Muslim clerics and scholars must do more to denounce terrorism and its leaders or risk allowing Islamic radicalism to spread, the president of Iraq said at a conference Tuesday.

"It is incumbent on Muslim theologians — and all Muslim thinkers — to make sure these criminals have no peace and have no room," Jalal Talabani told a gathering of religious and political leaders examining ways to improve contacts between the West and Muslim nations.

Terrorism has dominated the agenda and showed the deep quandaries over how to wage an intellectual battle against al-Qaida and other radical groups. Talabani echoed the appeals of many moderate Muslims for sharper anti-terrorist condemnations from religious authorities, such as Sunni clerics who have influence in regions of Iraq considered rebel strongholds.

"Islamic leaders and philosophers must expose that they (the terrorist groups) are only trying to deceive their followers and they do nothing but destruction," he said.

His comments came shortly after two attacks in Iraq targeting police Tuesday: a car bomb blast in Baghdad that killed four police officers and gunfire in the northern city of Kirkuk that left four officers dead. US and Iraqi forces, meanwhile, pressed ahead with an offensive against suspected insurgents near the Syrian border.

"A barbarous type of terrorism exists in Iraq that is being carried out by al-Qaida and the most fundamentalist terrorists," Talabani said. "Terrorism is a scourge that the world is suffering under. ... It will grow if we don't act."

Talabani also challenged the widespread European opposition to the US-led occupation of Iraq, saying that war was the only way to end the brutalities of Saddam Hussein's regime.

The deputy speaker of Iraq's parliament, Hussain al-Shahristani, added that "if terrorism is allowed to defeat freedom and democracy in Iraq, then other parts of the world will also be threatened."

Earlier, Afghan President Hamid Karzai warned that the failure to defeat Taliban-led terrorism in his country could have wider consequences. Twin suicide bombings in the Afghan capital, Kabul, on Monday killed at least nine people and was blamed on militants with links to al-Qaida.

"Individual acts of terrorism we will continue to suffer for quite some time as well as the rest of the world," Karzai told reporters after his speech.

The conference has sought to sidestep direct political squabbles despite some clear differences, including an Iranian delegation led by former President Mohammad Khatami and a US presence directed by Daniel Fried, assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs.

But Austrian Foreign Minister Ursula Plassnik made a diplomatic jab apparently aimed at Khatami's hard-line successor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who last month said Israel should be "wiped off the map."

"It is not acceptable at all to question the right of existence of another," said Plassnik, whose nation takes over the European Union presidency Jan. 1. Austria has one of the closest ties with Iran among the EU members.

Fried also used the sidelines of the conference to amplify US claims that Iran is seeking to develop nuclear weapons. Iran says its nuclear program is only for energy-producing reactors.

"The world should contemplate a nuclear weapons-armed Iran with the greatest of concern," Fried told journalists. The International Atomic Energy Agency's 35-nation board holds a key meeting on Iran's nuclear program next week at its Vienna headquarters.

(Chinadaily.com via agencies November 16, 2005)