http://theage.com.au/articles/2002/04/03/1017206223466.html

Malaysia's call to condemn attacks on civilians as terrorism finds no support

By Tim Colebatch April 4 2002

His worst enemies could never accuse Mahathir Mohamad of being afraid to speak his mind. But this week a bold initiative by the Malaysian Prime Minister to find a middle ground on which Islamic countries could make up with the West ended in failure.

At a special meeting of Islamic foreign ministers convened in Kuala Lumpur at his request, Dr Mahathir did an impressive job of defining and occupying a middle ground in the global debate on terrorism: urging Muslim countries and the West to ditch double standards and condemn all attacks directed at civilians as terrorism, while tackling the injustices from which terrorism springs.

Bravely, in this gathering, he specifically condemned the attacks of Palestinian suicide bombers on Israeli civilians, as well as those of the Israeli army on Palestinian civilians.

Many influential Muslim states had refrained from sending their top-ranking representatives to the conference as tension increased in their own neighbourhoods.

If the world could agree to outlaw the use of nerve gas in war, he argued, surely it could agree to outlaw attacks targeting civilians.

But when the talking ended yesterday, Dr Mahathir was left by himself in that middle ground.

The other 56 member countries of the Islamic Conference stuck instead to the old script: condemning terrorism in general, but insisting that the Palestinian suicide bombers and anyone else they approved of were not terrorists.

The Kuala Lumpur declaration, which Dr Mahathir hoped could form a bridge to rebuild relations between the Islamic world and the West after September 11, ended up offering little new.

Its one initiative was to propose an international conference under the United Nations at which the world might attempt to define terrorism and a response to it.

"We unequivocally condemn acts of international terrorism in all its forms and manifestations, including state terrorism, irrespective of its motives, perpetrators and victims," the declaration said.

But then it added: "We reject any attempt to link terrorism to the struggle of the Palestinian people in the exercise of their inalienable right to establish their independent state with Al-Quds Al-Sharif (Jerusalem) as its capital.

"We reject any attempt to associate Islamic states or Palestinian and Lebanese resistance with terrorism."

Malaysia's Foreign Minister, Syed Hamid Albar, denied to journalists afterwards that there had been any divisions at the conference on the issue.

"We have achieved consensus in all forms," he said. But speech after speech from other ministers made it clear that no other country would follow Malaysia in condemning the suicide bombers.

It was just bad luck for Dr Mahathir that his conference coincided with the Israeli army invading Palestinian towns, villages and even its government headquarters, leaving his initiative doomed.

What was striking, however, was the perspective he brought to the issue, coming as the leader of perhaps the most developed and Westernised country in the Islamic world.

While it suits Dr Mahathir's domestic political agenda to take a tough line on terrorism, there was also genuine concern that Muslim countries and their people would suffer unless they closed the breach with the United States.

He warned his Islamic colleagues that the September 11 attacks had been "an unmitigated disaster for Muslims all over the world. Our image, which was not good, has been made worse".

Without a fresh initiative to heal the wounds, "Muslim-bashing will be heightened, and our struggle to alleviate the sufferings of millions of oppressed Muslims will fail".

The oppression he referred to, of course, was poverty. Two-thirds of Islamic nations have an income per head that is less than a 10th of Australian levels, many of them much less.

Apart from Malaysia, the only Muslim countries in the richest 40 per cent of nations got there solely through oil. There was a subtle message to other Islamic leaders about what their priorities should be. But it fell on stony ground.