I refer to the letter Malaysian foreign policy neither fair nor just and wish to state that the writer wrongly conflated specific foreign policies of Malaysia to a Judeo-Christian will, citing East Timor, Lebanon and Iraq as examples. Let's take the example of East Timor. East Timor, unlike Jolo, was an fledgling independent country that was invaded by Indonesia.

Jolo's Moro, unlike the Timorese, did not experience the widespread massacres and pogroms against them on the scale experienced by East Timorese. Amnesty International estimates the deaths from the Indonesian occupation of East Timor to be in excess of 200,000 - significant considering the current Timorese population of 950,000.

Furthermore, unlike in Jolo, the Timorese did not engage for the most part in terrorism and they certainly did not kidnap innocent tourists from another country. Just because the Moro are Muslims does not mean they are more deserving of sovereignty and independence than East Timor's Catholics.

Likewise in Lebanon, the writer wrongly claims that the UN Charter limits peacekeeping to civil wars and disputes. No where in the UN Charter - especially in the relevant Chapter 7 - does it state this. Furthermore, the peacekeepers under the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (Unifil) show no bias towards Israel (or America, for that matter). Quite the opposite, Unifil has instead ignored and turned a blind eye towards the continued arms-smuggling by Hizbollah despite the latter being the cause of the recent entanglement.

And lastly, voting on a Security Council resolution against Iraq shows no bias against Muslims, other than that Iraq should have been given some sort of special privilege for being Muslim. And the resolution, against the insinuation of the writer, did not authorise war.

Under the principle of 'expressio unius est exclusio alterius' (terms excluded must be considered excluded intentionally), that resolution, while leaving room for the possibility of war, simply did not authorise war. Iraq clearly deserved the resolution for its intransigence, whether the country is Muslim or not.