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."