WASHINGTON - President George W Bush Tuesday praised the leadership shown by Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad in the US campaign against terrorism, in White House talks which saw testy US relations with the veteran prime minister consigned to the past.

Mahathir's visit is a sign of the changes wrought in US foreign policy by the Sept 11 attacks - and Washington's desire to engage nations seen as crucial to its anti-terror campaign.

"I've been looking forward to this visit to publicly thank the prime minister for his strong support in the war against terror," Bush told reporters during a joint press availability in the Oval Office.

"We share a deep concern about terror - what terror means to our respective countries, what it means to our peoples.

"Mr Prime Minister, I want to thank you for your friendship, and thank you for your leadership," said Bush.

Mahathir enthusiastically backed the US campaign against terrorism and vowed to crack down on terrorists masquerading as defenders of Islam.

'No rest, no quarter'

Later at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations business council dinner, Mahathir vowed to give international terrorists "no rest, no quarter and no place to hide".

"We do not tolerate their presence. We give them no rest, no quarter no place to hide. We have adequate laws and capacity to deal with such threats and we have much expertise in this field," Mahathir said.

However, Mahathir, veteran leader of mainly-Muslim Malaysia returned to a consistent theme of his premiership.

He called for an attempt to share the spoils of globalization and to eradicate the poverty which he believes causes terrorism.

"If we are to prevent it, we must not only hunt down all the terrorists but also remove the root causes that make some people angry and bitter enough to commit or support acts of terror."

And Mahathir, a firm supporter of the Palestinians, drew comparisons between the Sept 11 attacks and other incidents including Israeli actions in the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank.

"The attacks on the World Trade Center on Sept 11, the human bomb attacks by Palestinians and the Tamil Tigers, the attacks against civilians by Israeli forces in Jenin ad elsewhere, the killings of Bosnian Muslims and others are acts of terrorism and the perpetrators must therefore be condemned as terrorists," he said.

Mahathir's performance in fighting terrorism has been compared favourably here to that of Indonesia, which some officials believe has done little to crack down on extremism.

The Malaysian government has taken into custody more than 60 militants allegedly linked to the al-Qaeda network of Osama bin Laden.