Washington: US President George Bush announced a five-point strategy for combating terrorism, including denial of weapons of mass destruction like those provided by "world's most dangerous nuclear trading cartel" run by the father of Pakistan's atomic bomb.
"Working with Great Britain and Pakistan and other nations, the United States shut down the world's most dangerous nuclear trading cartel, the A Q Khan network," he said on Tuesday in the second in a series of five scheduled speeches in the run up to the fifth anniversary of the terrorist attacks of Sep 11, 2001.
"This network had supplied Iran and Libya and North Korea with equipment and know-how that advanced their efforts to obtain nuclear weapons," Bush noted, calling the danger of extremists and terrorists armed with weapons of mass destruction as "the greatest threat this world faces".
Other four key elements of the Bush strategy envisaging "a battle of arms and ideas," in the global war on terrorism focus on:
Achieving these short-term strategic objectives, the strategy states, will buy the necessary time and space for the international community to focus on the long-term solution for winning the War on Terror. Winning the "war of ideas" by advancing effective democracies to address underlying societal conditions that terrorists seek to exploit.
"Effective democracies honour and uphold basic human rights, including freedom of religion, conscience, speech, assembly, association, and press. They are the long-term antidote to the ideology of terrorism today," according to a White House report on the strategy.
"There will continue to be challenges ahead," the report concludes, "but along with our partners, we will attack terrorism and its ideology, and bring hope and freedom to the people of the world. This is how we will win the War on Terror."
Meanwhile, an American Islamic civil rights and advocacy group said Bush's address on the status of America's war on terrorism "grants undeserved legitimacy to extremists."
"By focusing almost exclusively on the views of groups like Al Qaeda and failing to address the concerns of the vast majority of Muslims worldwide who reject terrorism, President Bush grants undeserved legitimacy to extremists and marginalizes true moderates," the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) stated.
"Rather than focus on the negative messages of Al Qaeda, the President ought to work with mainstream Muslims at home and abroad to isolate terrorists and promote a positive vision of hope, mutual respect and diplomacy" it said.
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