- Muslim leaders closed ranks around Malaysian Prime Minister
Mahathir Mohamad after his attack on Jews caused a firestorm of protest
and overshadowed their troubled bid for unity on Iraq at a summit meeting.
-
- Mahathir's provocative declaration that "Jews rule
this world" and get others to fight and die for them drew violently
contrasting reactions in the western world and at the meeting here of the
57-member Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC).
-
- Western nations condemned the speech as outrageous and
offensive, while Israel's ambassador to Singapore Itzhak Shoham compared
the remarks to those made by Hitler.
-
- But Muslim officials gathered for the OIC meeting said
Mahathir's comments had been taken out of context and were aimed at rallying
the Muslim world.
-
- Yemen's Foreign Minister Abu Bakr al-Qurbi said Friday
that he supported Mahathir "100 percent."
-
- "The prime minister outlined a very important issue
that the Israelis and the Jews control most of the economy and the media
in the world," he said.
-
- "Therefore we face that challenge of how we can
as a Muslim ummah (community) act to counter such Zionist abilities by
building our capabilities, both economically and in the media form."
-
- Mahathir had called on Muslims to emulate the Jewish
response to oppression, saying the Jews had "survived 2,000 years
of pogroms not by hitting back, but by thinking."
-
- "We cannot fight them through brawn alone, we must
use our brains also," he said.
-
- Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher said he did not
think much attention should be paid to the "clamour and accusations"
from western countries.
-
- "Those who are commenting on the speech have not
read it in its entirety," Maher said.
-
- "Nobody felt it was inflammatory. We thought it
was a very, very wise assessment. It was addressed to the Muslims, it was
an appeal for them to wake up."
-
- Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai said Mahathir was
just "talking about issues confronting the Muslim world and what Muslims
should do. Muslims must educate themselves, must begin to be progressive
to develop themselves.
-
- "His historical analysis of what happened in Islam
is very correct."
-
- Apart from Mahathir's remarks, the summit has focused
on the situation in Iraq and the sense that the Islamic world has been
unjustly oppressed and humiliated by the so-called war on terrorism.
-
- The summit is the biggest gathering of Islamic leaders
since the 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, drawing more than
30 heads of state and government from throughout the Muslim world.
-
- Iraq is represented by members of its US-appointed Governing
Council, which won a bid to get the summit to drop a draft resolution calling
for a timetable for the withdrawal of US troops and a central role for
the United Nations in the transition to democracy.
-
- Instead, the summit is expected to issue a statement
at its conclusion later Friday simply calling for independence as soon
as possible.
-
- The adoption by the United Nations Security Council of
a US-drafted resolution on Iraq, authorizing a multinational force for
the war-torn country but setting no deadlines, was welcomed by Iraq's transitional
Governing Council chairman Iyad Allawi.
-
- Allawi was relieved that France, Germany and Russia had
dropped their demand that the UN resolution specify a precise timetable,
which he said was "treating us like school children."
-
- But Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf said that despite
the new resolution, Pakistan is not yet in a position to contribute troops
because not all its preconditions have been met.
-
- These include an expression of "desire for Muslim
troops, or Pakistani troops" from the Iraqis, and the willingness
of other Muslim countries to contribute forces, he said.
-
- Washington has asked three Muslim states -- Pakistan,
Bangladesh and Turkey -- to deploy soldiers to ease the burden on US forces
confronting mounting opposition in Iraq, but only Turkey has agreed.
-
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