ISLAMABAD, March 31: Pakistan is expected to propose a joint course of action to minimise the negative impact of the US-led war on terrorism on Muslims and their legitimate freedom struggles at the OIC ministerial conference on terrorism beginning in Malaysia on Monday.

Pakistan’s proposal, according to Foreign Office sources, would be that the Muslim countries take a joint stand on the issue of terrorism. It would also call upon the OIC to play its role in ensuring that the world also focused on the root-causes of various forms of extremism as means towards a long-term solution.

The OIC meeting holds special significance as it is convening at a time when the issue of terrorism occupies centre stage in world affairs.

The initiative of convening the conference on terrorism was taken by Malaysia’s Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammed early this year in view of the fact that the Muslim world was being increasingly targeted in the international campaign against terrorism. The Muslim world is also concerned about the role of international media in projecting a distorted image of Islam through selective labelling and ill-defined phrases such as ‘Islamic fundamentalists’ and ‘Islamic terrorists’.

Disturbed by this situation, the OIC meeting would address these concerns and evolve a joint strategy to effectively respond to the multiple challenges posed by the international war against terrorism.

Interior Minister Moinuddin Haider will represent Pakistan at the OIC ministerial conference. He would reiterate Pakistan’s position that the freedom struggles in Kashmir and Palestine should not become target of the international campaign against terrorism. That the campaign must not be used as a pretext for legitimising state terror against just Muslim movements or for attacking any Islamic country, sources in the Foreign Office said. The OIC conference on terrorism coincides with the discussions in the Sixth Committee of the United Nations on the draft convention on international terrorism. India and OIC have submitted their respective drafts for the proposed convention and Pakistan has suggested certain amendments to the draft convention.

The conference is likely to discuss other concerns of OIC member states particularly those stemming from the fact that the agenda of international terrorism is being led and defined mainly by the US. Washington’s concern at terrorism has largely been restricted to what it considers terrorism by individuals and groups. Critics of the US approach say by keeping the question of state terrorism out of the terrorism discourse, the legitimacy of armed struggle against foreign occupation is being indirectly discounted if not actively censured. Such censure is opposed to the United Nations charter and the body of International law which clearly recognise peoples’ right to self-determination, self-defence, and resistance against foreign occupation.