PUTRAJAYA, April 22: The world's Muslim nations urged the United States on Thursday to drop its support for a so-called Israeli peace plan and called for a new UN mandate on Iraq, describing the situation in the Middle East as "alarming".
An emergency meeting of the 57-member Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), the world's biggest grouping of Muslim states, said President George Bush's endorsement of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan was "detrimental to the peace process".
The strong statement by the OIC, represented here by 13 nations holding key portfolios within the organization, reflects widespread anger in the Muslim world over Mr Bush's backing of Ariel Sharon's plan to keep some Arab land captured in the 1967 war.
"We emphasize that the plan and the support of the United States thereto are detrimental to the peace process in the Middle East as they are denying the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people," the communique said.
It called the plan "counterproductive to the objectives of the roadmap", the US-backed plan for peace in the Middle East which outlines an independent Palestinian state negotiated by reciprocal Israeli and Palestinian steps.
The OIC urged the UN Security Council to "consider the deployment of a UN peacekeeping force or an international monitoring mechanism" to ensure the implementation of the roadmap, but offered no details of how this would be done.
The OIC chairman, Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, told the opening session of the meeting that Ariel Sharon's plan with US backing "can literally wreck the entire peace process in the Middle East", describing the overall situation there as "extremely alarming".
"The latest developments are threatening the stability and integrity of the region, as well as the peace and security of its neighbouring countries," he told the conference in Malaysia's administrative capital.
Pakistan's Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri warned that the US support for Ariel Sharon would breed more terrorists. Mr Kasuri told AFP in an interview the United States should "stick to its original position in favour of the roadmap".
Israel's plan involves withdrawing from the Gaza Strip but maintaining some Jewish settlements in the West Bank, while the roadmap calls for reciprocal Israeli and Palestinian steps leading to an independent Palestinian state.
On Iraq, the OIC stressed the importance of a "central role" for the United Nations and urged the UN Security Council to adopt a new resolution which would give it a mandate to ensure "the restoration of sovereignty and full independence to the Iraqi people".
It condemned violence by both the occupation forces and Iraqi groups, calling on the US-led coalition to comply with the Geneva conventions on the treatment of civilians while criticizing "heinous acts of terrorism" carried out by anti-coalition groups.
The OIC welcomed the June 30 deadline for US-led forces to transfer political power to an Iraqi interim government and called on coalition troops to ensure that the process would be smooth.
Thirteen members holding key positions on various committees of the OIC were represented at the conference by ministers or senior officials. They were Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization, Malaysia, Pakistan, Turkey, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Qatar, Iran, Iraq, Senegal, Guinea and Sudan. OIC secretary-general Abdel wahed Belkeziz was also present.
The one-day meeting was brought forward from its original May scheduled date because of mounting anger and alienation in the Islamic world over US policies in the Middle East, even among Washington's friends.
Jordan's king abruptly postponed a visit to the White House this week and Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak said Arabs hold a "hatred never equalled" towards America. Neither Egypt nor Jordan were at the OIC meeting.
The meeting also comes as Washington prepares a resolution that would ask the UN Security Council to give its blessing to a new Iraqi interim government, a multinational force and a UN role in the country, after the planned hand over of power to an Iraqi interim government. -AFP/Reuters
