WASHINGTON, July 20: Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said on Monday that his country was ready to mobilize an international Muslim force to rehabilitate Iraq.

"We are prepared to rally support among Muslim countries for OIC participation in rebuilding Iraq and strengthening its institutions of governance and its economic system," Mr Abdullah said after talks with US President George Bush in the White House Oval Office.

Abdullah Badawi, chairman of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), said the world would risk another failure in nation building if Iraq was left in the cold at this juncture, rendering the region politically unstable and economically stagnant.

"We should no longer stand on the sidelines and merely watch Iraq struggle to find its feet after years of dictatorship and a recent invasion," he said at a dinner in Washington hosted by the US-Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Business Council.

Malaysia, on its part, was ready to send a "sizable" medical team to Iraq and participate in the reconstruction of Iraq, Mr Abdullah said. He warned that if the reconstruction of Iraq failed, the entire Muslim world would blame the US-led invasion for setting off a chain of events that led to sustained misery for ordinary Iraqis and a clash between the West and the Muslim world.

He said he suggested and Mr Bush agreed that a "capacity-building" program be undertaken in poor Muslim countries as part of efforts to demonstrate such good faith. -AFP