Speech of  Dr.Mohathir bin Mohamad, former prime minister of Malaysia

Your Excellency President Nazarbayev,
Dear participants of the Congress,
Ladies and gentlemen,
Firstly, I want to thank the Government of Kazakhstan for the invitation to speak on a rather difficult subject. As it is very difficult to see a positive role of religions' leaders in strengthening international security, I am not sure I can offer much. The reason is that religion for the majority, who govern the world, is something out-of-date.

International security or lack of security always occurs due to some reason. The perception of the suffered, regarding injustice, because of what they have suffered, can be such reason or it can occur, because other means for maintaining justice were not available for them. We can think that they are not right, but what they do think is the reason of their deeds.

Therefore, we should understand what their perception is or what they think. But the security problem should be solved by removal the reason or reasons of injustice because of which people suffer.

Probably, it is easy to hang labels on those, who threatens the international security and call them as terrorists, to undertake actions to stop them by force, however, it won't be a reliable long decision and removal of one leader or one group or everyone, who threatens our security, will simply result in appearing of one more leader or one more group.

Therefore, it will proceed until the problem is solved. The impossibility to get what they want will result in even greater threat to security of those whom they blame in the trouble.

Modern research is being carried out in the sphere of security. The electronic means are being developed, security forces are being created, and we train to constrain attacks. But besides the fact, that they are not effective, they will be very expensive. They will create big inconvenience for all of us. Recently actions on stopping flights between London and USA have been taken.

The information had been received that ten planes would be blown up above the Atlantic Ocean, and the applying explosives would be delivered to the plane as liquid; which would blow up at mixing. However, now there is a message in "The New York Times" that information had no grounds. But flights were cancelled, as a result, a million dollars was lost. Still, we ban passengers to transport liquid. But we cannot be sure that a new type won't be developed. Probably religious leaders can be convinced in recommending terrorists not to blow up planes with innocent passengers. But I don't think that religious leaders will succeed. They will not succeed, as anger, pain and disappointment will still be present.

Also there are no other ways to struggle with their strong enemies. Probably, it would be more effective to make religious leaders, convincing leaders of the countries against whom attacks are directed, to try to understand the problem and to appeal to the reasons. We know that the key reasons of the international security is embitterment and anger experienced by Palestinian Arabs whose land was deprived, and they were expelled from the country. They try to take away the land through a war, but they can't do it. It made them angry. They have created groups of resistance using tanks, catapults and stones. They were responded by bullets, some were killed, many were wounded.

All of us could watch it on TV. Nothing has happened after that. The world has done nothing. All religions are against murder, religious leaders of the European countries can put pressure upon leaders to stop murder but they failed to do it. Leaders of the countries did not consult religious leaders to stop unequal struggle between the armed tanks, people with automatic devices who fight against children with stones in their hands. Anger and disappointment of these people have reached that level, when rationality is already impossible, but people resort to blowing up themselves, to kill innocent people. We cannot condemn them for murder innocent people, you see their people are also killed without choosing. Nobody worries about them.

Planes destroyed the Centre of World Trade on the 11^th of September of 2001. We disagree with people who made it. It was the response to horrors, from which their compatriots had been suffering for the last years. People, who were killed as the result of this attack, were innocent. The world should see that this strategy is not efficient. Everything, that has happened, has resulted only in escalation of their attacks.

So, the world feels itself unprotected. We are pursued with fear that we can be blown up when flying at any time. The world is not safe any more for any of us. We can have the most armed forces, we can have the largest arsenals of nuclear weapon, but all this will not guarantee us security. We can go to the safest place on the planet but there is no guarantee that snipers will not kill us.

I believe that these are problems which we face and discuss with leaders of the countries who refuse to understand the reasons, hidden behind the problems of security and fail to understand the real reason. They think that their armed forces can cope with those who threaten their international security. We know about it as these leaders speak about poverty, about insufficient education as the reason that the poor walk on the streets of cities, but they will not fly by planes to blow them up and to run them into houses with people. There are many proofs that people, who have blown up themselves, in a due time have been highly educated. Actually many of these people come from rich countries. These leaders certainly are not right. Wrong consultations are provided for them or they refuse to realize the truth.

They have created a problem right at the beginning having taken away the others' land to create the state. They want to give that belongs to others in order to solve their problems. These are the key reasons. It is impossible to return what has been already made at the beginning. I don't know the degree to which these leaders are religious. I believe these people don't trust religion, therefore it is improbable that they will react to advice of religious leaders. But some leaders, as I understand, have developed new adherence, concerning religion. Probably, religious leaders can influence to constrain them from worsening the situation through applying more aggressive actions. I think that other countries also should be exposed to process of democratization. If these countries are destroyed and people are exposed to bombardments, I don't think, that there would be humility and they will recede. The governments can, but people will never do it. And it will result in a large number of terrorists and there will be more threat to the international security.

Religious leaders should influence those, who preach war, to explain to a governing body that military decisions are not the best choice. Religious bodies and their leaders should play an important role in issues, regarding the activity of their countries. They should call for the peaceful solving of problems instead of preaching war and violence.

Religious leaders need to be convinced in using other ways such as negotiations, arbitration or to address the international courts.

What can they do? They can meet leaders of other religions to explain and discuss difficulties they face. A dialogue between Moslem, Christian and Jewish religious leaders can result in deeper understanding of problems concerning the international security, which are caused by terrorists' actions. Participants should look at this problem and wish to solve the problems concerning the threat to international security.

Thank you.