LONDON (Reuters):

A leading British cabinet minister said yesterday it would be better if Muslim women did not wear full veils, sparking fresh anger in Britain's Islamic community.

Jack Straw, leader of the lower house of Parliament, triggered fury among Muslims this week when he said the wearing of veils made community relations more difficult because they acted as "a visible statement of separation and difference".

"I'm not talking about being prescriptive," Straw, a former foreign secretary, told BBC radio. "But with all the caveats, yes I would rather (women did not wear full veils)."

He said he had received a positive response when he asked women to take off the garments when they came to see him about issues in Blackburn, the northern English town with a 30 per cent Muslim population that he represents in Parliament.

But he defended Muslims' right to wear hijabs, or headscarves, unlike the French government which banned them from state schools, provoking protests across the Islamic world.

While British newspapers and commentators applauded Straw's stance, which he said was designed to provoke a "mature debate", many Muslims reacted with anger.

A local Muslim group, the Lancashire Council of Mosques, said his comments were "ill-judged and misconceived" and that many women found them "offensive and disturbing".

The question of how the Muslim community could be better integrated into mainstream British society has been a major political issue since last year's suicide bomb attacks on London's transport network by four British Islamists.

DIVIDED COMMUNITIES

In many British towns, communities are divided with little or no contact between ethnic groups. Many commentators fear this is fuelling tension and extremism.

Two weeks ago Home Secretary (interior minister) John Reid, a possible successor to Prime Minister Tony Blair who is to quit within a year, said he would stop Muslim extremists setting up "no-go" ghettos.

On Wednesday, opposition Conservative Party leader David Cameron said many communities were growing up living "parallel lives" and that only better contact would overcome differences.

Britain is home to about 1.8 million Muslims but Rajnaara Akhtar, chairman of the UK Protect-Hijab organisation, said fewer than 5 percent of the Muslim women wore a full veil.

"It shows a fundamental lack of understanding," she told Reuters, saying the government had failed to address the real issues of unemployment and poor education that had led to areas becoming "ghettoised".

A major survey released on Friday by the government's Office of National Statistics said Britain's Muslims were more than twice as likely to be unemployed than followers of other faiths and up to five times as likely to live in overcrowded housing.

Based on data from a 2001 national census, the study paints a bleak picture of life for Muslims in Britain, most of whom are ethnic Indians, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis.

"Of the different religious groups, unemployment rates among Muslims were more than double those in other groups," it said.