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Mahathir calls Sharon's Israel `state terrorists'

Calling the government of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon "state terrorists," yesterday, the prime minister of Malaysia, Mahathir Mohamad, said the fight against terror must target all terrorists if Muslims are to participate.

"If the whole world, including the Muslim world, is to be asked to participate in the elimination of terrorists and terrorism, then all terrorists, irrespective of their race or religion or the particular acts of terrorism that they were involved in, must be the target for elimination," Prime Minister Mahathir said in a speech in Kuala Lumpur.

"And these must include state terrorists as well, including the Israeli government of Ariel Sharon, the man responsible for the massacre of thousands of Palestinians in Shabra and Chatilla and still the man behind the systematic killings of the Palestinians today."

Sharon was Israel's defense minister when hundreds of Palestinians were massacred in 1982 in the Shabra and Chatilla refugee camps near Beirut during Israel's occupation of the city. A judicial inquiry later found Sharon negligent in failing to prevent the massacres.

Mahathir -- Asia's longest serving leader, having ruled his moderate Muslim Southeast Asian country of 23 million people for more than 20 years -- has condemned the Sept. 11 attacks in the US.

But the 76-year-old leader opposes the US-led military campaign in Afghanistan, which aims to destroy suspected terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden and unseat the Taliban regime which is accused of protecting him.

At a press conference after delivering the speech, Mahathir said he had written to US President George W. Bush urging him to use ground troops rather than bombing raids in Afghanistan, the national Bernama news agency reported.

``The ground forces can be the Northern Alliance or any other party because ground forces can inflict minimal damage to save innocent lives,'' Bernama quoted Mahathir as saying.

In his speech, Mahathir said the destruction of Afghanistan and the deaths of innocent people caused by the military campaign had angered many of the world's 1 billion Muslims.

"Of the many millions of angry Muslims, there would be quite a few who would join the ranks of the terrorists ... to avenge what is to them a gross injustice and cruelty," Mahathir said.

"So the bombings and rocketing of Afghanistan, far from progressing the war to eliminate terrorists, would actually result in the spawning of more terrorists."
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