liverpool was seized in connection with both events and said warrants were being used to search two addresses near Liverpool.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown addressed his nation Sunday, saying that Britons must realize that the terrorist threat their country faces is long-term and sustained and that that they must remain constantly vigilant about security.

Brown addressed his country in a televised interview Sunday, one day after a suspected terrorist drove a burning Jeep into a Glasgow International Airport terminal and two days after two car bombings were foiled in central London.

In a nationally televised interview, Brown said that Britain's message to the terrorists must be: We will not yield, we will not be intimidated, and we will not allow anyone to undermine our British way of life.

Brown, who took over from Tony Blair on Wednesday, convened a meeting of Britain's top security committee to discuss how he would deal with the first big test of his leadership.

The Home Office raised the national security alert level to "critical," the highest ranking and one which indicates further attacks are expected imminently.

"I want all British people to be vigilant and want them to support the police and all the authorities.... I know the British people will stand together united, resolute and strong," Brown said.

The green Jeep Cherokee was driven at speed into the glass door to the airport terminal in Scotland's second city, 600 kilometers north of London, and was then engulfed in flames.

The attack, which the head of Scotland's administration described as a "terrorist incident," came barely 36 hours after police thwarted a possible Al-Qaida plot in London in which two cars loaded with fuel, gas canisters and nails were left in the centre of the capital poised to detonate.

"I can confirm that we believe the incident at Glasgow airport is linked to the events in London yesterday," the top police officer in the Glasgow area, Willie Rae, told reporters.

"There are clearly similarities and we can confirm that this is being treated as a terrorist incident," he said.

Rae said the badly burnt man was found to have a "suspect device" hidden on his body. The hospital had to be evacuated briefly while the device was inspected.

Reacting to media reports that the device was a suicide belt, Strathclyde Police said on Sunday it was not believed to be an "improvised explosive device."

Also Sunday, London's Metropolitan Police said they had arrested two people "in connection with the events in London and Scotland on the 29th and 30th of June."

A caller to BBC television said he had been in a car in the county of Cheshire, on a motorway which links London with Glasgow, when traffic was brought to a halt by unmarked police cars in all three lanes.

The caller, named as Peter Whitehead, said he saw a woman in what he called Muslim dress and two men in suits step out of a car which had pulled to the side of the motorway.

The Metropolitan Police said no further details of the arrests were available.

In July 2005 four British Islamists blew themselves up on London's transport system and killed 52 commuters.

In Glasgow, witnesses described those arrested as Asian men.

"It [the car] raced across the central reservation and went straight into the building," said taxi driver Ian Crosby outside the terminal. The airport was shut down following the incident.

In London, police scoured hours of CCTV footage and extra squads were deployed on the streets after the discovery in the early hours of Friday of a vehicle packed with up to 60 litres of fuel, several gas canisters and a large quantity of nails.

A mobile phone, which security experts believed might have been a detonation device, was left inside the fume-filled car. A second Mercedes packed with gas and nails was later found to have been parked just a few hundred yards from the first.

Amid nationwide security fears authorities closed the airport in Liverpool, north-west England, on Saturday because of a suspect vehicle.

In Kennebunkport, Maine, the United States announced it was boosting security at airports nationwide, although the overall U.S. terrorism threat level would remain the same.