KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia’s straight-talking Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammad opened a Muslim foreign ministers conference on Monday with the simple analysis that anyone who kills civilians should be called a terrorist.

As a moderate Muslim leader whose tough line on militancy has found favour at home and abroad, Mahathir reasoned Israel was a terrorist state and the United States was supporting it.

He also said Palestinian suicide bombers were terrorists, while pleading their cause to be understood.

The veteran Southeast Asian leader came to the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) meeting buoyed by a by-election victory seen as an endorsement of his uncompromising policies toward radical Muslims.

Malaysian police have locked up nearly 50 suspects in the past 10 months, and any scepticism before Sept 11 about the militancy scare was muffled by the attacks on the United States.

An invitation to the White House, according to diplomats, is in the works, though he is uncompromisingly critical of Washington’s support for Israel.

Mahathir is a long time supporter of the Palestinian cause, and respected through much of the Muslim world, although conservative Malay Muslims wish he would quit.

But most Malaysians believe the 76-year-old leader, who has led them for 21 years, provides the surest guarantee of stability in a region far too familiar with racial and religious violence.

Mahathir began his rule as a champion of Malays, but over the years he became more of a Malaysian nationalist, cleverly balancing the interests of the country’s Malay, Chinese and Indian ethnic groups.

The Chinese, who make up a quarter of Malaysia’s 23 million people, are also the wealthiest and have most to lose if the precious stability of predominantly Muslim Malaysia is undone.

“Today Malaysians of Chinese origin are peace loving and loyal to the country,” Mahathir told the visiting ministers from the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC).

He was summing up the happy epilogue of a 42-year fight against communist rebels, whose ranks were filled with alienated young Chinese. He could have added “and now they’re voting for me”.

On Sunday, one Chinese partner in his multicultural coalition scored an easy by-election victory in a constituency dominated by Chinese. Another Chinese partner did likewise in January. And another ally swept the Sarawak state election in September.

Mahathir’s camp has cowed the opposition led by the hardline Parti Islam se-Malaysia (PAS) since September, albeit helped by banning their public meetings and arresting a few party members on suspicion of militancy.

Mahathir in some ways embodies the strong moderate Muslim leader the West seeks for support, but he takes care not to get too close.

At the opening of the OIC meeting Mahathir delivered a damning indictment of Israeli “state terrorism”, criticised Washington for not restraining the Jewish state, while also branding Palestinian suicide bombers as terrorist.

He then offered an analysis of the roots of terrorism, and said the world could learn some lessons from Malaysia’s experience of nation-building dealing with the communist threat.

Chinese communist sympathisers were actively wooed, given land and protection, and citizenship previously withheld by Malaysia’s British colonial masters.

“We fought against them, we hunted them, we punished them. But we also looked into the causes of their insurrection.”

Militancy is now budding among the Malays, the country’s poorer ethnic group, confusing a people already dazed by the impact of rapid industrialisation on their agrarian communities.

“We must win the hearts and minds of the people most likely to support terrorism,” Mahathir advised the visiting ministers.

A general election due by 2004 will tell him how he’s doing.

In 1999, Mahathir’s United Malays National Organisation won less than half the Malay vote, in a reaction to the sacking and humiliation of his deputy, Anwar Ibrahim — now appealing against a 15-year jail term for sodomy and corruption convictions.—Reuters