UNITED STATES MEMBER COMMITTEE | EVENTS | U.S. EVENTS | 2002 APC | GHAZZALI
PACIFIC BASIN ECONOMIC COUNCIL
UNITED STATES MEMBER COMMITTEE | EVENTS | U.S. EVENTS | 2002 APC | GHAZZALI
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The PBEC US Annual Policy Conference 2002
Getting Back to Business: Pacific Rim Growth and Security
Remarks by Ambassador Ghazzali Ladies and Gentlemen, I am very happy to speak with you this morning. It would be a privilege for me to do so under any circumstances, but I am especially glad to address you knowing that you will soon be holding a major meeting in my country. Malaysia is very proud to be the host for the Pacific Basin Economic Council's 35th International General Meeting in May 2002, and I personally am very pleased that you will have the opportunity to see and know our country and our people at first hand. For those of you who will be making your first visit to Malaysia, my advice is that you prepare yourselves for a pleasant surprise. You will find a first-world infrastructure, with our state-of-the-art international airport, our modern highways, skyscrapers, business centers, public facilities, hotels and restaurants. You will find a business-friendly environment that is at the same time dynamic, secure and comfortable. And you will find a local population that is very accommodating to foreign visitors, especially Americans. You will find many Americans and American businesses in Malaysia. This is because Malaysia has been, and continues to be, an outstanding place for Americans to do business. U.S. companies and investors have contributed more than $6 billion in foreign direct investment in Malaysia, which makes America our number one source of foreign investment. Indeed, over the years American investors and fund managers have achieved outstanding returns on their investments in Malaysia. And the U.S. is far and away our biggest trading partner. Malaysia is also a major consumer of U.S. exports. There is no denying the fact that the economic downturn in the United States and the reduction in air travel, especially after September 11, have had an impact on our bilateral trade volume. But we are confident that, as the U.S. economic recovery gathers force, U.S. investment in and trade with Malaysia will quickly reach new heights. We are busy preparing for this expansion in investment and trade by aggressively modernizing our banking, financial and corporate sectors. We are implementing new financial reforms to bring greater transparency and accountability to our banks and other financial institutions. We are, at the same time, reforming our corporate and securities laws to improve corporate governance and accountability, and assure transparency in the capital markets. Our government remains fully committed to privatization, restructuring and reform. We are not content to rest on our past economic achievements, impressive as they are. We want to continue to grow, and we want to do it with greater openness, greater competitiveness, more modern technology and broader access to global markets. Malaysia is an important economic and business partner of the United States. What is less well-known but equally true is that Malaysia is also an important partner of the United States in the fight against international terrorism, and it is on this critical subject that I will devote the balance of my remarks. Malaysia has demonstrated -- both by word and deed -- that it has zero tolerance for terrorism, and that it will spare no legitimate means to eradicate this pestilence from Malaysia itself, and in collaboration with its neighbors and friends, from the ASEAN region, and the world at large. Prime Minister Mahathir has been among the most outspoken of all world leaders in condemning terrorism, regardless of its source or objectives, and in mobilizing the international community against it. In a speech to the Asia Society in New York last week, as on prior occasions, the Prime Minister bluntly and emphatically rejected the notion that terrorism can ever be justified by the "cause" one is fighting for: "Whether people are fighting for a noble cause or not there are certain acts which they may not perpetrate. Exploding bombs in public places and killing innocent people cannot be accepted. Holding civilians to ransom or as hostages cannot be accepted. Poisoning food, medicine or water supply cannot be accepted. These are acts of terror and anyone committing these acts must be regarded as terrorists by everyone irrespective of the causes they are fighting for, irrespective of their religion, race or creed. And once they are defined as terrorists it is the duty of everyone, every country to hunt them down and bring them to justice." "If you tie a bomb to your body and go into a supermarket and explode yourself killing innocent people, then it is an act of terror. Even if you are doing it in order to overthrow a very oppressive government we cannot accept that. If you hijack an aircraft and put people in great