Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad on Friday slammed proposed US military action against Iraq, saying it would be unjust and undemocratic.

Mahathir said using military force to unseat Iraqi President Saddam Hussein would only serve to provoke greater hatred and dent the Islamic world's efforts to show the "moderate face" of Islam.

"The quarrel is with Saddam Hussein, they think he is a dictator. It is up to the people of Iraq to change their government if they can but they cannot," he told an international Islamic conference here.

"But because they cannot, it is not fair to punish them. You punish people who have no means of changing their conditions. That is I think unjust.

"We don't think other governments have a right, no matter how powerful they are, to change the government of another country. That is an undemocratic thing to do."

The veteran Asian leader, who is to step down October 2003, questioned why the US had picked on Iraq when there were other countries in the world which also needed a change in government.

Arousing ill-feelings

"When you focus on Iraq, the people who will suffer are the helpless people of Iraq and of course, you are going to arouse a lot of ill-feelings," he said.

"We pray and hope that it will not be done... it will make it difficult for us to show the moderate face of Islam."

The United States, which fears that Saddam is accumulating weapons of mass destruction, has been hinting that an attack on Iraq might be the next step in its unilaterally declared "war on terror".

US President George W Bush has vowed to use all tools at his disposal to oust Saddam. AFP