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Malaysia Says ASEAN Would not Participate in a War
KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 4 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Malaysian premier Mahathir Mohamad said Wednesday that the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) should not be participating in a war, and instead should act as a moderating force in urging for an end to such conflict.
"We should really not participate in war. If we do, we will only help to escalate the problems because an all-out war is the wrong solution, because many innocent people are going to be killed," he said during an interview with four ASEAN journalists.
He was asked on the scenario for Malaysia and the ASEAN if the United States did launch a strike against Afghanistan in retaliation to terror attacks which destroyed the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York and damaged the nerve center of American military, the Pentagon, in Washington on September 11th.
Mahathir said outsiders might not like the Taliban government in Afghanistan, but that this might not be the case for the Afghan people themselves.
"But they have no means of overthrowing the government. In a war, those who dislike the Talibans are also going to be killed. So it is not fair to have an all-out war against them," he said.
Mahathir said strictly speaking, international actions should be initiated by the United Nations (U.N.) and not by any one country.
"But there is a tendency for people to bypass the U.N. and this happens especially with the big powers, strong powers. And because of that, decisions are made which are not really reflecting the interest of the world as a whole," he said.
Mahathir said the upcoming meeting of ASEAN heads of government in Brunei Darussalam would likely discuss events in the U.S. and its repercussions to this region.
He said: "I think whether we like it or not, we will have to discuss what happened in the U.S. simply because ASEAN is actually a trade bloc and our prosperity depends on trade. When a market is hurt or not doing well, we will suffer."
"So we will need to discuss this in order to find ways and means of overcoming that and putting in place new plans, alternatives that will help the economy to recover."
He said the ASEAN must be against terrorism and in order to deal with it, military action was not enough as the fight would be against an "invisible" enemy.
"It is not like fighting a country. [When] you fight a country you know where the borders are. [When] you fight terrorists; you are fighting an invisible enemy. You don't even know whether the man who is speaking to you is a terrorist or not...You can kill a thousand terrorists, but how do you know there are no other terrorists," he said.
Mahathir insisted that the main way of fighting terrorists was to remove the causes of terrorism, just like Malaysia did in its fight against its own terrorists (Communists) from 1948 to 1990.
"We must look into the causes, why is it some people are willing to kill themselves in order to achieve something that they believe in. If we find the reason why and we tackle it, then more people will avoid having to be terrorists. If we don't remove the causes, we are going to see terrorism forever," he said.
He dismissed the perception of the world that only Muslims are terrorists. "There has been terrorism in Japan. There are Hindu terrorists, Jewish terrorists, too. In this case, it happens to be Muslim terrorists," he said.
Mahathir said perhaps those who were jittery were not able to separate terrorists from ordinary Muslims, resulting in instances where Muslim travelers had to undergo questioning by the authorities.
"They assume that anybody who has a Muslim name could be potential terrorists. So in the end, it turns out to be an attack against Muslims, or suspicion against Muslims. And yet there are terrorists who are non-Muslims, who are maybe even Christians," he said.
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