danger and to violent death as happened on September 11, that is an act of terror. You may be fighting for Palestine, you may be fighting for whichever country but it is not acceptable. If you do that you must be outlawed by the whole world." Malaysia is not a newcomer to the struggle against terrorism. In the 1950's and 1960's, we confronted and defeated a communist insurgency that relied principally on terrorism to demoralize our population and overthrow our government. At one point, the communists numbered as many as 12,000, and they terrorized and inflicted horrible damage on civilians, especially but not limited to those in rural villages. Nevertheless, Malaysia was able to defeat the communist terrorists, even as other countries in the region fell victim to similar movements and tactics. More recently, Malaysia has been confronted by terrorism from a different source -- extremist Muslim groups who claim our present government is not Islamic enough, and who want to replace it with a Taliban-style Islamic state. News reports by the international media have established that these extremist groups are closely linked to similar ones in Indonesia and the southern Philippines. In Malaysia, a significant number of these terrorists are young members of the opposition Pan Malaysia Islamic Party, or PAS. They do not believe that democratic elections would ever bring their party to power, and allow them constitutionally to install their version of an Islamic state. In this, they are probably right, because the vast majority of Malaysians, including Muslim Malaysians, want to preserve our multi-religious, multi-ethnic and multi-cultural society and the spirit of religious and ethnic tolerance that underlies it. And they want to preserve our commitment to modernization, development, and openness to the outside world, which have played such an important role in our unprecedented economic growth and prosperity over the past two decades. The core leaders are mainly religious students who went to Pakistan ostensibly to study Islam. Instead they were taught that the Malaysian Government is not Islamic and it is their duty to overthrow it by violence. They returned to carry out their revolution, relying mainly on acts of terror. Fortunately, our civilian population and security forces have been up to the challenge, and we began arresting them before any serious damage could be done. Some of them did manage to kill a Christian state assemblyman, explode a few bombs in odd places, rob a couple of banks and steal arms from a police station. After September 11, they organized demonstrations in front of the U.S. Embassy in Kuala Lumpur, burned an American flag, and solicited volunteers to go and fight alongside the Taliban in Afghanistan. More recently, it was reported that they were also seeking to obtain substantial quantities of explosives to carry out terrorist activities. But we have now arrested them. And we are continuing to investigate their activities and to gather more information about them. As the Prime Minister said when 15 of these terrorists were captured last month: "It shows that we are firm. When we promise we will take action against terrorists, we don't care whether the terrorists are locals or foreign, when you are in the country, creating trouble, you get arrested..." Malaysia is proud of the support it has given to the United States in the fight against al-Qaeda. As our Foreign Minister Syed Hamid recently said: "Malaysia does not condone terrorism and will support the United States in the fight against it." This support started long before September 11. As far back as 1995, Malaysia arrested and turned over to the United States an Afghani associate of Osama bin Laden, Wali Khan Amin Shah, who was subsequently convicted by a U.S. court of plotting to hijack and bomb 11 commercial jetliners. He will spend the rest of his life in a U.S. prison. In January 2000, Malaysian police followed and videotaped suspected al-Qaeda members Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi during their three-day stay in Kuala Lumpur, and then promptly turned over the tapes to U.S. intelligence officials. Although the U.S. put these men on an immigration watch list following receipt of this information from Malaysia, they somehow managed to enter the United States and, on September 11, hijack and crash a plane into the Pentagon. Malaysians were shocked and saddened by the September 11 disasters. Prime Minister Mahathir personally laid a wreath at the U.S. Embassy and signed the book of condolences, and was one of the first heads of state to express his sympathy and support to President Bush. He also ordered extra security for the U.S. Embassy in KL. And Malaysia immediately intensified its intelligence-sharing with the United States, in an effort to track down the terrorists responsible for the despicable attacks on the U.S., and bring them to justice. When President Bush met the Prime Minister at the APEC Summit in Shanghai, last October, he