Malaysia opened an Islamic conference on terrorism yesterday, branding both Palestinian suicide bombers and Israeli soldiers as terrorists and urging the UN Security Council to approve "deterrent sanctions" against Israel.
Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, recalling the Nazi Holocaust against the Jews during World War II, said Israel should pull its troops out of the Palestinian territories and urged the world to intervene by force if it did not.
"The Holocaust did not defeat the Jews. A second holocaust with Arabs for victims will not defeat the Arabs either," Mahathir told foreign ministers from the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC).
"Israelis must come to their senses and opt for de-escalation of terror rather than escalating it. If the Israelis won't, then the world must forcibly stop them."
A resolution calling on the Security Council to "take the necessary measures to provide international protection for the Palestinian people and apply deterrent sanctions against Israel" was approved unanimously.
The resolution, adopted at the first session of a conference, said Israel's actions were "posing a threat to international peace and security, and dragging the region toward an all-out war."
Delegates urged the US and Russia, as co-sponsors of the Middle East peace process, the UN Security Council and the EU to press Israel to withdraw its troops from all occupied Arab and Palestinian territories.
The OIC called the conference to dispel perceptions equating Islam with terrorism in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks by Muslim radical airline hijackers who killed almost 3,000 people in the US.
Ministers or their representatives from most of the OIC's 57 members -- who range from Albania in Europe to Indonesia in Asia, Guyana in South America and Mozambique in Africa -- were in Malaysia for the three-day meeting.
Mahathir proposed a definition for terrorism encompassing all violence targeted at civilians, which he said included the Sept. 11 attacks, Palestinian and Tamil suicide bombers as well as assaults by Israel in the Palestinian territories.
"I would like to suggest here that armed attacks or other forms of attacks against civilians must be regarded as acts of terror and the perpetrators regarded as terrorists," he said.
Mahathir, who faces a challenge from Muslim radicals at home, said the root causes behind acts of terror could not be ignored.
"We cannot just dismiss them as senseless perverts who enjoy terrorizing people," he added, referring to the perpetrators.
Super Typhoon Kong-rey is the largest cyclone to impact Taiwan in 27 years, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said today. Kong-rey’s radius of maximum wind (RMW) — the distance between the center of a cyclone and its band of strongest winds — has expanded to 320km, CWA forecaster Chang Chun-yao (張竣堯) said. The last time a typhoon of comparable strength with an RMW larger than 300km made landfall in Taiwan was Typhoon Herb in 1996, he said. Herb made landfall between Keelung and Suao (蘇澳) in Yilan County with an RMW of 350km, Chang said. The weather station in Alishan (阿里山) recorded 1.09m of
NO WORK, CLASS: President William Lai urged people in the eastern, southern and northern parts of the country to be on alert, with Typhoon Kong-rey approaching Typhoon Kong-rey is expected to make landfall on Taiwan’s east coast today, with work and classes canceled nationwide. Packing gusts of nearly 300kph, the storm yesterday intensified into a typhoon and was expected to gain even more strength before hitting Taitung County, the US Navy’s Joint Typhoon Warning Center said. The storm is forecast to cross Taiwan’s south, enter the Taiwan Strait and head toward China, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The CWA labeled the storm a “strong typhoon,” the most powerful on its scale. Up to 1.2m of rainfall was expected in mountainous areas of eastern Taiwan and destructive winds are likely
The Central Weather Administration (CWA) yesterday at 5:30pm issued a sea warning for Typhoon Kong-rey as the storm drew closer to the east coast. As of 8pm yesterday, the storm was 670km southeast of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻) and traveling northwest at 12kph to 16kph. It was packing maximum sustained winds of 162kph and gusts of up to 198kph, the CWA said. A land warning might be issued this morning for the storm, which is expected to have the strongest impact on Taiwan from tonight to early Friday morning, the agency said. Orchid Island (Lanyu, 蘭嶼) and Green Island (綠島) canceled classes and work
KONG-REY: A woman was killed in a vehicle hit by a tree, while 205 people were injured as the storm moved across the nation and entered the Taiwan Strait Typhoon Kong-rey slammed into Taiwan yesterday as one of the biggest storms to hit the nation in decades, whipping up 10m waves, triggering floods and claiming at least one life. Kong-rey made landfall in Taitung County’s Chenggong Township (成功) at 1:40pm, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The typhoon — the first in Taiwan’s history to make landfall after mid-October — was moving north-northwest at 21kph when it hit land, CWA data showed. The fast-moving storm was packing maximum sustained winds of 184kph, with gusts of up to 227kph, CWA data showed. It was the same strength as Typhoon Gaemi, which was the most
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