US strikes on Afghanistan must be "limited" to those who carried out the terror attacks on the United States, Qatar's emir, the chairman of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, said Wednesday.
The assembled foreign ministers said they definitely opposed any US-led military action against any Arab country.
Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, the OIC chairman, called on the United Nations on Wednesday to convene a conference on terrorism.
"It is important that the United Nations organizes an international conference to draw up an international agreement with an aim of fighting against terrorism, which affects all its member states," Sheikh Hamad was quoted by AFP and reports as saying.
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, whose government has officially backed US strikes against Afghanistan, has repeatedly called for an international conference to address the issue and reach a definition of terrorism.
The Qatari leader, who also announced that his country would donate $10 million to an Islamic fund for the Afghan people, said the anti-terror fight must be "carried out under the aegis of the United Nations," he said, stressing that the agreement must "define terrorism and differentiate between this phenomenon and the fight of peoples against occupation."
As expected, the Palestinian issue is also topping the agenda, with the term “state terrorism” as key word in the ministers’ speeches.
According to AFP, Sheikh Hamad blasted the "state terrorism carried out by the Israeli government against the Palestinian people and its attempts to aggravate the situation in the region by exploiting (anti-US attacks) to create new realities in the Middle East."
"State terrorism gives birth to terrorism by organizations and there is no other choice but to break this vicious circle by giving the Palestinian people their legitimate rights."
He described US President George W. Bush's implicit support for a Palestinian state as a "very important positive step," calling on Washington to "make use of this position quickly within the framework of UN resolutions."
However, the US-led war against Afghanistan “must be limited to the authors of the attacks and no one else, so that the innocent do not have to pay the price," said the sheikh.
OIC members, including Iran, Pakistan and Oman, called for the meeting on the attacks, which Tehran said had been exploited as a pretext to reinforce anti-Muslim sentiment in the West.
In a meeting here Tuesday night, Arab foreign ministers voiced support for the international fight against terrorism, but gave a muted response to the US-led military reprisals.
"We are all against international terrorism and we will not tolerate this phenomenon being linked to Islam," Arab League chief Amr Moussa was quoted as saying.
The Arab ministers failed to come up with one unified stand, but the official Kuwaiti news agency (KUNA) said they had agreed on 15 points.
"The UN should be the pivot of the fight against terrorism," Moussa added at the end of informal consultations among the ministers of the 22-member group.
Asked about the league's response to the military strikes on Afghanistan, Moussa said they "should be limited to what they (the Americans) consider to be military bases" and should "spare civilians" – Albawaba.com
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