thanked him for Malaysia's cooperation in intelligence sharing. According to the official White House statement: "Malaysia is being supportive. The President expressed appreciation for what Malaysia has done in information-sharing and other areas of support." Prime Minister Mahathir responded: "We see eye to eye on this important issue of terrorism." Malaysia has continued to cooperate fully with the United States. Recently, U.S. Ambassador to Malaysia Marie Huhtala said: "Malaysia has done an outstanding job on cooperating with us on counter-terrorism. I have been extremely satisfied with the cooperation from the very beginning....We have had excellent cooperation on locating and freezing any assets that might be in your banks that belong to terrorists, and particularly cooperation with your police forces in tracking down terrorists. This is just invaluable. Malaysia has done a fantastic job." Because of our excellent record in fighting terrorism, and in cooperating fully and unreservedly with the United States, many Malaysians have been shocked and disappointed by the recent spate of articles in the U.S. press about the alleged existence of "terrorist cells" in Malaysia. One of these articles quoted a supposedly secret document from a U.S. Government agency as speculating that Malaysia might have been a "launching pad" for the September 11 attacks. It is entirely unfair for any responsible periodical to publish, such an unsubstantiated article. Yes, two of the September 11 hijackers stopped briefly in Kuala Lumpur in January 2000, but they were under close surveillance by our police the entire time, and we promptly informed the United States and turned over all the data we collected. Yes, Zacarias Moussaoui, the man currently awaiting trial in the United States for his alleged role in the September 11 attacks, visited Malaysia last year. But the man who received him in KL, Yazid Sufaat, has been arrested by our police, and we have been sharing all information obtained from his interrogation with U.S. intelligence authorities. He was also reported to have denied providing funds to Mr. Moussaoui. We want the American people to know our stand on terrorism, and our stand on cooperation with the United States. Thus, we are perplexed when the U.S. news media publish unfounded speculation and ignore the U.S. Ambassador's public statement that Malaysia has done a "fantastic job" and an "outstanding job in cooperating with us on counter-terrorism." We also want you to know that Malaysia has cooperated extensively with its ASEAN neighbors in regional efforts to combat terrorism. Indeed, Malaysia has taken a leadership role within ASEAN on counter-terrorism.
Malaysia has learned a lot from its experience in combating terrorism. The most important lesson is that military action alone is insufficient to defeat it. We defeated the communists not just through military action but as much by winning the hearts and minds of the people who sympathized with them. Since the terrorists were ethnic Chinese, we identified the causes for their disaffection and remedied them. The result was a swing in favor of the government and we eventually put an end to the terrorism. A similar approach is required to defeat the terrorism of today. We must understand, as our Prime Minister recently said: "The terrorists of today are not wild-eyed, illiterate fanatics who merely obey the orders of their evil leaders. They are educated, well off people with wives and families. We cannot know they are terrorists until they have committed their horrible crimes. Their known leaders and their group may be eliminated, but until the causes are removed there is no guarantee new groups will not form to commit further acts of terror." "And so, while we fight against the known or suspected terrorists, we must also eliminate the causes. While we must condemn their acts of terror, we must strive to understand the reasons for their anger and their reactions, irrational though they may be. We have to understand if we are going to tackle the problem." Based on our own successes to date, Malaysia can claim to know how to deal with terrorists, be they Muslims or non-Muslims. We have been successful so far, and we believe we can handle future problems. Our message to our neighbors and friends is clear, and fully supported by our own experiences: The nations of the world must join together to fight terrorists and terrorism everywhere. They must pursue the terrorists relentlessly and give them no quarter. But, at the same time, and without in the slightest degree accepting terrorism as a response to a perceived problem, we must all strive to understand, and address, the root causes of terrorism, because this is the only way ultimately to defeat it. We can defeat terrorists by taking direct action against them. But we can only defeat terrorism, in the words of our Prime Minister, if we "reduce the attraction of acts of terror for those who see no means of redress of their own sufferings." Thank you. |