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RIYADH, Jan 13: Saudi Arabia warned on Monday that waging war against Iraq would be a loss to all parties and called for allowing Arab countries to resolve the crisis peacefully.
Saudi Arabia “believes that waging war (against Iraq) will be a loss to all parties, the attacker and the target”, said a statement issued following a cabinet meeting and quoted by the official SPA news agency.
“The kingdom believes that opportunity should be given for dialogue even if the UN Security Council sanctions war. It is an Arab demand that enough time should be given for diplomacy to spare the region and the world human tragedies,” the statement added.
The Saudi cabinet, chaired by Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz, expressed Riyadh’s “deep concern towards developments in Iraq, reaffirming the kingdom’s keenness to preserve Iraq’s unity and national integrity”.
It asserted that “Iraq is an integral part of the Arab and Islamic world”.
The crown prince on Sunday told a group of Arab thinkers and intellectuals he was “convinced” there will be no US-led war against Iraq.
Saudi Arabia, which has long borders with Iraq, has been lobbying to find a peaceful solution to the crisis between the United States and Iraq.
Turkish Prime Minister Abdullah Gul held talks on Saturday in Riyadh with Saudi leaders over a proposed initiative to end the standoff over Iraq and prevent war, and said time was pressing to find a peaceful settlement.
Riyadh has reiterated that its decision to join a UN-sanctioned war against Baghdad will be based on its national interests and the evidence of Iraq’s material breach of UN Security Council Resolution 1441.
The United States has deployed tens of thousands of troops in the region for an eventual military strike on the government of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, whom Washington accuses of developing weapons of mass destruction.
Around 5,000 troops are deployed in Saudi Arabia, which served as a launchpad for attacks on Iraq in 1991.
MAHATHIR: An attack on Iraq will hurt the fight against international terrorism, inflame Muslim anger and increase the number of recruits to terrorist ranks, Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said on Monday.
Mahathir, whose country takes over the chairmanship of the 57-member Organization of the Islamic Conference this year, gave the warning as he opened an annual meeting of the Asia Pacific Parliamentary Forum (APPF) here.
“There was a time when Muslim countries were in agreement over the need to stop Iraqi aggressiveness. Today that unity of purpose has disappeared. Muslims see the stance taken against Iraq as another act of discrimination against Muslims,” he said.
Addressing more than 170 delegates from 24 countries, including the United States, Japan, Australia and China, Mahathir said the world was failing in the “war on terrorism” because it was not addressing a major root cause — the plight of the Palestinians.
“I would like to insist that the principle reason is territorial and not religious. The Palestinians have had their land taken away from them and they have been expelled from their land and made refugees.
“Their struggle has been ignored by the world. Even the killings of their people, children and non-combatants included, raised hardly an eyebrow. Unable to wage conventional war they have resorted to acts of terror.”
Although friendly Muslim countries were unable to help the Palestinians, individuals were resorting to acts of terrorism in what they believed was a struggle for justice, Mahathir said.
The attacks on the United States in Sept 2001 were “an attack on the whole world”, he said. “By the same token, the dispossession of Palestinian land is not an exclusive problem of the Palestinians.
“The terrorism that assails the world today has a direct connection with the fate of the Palestinians.”
Southeast Asia’s longest-serving leader, who has run Malaysia for the past 21 years, said the difference in approach by the United States towards Iraq and North Korea would anger Muslims further.
“Iraq, Iran and North Korea have been labelled as the Axis of Evil. But despite the fact that North Korea has admitted that it has nuclear capability, it is not being threatened with war as Iraq is.”
“We do not want to see North Korea being threatened with war and the country being militarily attacked, but the accommodating attitude towards North Korea is going to anger the Muslims more,” he said.—AFP
