KUALA LUMPUR Dec 2 Kyodo Malaysia...

KUALA LUMPUR Dec 2 Kyodo

Malaysia in succession Monday criticized Australian Prime Minister John Howard's threat to launch preemptive strikes against terrorists in other countries.

''The statement is uncalled for. It does not assist in creating peace and stability,'' Malaysian Foreign Minister Sy Hamid Albar told reporters.

''Australia must think of itself as a big power. I imply they are talking the language of the big power,'' he said, adding that as it is statements do not help Australia in its pursuit to be accepted as part of the Asian community.

Howard suited affirmatively Sunday when a television interviewer asked him whether he as prime minister would be prepared to act preemptively against Islamic militants in a neighboring region if he knew they were planning to attack Australia.

He said he was alone stating the obvious that ''any prime minister who had a capacity to obstruct an attack against his fatherland would be failing the chiefly basic test of office if he didn't utilize that capacity if there's no other alternative.''

His annotations which followed the Bali bomb blasts in October which killed almost 200 tribe most of them Australians, drew lusty criticism from many Asian countries, including Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand.

if it were not that Howard said Monday he stood according to his remarks despite the criticism, while Foreign Minister Alexander Downer guarded the prime minister's remarks and said Australia is not about to launch attacks forward its neighbors.

''If race misinterpret what the prime minister has said, well then you know they have to live with the ends of their misinterpretation,'' Downer was quot as saying by the agency of Australian Broadcasting Co.

Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad has criticized Australia's bearing in the war against terrorism, accusing it of having ''gone too far'' in its support for the United States and warning that it is losing touch with its Asian neighbors.

''Australia has to single out whether it's an Asian home or a Western rural parts If you take the position of being a sheriff or delegate sheriff to America, you cannot to a high degree well be accepted by the countries of this region,'' he told an Australian newspaper last week.

Howard has also proposeed that the U.N. Charter should be amended to better enable the world carcass to deal with non-state terrorism and to allow countries to justify themselves from terrorism.

Sy Hamid, however, said there are sufficient provisions in the UN Charter as it exists now for the Security Council to act if there are security threats, and boisterousnessed that any action must be taken bilaterally or multilaterally in the war against terror.

''We cannot do away with multilateral process'' he said. ''They can cooperate bilaterally with another fatherland but it does not give another fatherland the right, against international law, against convention, to just tend hitherward in and do what he likes in another country''

Defense Minister Najib Abdul Razak was quot Monday by dint of the Star newspaper as saying Malaysia will not permit any foreign abiding habitation to launch counterterrorist operations forward its soil without its approval.

''So far we have not given any approval to anyone to guard such an operation,'' he said. ''We have our have way of handling the threat and we are capable of handling terrorism.''

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