NEW YORK, Sept 30: Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said Sudan must immediately resolve the problem in Darfur to avoid economic sanctions by major powers.

He said he had contacted Sudan President Omer Hassan Ahmaed El-Bashir as the chairman of the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) and the Non Aligned Movement (NAM) and explained to him that if sanctions were imposed, the people of his country would suffer.

Mr Badawi told Malaysian journalists that sanctions would give room to certain groups to topple El-Bashir's leadership. He said the OIC and the NAM would like the United Nations to play a bigger role in Iraq and set up a peacekeeping force to bring stability to the state.

He said UN Secretary General Kofi Annan had told him during their meeting on Monday that the United Nations was incapable of maintaining security in Iraq. He said he had told Mr Annan about the importance of expediting the peace plan for Palestine as the issue had angered Muslims world wide.

He said Muslims and developing countries wanted to see an independent and sovereign Palestinian state in 2005 with recognized border and not in conflict with Israel. The prime minister said the restructuring of the UN would be difficult to carry out and it would take a long time before it could be accepted, especially by the major powers.

He said efforts must be made to first implement the proposals that were easy to implement. A motion to increase the number of permanent members in the Security Council was not likely to be accepted by the existing permanent members, he said. -APP