Abdullah Badawi criticised USA

I have to admit that after a lousy long-ish honeymoon period, I am no longer prepared to give PM Abdullah Ahmad Badawi (AAB) any more benefits of the doubt. Then, just as I am about to write him off, he comes along and show his resolute in his Chair of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), where once giants such as Jawaharlal Nehru of India, Sukarno of Indonesia, Zhou Enlai of China), Gamal Abdul-Nasser of Egypt, Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, and many others led the way.

AAB said, in criticism of the US campaign to demonise and marginalise Iran to abandon its nuclear programme, there should be one set of rules for everybody:

"Allowing Israel to develop nuclear weapons with impunity - which it does not deny - while others in the region are prohibited from doing so, is a blatant case of double standards."

"It has created a destabilising asymmetry in a volatile part of the world. We must recognise Iran's right to develop such technology for peaceful purposes."

AAB also called for an immediate resolution to the Palestinian crisis, describing it as one of the most profound tragedies of our time. And I support that description. The USA has a lot to answer for mollycoddling Israel in its expansionism and brutalities.

AAB said the so-called peace process is now a bit of a joke, no thanks to the US one-sided perception. He called for an end to US-led sanctions and warned what everyone knows, that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would not end until the rights of the Palestinian people were recognised.

As a start, AAB called for recognition of the Hamas government and said that it "must be engaged through contacts and dialogue, not shunned or ostracised and sanctioned."