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OIC to counter U.S. with oil?

By P. S. Suryanarayana

KUALA LUMPUR Feb. 26. The Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC) is considering the feasibility of deploying the oil wealth of the Muslim countries as a `weapon' to try and "exert pressure'' on the U.S. and its allies to prevent them from taking any precipitate action against Iraq, said the Malaysian Prime Minister, Mahathir Mohamad, who hosted an informal OIC meeting of urgent consultations on the crises facing the organisation. The meeting was held here today after the conclusion of the thirteenth summit of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), which includes the OIC.

At a press conference, Dr. Mahathir said that there had been "some suggestions'' that "we (the Muslim member-states) look at using our oil wealth in order to exert pressure.'' How this could be done ``is something else'', he noted. There was, on the whole, a "consensus as to the need for us to think about these things''. One school of thought within the OIC was that the use of oil as a war-preventive weapon might be `dangerous' and could produce "lot of repercussions''. It was felt that such "weapons might rebound''. The alternative view was that "we will not be able to exert some influence'' so as to dictate the course of events if the proposal were not at all considered.

Asked whether the OIC favoured the U.N. demand that Iraq should destroy some specified categories of missiles before March 1, Dr. Mahathir, articulating the Organisation's views, said "Our view is that anything that the U.N. asks Iraq to do, Iraq should do''. It was, however, left to Iraq to comply or not. He indicated that he would address a letter to the U.N. Security Council, in his dual capacity as the NAM Chairman and the coordinator of the latest OIC meeting here, on Iraq. Iraq and Palestine dominated today's OIC meeting, while the Pakistani President, Pervez Musharraf, raised the Kashmir issue during a discussion on Palestine.

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