NEW YORK, Sept 22: UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan warned a summit of world leaders on Monday that the war on terrorism could not be won by military force alone.

“To fight terrorism, we must not only fight terrorists. We have to win hearts and minds,” Annan said in an opening address to 18 heads of state and government meeting in New York to discuss the root causes of terrorism.

“Terrorism will only be defeated if we act to solve the political disputes or long-standing conflicts that generate support for it,” Mr Annan said.

“If we do not, we should find ourselves acting as recruiting sergeants for the very terrorists we seek to suppress,” he added.

The one-day conference, “Fighting Terrorism for Humanity,” was the joint brainchild of Norwegian Prime Minister Kjell Bondevik and Nobel peace laureate Elie Wiesel.

Among the 18 heads of state or government attending the meeting were French President Jacques Chirac, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf and Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov was also present. The United States, which has spearheaded the global war on terrorism since the Sept 11, 2001 attacks, was not represented.

In his speech, Mr Annan stressed that it was just as mistaken to believe terrorism was unrelated to political and social factors, as it was to assume that terrorists were mere products of their environment.

“We also delude ourselves if we think military force alone can defeat terrorism. It may sometimes be necessary ... but we need to do much more than that,” he said.

After the opening speeches, the summit heard testimony from survivors of the Sept 11 attacks and other terrorist strikes.

Later in the day, the world leaders were due to hold a round table discussion on the report of an international panel of terrorism experts which convened in Oslo in June.—AFP