Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said his country was ready to mobilize an international Muslim force to rehabilitate war-torn Iraq.
"We are prepared to rally support among the Organisation of the Islamic Conference [OIC] to rebuild Iraq and strengthen its institutions of governance and its economic system," Abdullah said late Monday after talks with US President George W. Bush in the Oval Office.
Abdullah, chairman of the 57-member OIC, said the world would risk another failure in nation-building if Iraq was left in the cold at this juncture, rendering the region politically unstable and economically stagnant.
"We should no longer stand on the sidelines and merely watch Iraq struggle to find its feet after years of dictatorship and a recent invasion," he said at a dinner in Washington hosted by the US-ASEAN Business Council.
Malaysia, for its part, was ready to send a "sizeable" medical team to Iraq and participate in the reconstruction of Iraq, Abdullah said.
He warned that if the reconstruction of Iraq failed, the entire Muslim world would blame the US-led invasion for setting off a chain of events that led to sustained misery for ordinary Iraqis and a clash between the West and the Muslim world.
Abdullah pointed out that the Muslim world still needed some demonstration of good faith from the US in addressing the root causes of terrorism, in particular the unresolved question of Palestine.
He said he suggested and Bush agreed that a "capacity-building" program be undertaken in poor Muslim countries as part of efforts to demonstrate such good faith.
Bush said: "We talked about Iraq, and I told him I was pleased with the progress being made in Iraq, and the prime minister had some helpful suggestions.
"So, all in all, it's been a very constructive meeting," Bush said.
Abdullah, who also heads the 116-nation Non-Aligned Movement of developing states, called for bridging "the great divide" between the Muslim world and the West, saying efforts should go beyond "elite diplomacy."
He declared that bilateral ties between Malaysia and the US were "very strong" despite Kuala Lumpur's opposition to the war in Iraq.
"You cannot judge our bilateral relations simply on the basis of what you hear, that we may have some differences on Iraq or on Palestine," he said.
"The foundation of the bilateral relations has remained strong all the time," he said.
This is the first visit to the US by Abdullah, who took over last October from retiring premier Mahathir Mohamad, a vociferous critic of Bush's foreign policies.
Through the noise of rushing papers and whirring belts at a print factory in Kyoto, two creators watch their photo essay come to life in broadsheet form — part of an effort to win new audiences in the age of artificial intelligence (AI). Despite the decline of the publishing industry, self-publication and handmade “zine” magazines are growing in popularity in Japan, reflecting the nation’s enduring love of paper in the digital era. While speaking to Agence France-Presse at the plant, his hands black with ink, one of the creators, Kazuma Obara, said: “I think [paper] is a medium that engages all five
‘ABSURD MISTAKE’: The election commission said that there had been a failure to anticipate turnout after 14 polling stations ran short of ballot papers South Korean riot police yesterday cleared protesters from a Seoul polling station after a 35-hour blockade sparked by a shortage of ballot papers during local elections earlier this week. Wednesday’s election was the first nationwide vote since South Korean President Lee Jae-myung took office following the ouster of Yoon Suk-yeol over his short-lived martial law declaration. Lee’s ruling Democratic Party swept most races, but failed to flip the crucial Seoul mayoral seat. The South Korean National Election Commission apologized, blaming a failure to anticipate turnout after 14 polling stations in Seoul ran short of ballot papers. Some polling stations stayed open until 10pm to
Australian researchers have trained lab-grown brain cells on a silicon computer chip to play the 1990s shooter game Doom and said they are just scratching the surface of what the neurons could be capable of doing. It is the science-fiction work of biotech boffins at Cortical Labs, who researched and developed the technology that harnesses the workings of the brain’s networking system. Each so-called “biological computer” contains about 200,000 living human brain cells, grown from stem cells that were harvested from blood donations. Having mastered the simple computer game Pong, where a paddle is moved up and down to send a ball
France experienced its hottest spring on record, the French weather service said on Tuesday, after an exceptional early heat wave that also broke highs for the season in England and Wales. Meteo-France said the average nationwide temperature over March to May was 13.8°C — about 1.7°C above the norm, and surpassing records set in 2011 and 2020. “The warmest spring since records began in 1900,” it said in a bulletin. All three months were warmer than average, but the onset of an “unprecedented heatwave” late last month pushed the mercury to highs typically seen at the height of the summer. “Our country had never
RSS