Agence France Presse -- Arab News

JAKARTA, 24 February 2004 — An international conference of Islamic scholars opened yesterday in Indonesia with bitter attacks from President Megawati Sukarnoputri and a Muslim leader on the US-led invasion of Iraq.

Megawati, in a speech opening the conference, described the war in Iraq as “exceptional injustice” against a Muslim country. “It may be due to coincidence or intention, but an exceptional injustice is apparent in the attitude and actions of big countries toward countries whose majority populations are Muslims,” said the president of the world’s largest Muslim-populated nation.

“The act of violence undertaken unilaterally against the Republic of Iraq by certain countries, which are now finding it difficult to prove the existence of weapons of mass destruction there, which is the sole justification to launch the biggest military attack at the beginning of the 21st century, is an evident picture of this injustice,” she said.

The three-day conference, attended by some 300 delegates from 49 countries, is aimed at promoting dialogue between the Islamic world and the West in view of tensions over the US-led global war on terror — seen by many in Muslim countries as targeting Islam.

Megawati was among the first world leaders to express condolences to the United States for the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. But she and her government have sharply criticized its military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The meeting is organized by Indonesia’s largest Islamic organization, the Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), in cooperation with the government. NU chairman Hasyim Muzadi criticized the US-led campaigns in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

“An attack against a country under any pretext will only bring untold misery to innocent civilians,” Muzadi told delegates. “The attackers also stand to lose, at least as far as global opinion is concerned, not to mention if it is launched without the authorization of the United Nations.”

“Whether they realize it or not, those discriminative acts constitute test cases as to whether those big countries are serious in practicing the human rights that they have preached to the whole world since the 20th century,” she said. Megawati urged Islamic scholars to disprove a thesis that the world would in future be characterized by religious conflict. The president urged Muslims to present a peaceful face of Islam and reaffirmed Indonesia’s determination to take tough action against terrorists.