[Nampaknya DSWA agak berhati-hati dalam isu ini yang telah memberikan Mahathir sedikit kelebihan. Tetapi jika perang meleret sehingga Ramadhan serta ramainya kanak-kanak menjadi korban Mahathir akan kegusaran kerana ekonomi pasti akan bergoyang... Senjata kali ini mungkin akan memakan tuan kerana tanpa bukti yang menyerang yang akan tumbang dengan penuh keaiban. - Editor]

http://asia.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/asiapcf/southeast/ 10/31/malaysia.attacks/index.html

Malaysian opposition leader shuns jihad calls

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) -- The wife of Malaysia's ousted deputy prime minister, Anwar Ibrahim, has pledged that the opposition party she leads will not support members who want to travel to Afghanistan to fight what they consider a holy war against the United States.

"The party will not go into (these) areas," Azizah Ismail, president of the National Justice Party, said in an interview late Wednesday with The Associated Press. "In any war, I've always maintained that the price is too high."

Azizah's comments contrasted with the view of the fundamentalist Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party, the country's largest opposition party, and her partner in a fragile coalition challenging Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad's government.

The Islamic party recently declared its support for members who want to fight jihad, or holy war, to defend Afghans, though leaders later said that jihad could include charity or praying.

The Islamic party has condemned the U.S.-led strikes on Afghanistan and held several peaceful demonstrations outside the U.S. Embassy in Kuala Lumpur.

The biggest rally drew 3,000 people in this mostly Muslim country in Southeast Asia nearly three weeks ago but the protests have since died down.

Azizah's party, which is composed mostly of Malay Muslims, Malaysia's largest ethnic group, did not join the demonstrations. She said Wednesday that although her party does not condone the attacks on Afghanistan, it would endorse "mercy missions" to help Afghan civilians.

"We will take part in the humanitarian side (for) the civilians that we worry about," Azizah said, adding that her party hoped the U.S. government would try "other means" besides bombing Afghanistan to bring the suspects behind the September 11 attacks to justice.

Personal leeway

Azizah said her party members were entitled to their "personal stand" if any of them wanted to fight for Afghanistan's ruling Taliban. She also said differences in opinion would not jeopardize her party's partnership with the fundamentalist Islamic party.

"They may have certain views that differ from us slightly, but we understand each other and we respect each other," she said.

Neither party has called for a holy war.

Another opposition party, the ethnic Chinese-dominated Democratic Action Party, quit the coalition in recent weeks in protest against the Islamic party's desire to set up a religious state if it comes to power.

Azizah founded the Justice Party after Mahathir, currently Asia's longest-ruling leader, fired her husband from the Cabinet in 1998 amid a dispute over how to cope with the Asian economic crisis.

Anwar is now serving prison terms totaling 15 years on corruption and sodomy convictions. Anwar says he was framed to prevent him from challenging Mahathir for power. The government denies it.

Mahathir has condemned the attacks in New York and Washington but has also urged an end to air strikes on Afghanistan.

Riot police officers stand guard at a shopping district during a demonstration in Kamunting, 250 kilometers (155 miles) north of Kuala Lumpur

http://asia.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/asiapcf/southeast/ 10/31/malaysia.mahathir/index.html

Mahathir boosted by terrorism stance

By Michael Richardson

Malaysia's wily and long-serving Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad is using the issue of terrorism to improve his political credentials at home and abroad.

But like Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri, who also condemned the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States, Dr Mahathir is worried that the U.S.-led bombing of Afghanistan -- especially if continued into the coming Muslim holy month of Ramadan -- will cause a large number of civilian casualities and create a backlash in the Islamic world, even among moderate Muslims.

The Malaysian government is now calling for an immediate halt to the bombing to prevent what the Malaysian Foreign Minister Syed Hamid Albar warns would be a dangerous situation that could destabilize Islamic states supporting the campaign to eradicate terrorism and thus split the fragile international coalition led by the U.S. and Britain.

Malaysia wants the United Nations to become involved in Afghanistan to broker an end to the foreign intervention and fighting, and help lay the basis for a peaceful political settlement, while moves to bring Osama bin Laden and other members of his terrorist network to justice, probably before a UN-sanctioned international court, continue.

Only a few months ago, Dr. Mahathir was regarded even by some senior members of his own party as a liability because of his unpopularity among majority ethnic Malay Muslims who were angry at the jailing on sex and corruption charges of former Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim in 1998.

The rapid slowdown in the previously fast-growing Malaysian economy and rising unemployment added to Dr Mahathir's troubles.

But since the September 11 attacks on the US, he has turned the issue of terrorism to his own advantage and against the main Malay Muslim opposition group, the Islamic Party of Malaysia, which is known by its Malay acronym as PAS.

Winning U.S. support

Before the attacks, Dr Mahathir had alleged that PAS sympathized with the Taliban in Afghanistan and had connections with a small but violent Islamic group, the Malaysian Mujahideen.

Many Malays were skeptical but when PAS called for a jihad, or holy war, against the U.S. in Afghanistan and held demonstrations in front of the U.S. embassy in Kuala Lumpur -- at which its supporters shouted "Long Live the Taliban" and "Death to America" -- Dr. Mahathir was seen in a different light.

PAS has lost ground, while support for Dr Mahathir's multi-ethnic coalition government has increased among both Malays and non-Muslim Chinese and Indians, political analysts now say.

Because he quickly condemned the terrorist attacks on the United States and is seen as a the leader of a moderate, open and economically progressive Muslim nation, Dr Mahathir is being actively courted by the United States as it tries to sustain the international coalition against terrorism.

The US is Malaysia's biggest investor and trading partner. The Bush administration had previously told the Malaysian government that improved bilateral relations depended on better treatment of Mr. Anwar and detained members of the Malaysian opposition.

But after the attacks, U.S. President George W. Bush phoned Dr. Mahathir to ask his advice on fighting terrorism and later had a well-publicized meeting with him on the sidelines of the APEC summit in Shanghai.