COPENHAGEN - Britain and the United States should listen to the rest of the world opposing unilateral military action against Iraq, said Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad today.

He also said sanctions must be lifted now that President Saddam Hussein has agreed to readmit UN weapons inspectors.

"Britain and America should listen to the rest of the world," Mahathir told a news conference at the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) summit in the Danish capital Copenhagen.

"If the rest of the world cannot agree, there must be a reason for it. They don't disagree merely because they want to be difficult. So let us act multilateraly," said Mahathir.

On UN-imposed sanctions against Iraq, he said Malaysia does not agree with them "simply because it does not hurt the government or the leaders of the government."

Sanctions "hurt the people, pregnant mothers, old people, children," he said.

"Why should we punish these people who are not responsible at all for the government that they have?

"It's not a democratic country, they did not chose the government and yet you are punishing them because they have a bad government or at least in your view (the government) is bad."

Furnish proof

Reacting to a dossier unveiled by Britain today showing Saddam could be a year away from having a nuclear bomb, he said sending in the inspectors would be the best way to prove the allegations.

"We'll be very happy to support military action if you can provide without any reasonable doubt that these people are manufacturing weapons of mass destruction," he said.

Mahathir also said the "root causes" of terrorism must be dealt with if the problem is to be contained.

"You will be trying to increase security, take actions against the terrorists, but their numbers cannot be reduced with any degree of certainty for as long as the cause or at least they believe there is a cause for them to act," he said.

"Even if some of them are killed or they kill themselves there will be other volunteers."

Malaysian authorities have arrested several suspected terrorists believed linked to suspected Sept 11 mastermind Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda network.— AFP