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hinder all our efforts to further
interethnic
and religious harmony, and have no place in a
decent
world. Such false and anti-Semitic
remarks are as offensive to Muslims
as they are
to others."
Italian Foreign Minister Franco
Frattini told
reporters Thursday night Mahathir's remarks
were
"gravely offensive."
But when the paper was handed to EU
leaders
Friday morning, Chirac said there was no place
in an EU
declaration for a text of this kind,
diplomats said. Other leaders
agreed, although
the Netherlands wanted the wording to stay in
the
declaration.
The leaders then compromised by having
Italian
Premier Silvio Berlusconi, the summit host,
criticize
Mahathir at his closing news
conference.
The French Embassy in
Israel issued a statement
saying that Chirac condemned the
Malaysian's
prime minister's statements about Jews, but
that the
French President felt that the EU
summit statement was not the
appropriate place
to express this.
Officials said the draft
text also would be
issued as a separate statement and would
be
posted on the EU presidency
website,
http://ueitalia2003.it
Berlusconi told
reporters Mahathir's comments
about Jews undermine efforts to bring
different
religions closer.
"All of our efforts must go toward
a dialogue
between the Western world and the Islamic
world, between
Christian religion and Islamic
religion," he added.
Malaysian PM refuses to back down on remarks
Malaysia's
PM on Friday accused Western
countries of using a double standard
for
criticizing Jews and Muslims, and refused to
apologize for a
speech in which he said Jews
ruled the world.
"Lots of people
make nasty statements about us,
about Muslims," Prime Minister Mahathir
Mohamad
said Friday. "People call Muslims terrorists,
they even say
... Muhammed the prophet was a
terrorist."
"People make such
statements, and they seem to
get away with it. But if you say anything
at
all against the Jews, you are accused of being
anti-Semitic,"
Mahathir told a news conference
after the close of a summit of the
Organization
of the Islamic Conference, the world's largest
Muslim
grouping.
In his speech, Mahathir used allegations of
Jewish
dominance to underline his chief point:
that Muslims needed to embrace
modern knowledge
and technology, and overcome divisions
over
religious dogma that have left them weakened on
the world
stage.
Mahathir said Muslims had achieved "nothing" in
more
than 50 years of fighting Israel. He also
said the world's 1.3 billion
Muslims "cannot be
defeated by a few million Jews."
Mahathir,
77, a senior statesmen in the
developing world who will retire Oct. 31
after
22 years in office, has long been a leader who
takes pride in
calling things the way he sees
them. He is a staunch advocate of
the
Palestinians and strongly opposed the war in
Iraq, but he also
has jailed terror suspects
from the al-Qaida-linked Jemaah
Islamiyah
group.
The United States, Canada, the European
Union,
Israel, Germany, Britain and Australia all
condemned
Mahathir's remarks about Jews.
State Department spokesman Adam
Ereli called the
speech offensive and inflammatory. Israel's
Foreign
Ministry said it was "a desecration of
the memory of 6 million victims
of
anti-Semitism."
Britain summoned Malaysia's top diplomat
in
London to express concern, the Foreign Office
said.
But
Mahathir was unapologetic Friday - stressing
that remarks by his
foreign minister expressing
sorrow over misunderstandings were not
an
apology for the speech - and he told the news
conference he
opposed terrorism, suicide
bombings and Israel's policy of
massive
retaliation in response to Palestinian
violence.
"What I said in my speech is that we should stop
all this
violence," Mahathir said, noting that
historically, Jews had sought
refuge in Muslim
lands to escape persecution in Europe.
But
since Israel was established a half-century
ago, "there seems to be no
more peace in the
Middle East," Mahathir said.
Mahathir said
most European leaders - in which
he generally includes Australia and
the United
States - were biased and "feel that while it is
proper to
criticize Muslims and Arabs, it is
not proper to criticize Europeans
and Jews.
Apparently, they think they are
privileged
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