| Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Friday, November 16, 2001 |
Mahathir Appeals to Bush to Stop Bombing Afghanistan |
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Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad Friday appealed to U.S. President George W. Bush to use ground forces instead of air strikes if the United States wants to fight the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.
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Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad Friday appealed to U.S. President George W. Bush to use ground forces instead of air strikes if the United States wants to fight the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.
"The ground forces can be the Northern Alliance or any other party because ground forces can inflict minimal damage to save innocent lives from being killed," he told reporters after opening a national-level conference on terrorism at the Putra World Trade Center here.
He said he had written to President Bush and expressed that air strikes and distance bombings should be halted and there should be ground forces to fight the Taliban to minimize damage and aim at the correct target.
Mahathir said that if terrorism was to be wiped out, one should find the cause and reason for such acts and one of the things was to resolve the Palestinian issue.
Taking a swipe at Israel's military action against Palestine, Mahathir said Israel should recognize Palestine as a state.
"Each of them (Israel and Palestine) makes use of their terror tactics and the United Nations must come in to separate them. U.N. forces must be allowed to forcibly separate them," he said.
"Israel should not fly its helicopters over Palestine and send rockets to Palestine. Such acts constitute an act of terror. They (Israel) are just aggravating the situation," he said, adding Israel's action on Palestine was not going to help the world counter terrorism.
"The Arabs recognize Israel and Israel should also recognize the Palestinians," he said.
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