Islamic ministers to meet on terrorism

Islamic ministers to meet on terrorism

Agencies Kuala Lumpur

Ministers of Islamic nations meet here next week to discuss ways of dispelling perceptions in the West that Muslims are chiefly responsible for global terror.

The discussions by foreign ministers of the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) will lead, ultimately, to a broader conference by the United Nations.

A key goal will be to seek a definition of what constitutes terrorism and a terrorist.

Ministers will also try to seek the root causes of militancy.

"There are many extremists from other religions. From either Israeli Jews, Christians, Buddhists or Hindus," Malaysian Foreign Minister Syed Hamid Albar told Malaysian television.

Poverty, oppression, low literacy and socio-economic factors were the root causes of terrorism rather than religion, he said.

But the subject likely to be uppermost in everyone's minds when they meet on Monday is the crisis in the Middle East.

Several OIC delegates will be fresh from this week's Arab Summit in Lebanon, where Saudi Arabia has been pushing its plan for peace between Israel and its Arab neighbors.

The crisis in the Middle East goes to the heart of the uneasy relationship with the world of terror.

Syed Hamid said it was important not to link the Palestinian struggle for independence with terrorism.

"It is the struggle to free the nation from Israeli military occupation," he said. "The Palestinian saga is not considered terrorism."

Muslims make up 20 percent of the world's population.

U.S. support for Israel has alienated many of them, not least in Southeast Asia.

Suggestions that Washington may extend its anti-terror campaign to other Muslim nations such as Iraq and Iran are also likely to feature on the agenda.

The United States has also branded OIC members Iraq and Iran as part of an "axis of evil", along with North Korea.

Meanwhile Malaysia's prime minister on Thursday also set the tone for the meeting saying that Washington should not escalate the war on terrorism to include military strikes on Iraq, predicting it would only foster a terror backlash.

In an exclusive interview with the Associated Press, Mahathir Mohamad said that tackling the root causes of terror -- among them the Israeli-Palestinian conflict -- had been sidelined in the U.S. military campaign.

He said that for peace to prevail, Iraq needed to show the world that it is not planning to attack its neighbors.

"I think we should try and use the UN agencies again," Mahathir said. "Eventually Iraq will have to come around to accepting the need to satisfy the international community that they are not going to go to war against anybody and make use of weapons of mass destruction."

Mahathir noted that Israel is also armed with such fearsome weapons "and it is not fair to single out Iraq alone."

He added that the United States should not "spread the war to other places."

"That would only cause a great deal more anger and that will actually become a new cause for terrorism," Mahathir said.

The Malaysian prime minister then lashed out at Israel saying that it was a mistake that Yasser Arafat was prevented from attending an Arab League summit in Beirut.

"Not to give him the chance to speak his mind is not contributing anything to peace," Mahathir said. "Undermining Arafat is one of the reasons he is not able to control the extremists among the Palestinians."