PUTRAJAYA, Malaysia, 23 April 2004 — The United States should reconsider its decision to support the latest Israeli strategy on the Palestinian territories as it is likely to breed more terrorists, Pakistan’s foreign minister said yesterday.

Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri told AFP in an interview that extremist groups would exploit President George W. Bush’s endorsement of a plan by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to keep some Arab land captured in the 1967 war.

“This recent unilateral action by Prime Minister Sharon is actually an encouragement to the terrorists. Any additional sense of hurt by the Palestinians will play directly into the hands of the extremists,” Kasuri said.

Pakistan is a key US ally in the fight against terrorism, helping the hunt for members of Osama Bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda movement along its border with Afghanistan. Kasuri called on the US to “stick to its original position in favor of the road map” for peace in the Middle East, which calls for reciprocal Israeli and Palestinian steps leading to an independent Palestinian state.

Kasuri spoke to AFP on the sidelines of an emergency meeting of the 57-member Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) called at the request of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat after Bush’s apparent reversal of decades-old US policy.

“We urge the international community to make efforts to see that no major world power backs these unilateral actions,” Kasuri said.

US officials have stressed that Bush was not abandoning the road map, with Secretary of State Colin Powell saying Washington still supported an independent Palestinian state.

He insisted that Bush’s support of Sharon’s plan to unilaterally withdraw from the Gaza Strip but maintain some Jewish settlements in the West Bank had not prejudged or prejudiced negotiations on the creation of such a state.

Turning to Iraq, the other major issue under discussion at the OIC meeting, Kasuri said Pakistan was considering a US request to send troops to the war-torn country to protect United Nations staff.

The government’s decision would be based upon the wishes of the UN and the Iraqi people, he said, emphasizing that any Pakistani troops would not play the role of UN peacekeepers.

“As far as Pakistan is concerned it has received a request from the United States to send troops for the protection of the UN personnel, not for maintaining law and order.

“We are considering that and our government’s decision will be based upon what it perceives as what the people of Iraq want,” he said. John Negroponte, the American ambassador to the United Nations and recently appointed envoy to Iraq, said last week the United States planned to put an international force in place in Iraq dedicated to protecting UN personnel.

The force would be under the unified command of the US-led coalition and the UN itself would not be involved in maintaining security, said Negroponte. The UN pulled all its international staff out of Iraq in October, several weeks after 22 people were killed in a suicide bombing at the UN’s Baghdad offices. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has said he could not guarantee sending a large team back to Iraq because of the deteriorating security situation.