By NNN-Bernama
New York : Foreign occupation of Iraq is causing much of the problems confronting the country now and Iraqis should be given the full opportunity to determine their own future, Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said here.
For this purpose, Iraq needed a government of national unity which could be accomplished through national reconciliation, he said in his address at the General Debate of the 62nd United Nations General Assembly.
Foreign troops have occupied Iraq since March 2003 following the overthrow of President Saddam Hussein. It is estimated that there are now close to 170,000 foreign troops in Iraq, with the majority coming from the United States.
Abdullah said he was putting great emphasis on national unity because it has been the Malaysian experience that national unity was best achieved through the practice of power-sharing in a government in which ethnic groups of different religious faiths were represented.
As such, he said, the international community had a clear responsibility to assist the people of Iraq achieve peace and stability, so that the unity of Iraq as a nation was preserved and the territorial integrity of Iraq as a state was not compromised.
In making a frank and forthright speech at the general assembly, the prime minister also articulated on the situation in Palestine, a problem which he said has been festering for 60 years for a solution to be found.
Saying that the Palestine question topped the list of grievances which the Islamic world held against the West, he also underscored his strong belief that the unsettled Palestinian problem was the single most important issue lying in the way of peace and fraternity between Islamic and Western countries.
“I am equally certain that once the problem of Palestine is settled, there will be greater harmony between Western and Islamic countries, the inheritors of the world’s two great religions and civilisations.”
Saying that he was aware of fresh initiatives to bring Israel and Palestine, together with other states, for high-level peace talks soon and that though he had always taken the position that any final settlement of the Palestine issue must take place within the UN framework, support must be given to the peace talks for them to create momentum for a true meeting of minds.
“In particular, we should urge the Israeli and Palestinian leaderships to act courageously to meet the needs and expectations of their peoples who have suffered long enough.
“Of course, real peace can only be achieved if the legitimate rights of peoples are recognised and protected during the negotiations. Palestine had been partitioned before. This should never happen again.”
He said both sides to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict must commit to reaching solutions through compromise and that this opportunity must be seized upon.
Abdullah, who devoted a large part of his speech to the increasing discord between cultures and civilisations, especially between Islam and the West, added that it was threatening to tear apart the fabric of peaceful relations between peoples and nations.
He said the course of human history had been marked by a few pivotal moments, during which “we can make the correct or wrong decisions that will impact on the destinies of those who come after us”.
“We are now living in such a time,” he said.
Abdullah said he believed that the main cause for the cultural and civilisational discord was the misperception in the West that Islam promoted exclusivity and encouraged extremism.
In this regard, he said, Malaysia fully supported various efforts to hold dialogues at the international level to establish the truth that Islam espoused universalism and not exclusivity, tolerance and not bigotry.
He said it was wrong to put the blame on religion as the cause of the existing disputes between nations because all genuine religions advocated peace and harmony among peoples as well as acceptance of others.
“This is certainly the case with Islam which teaches its believers to practise tolerance, forgiveness, peace, fraternity and co-existence. The Quran, which is the written foundation of the religion of Islam, is very explicit in recognising the existence of religions other than Islam.”
The prime minister asserted that religion was not the root cause of the world’s troubles had been confirmed by the Report of the High-level Group of the Alliance of Civilisations in November last year.
He said the report maintained that although religion was often cynically exploited to stir passions, fuel suspicions and support alarmist claims that the world was facing a new “war of religions”, the root of the matter was political, not religious.
Abdullah said one should give support to various initiatives at the national and regional levels to carry forward the message and recommendations of the 2006 Report.
He said there was always a tendency to blame history, but there was no evidence in history, which pointed to religion as the cause for the current discord between cultures and civilisations.
“It is not the explanation for the existence of conflicts between Western and Muslim countries. The answer lies in more recent times, which is the repeated use of force by the powerful over the weak to secure strategic or territorial gains. The vestiges of these wars for control and domination persist today as gnawing problems in Afghanistan, Lebanon, the Golan Heights and Iraq.”
Abdullah also said that Muslims also had a responsibility to present to the world the true face of Islam and it must be made clear to all that it was a religion which abhorred conflicts, more so between Muslims.
“When disputes do arise, Islam enjoins forgiveness and reconciliation through `musyawarah’, which can be translated as engaging in dialogue and peaceful negotiations. Furthermore, the teachings of Islam put a very high premium on peace and development. Islam is definitely not an encumbrance to progress and prosperity.”
Citing the case of Malaysia, he said that though Muslims constituted the large majority of the population, the government had used the progressive teachings of “Islam Hadhari” (Civilisational Islam) as the basis for good governance to deliver benefits to all sectors of the multi-ethnic and multi-religious society without discrimination.