- BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanon's
most influential Shi'ite cleric on Friday urged Muslims and Arabs to withdraw
their assets from American investments in response to U.S. financial scrutiny
of Muslims after September 11.
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- "There has to be a change of mindset in ... dealings
with America, particularly by withdrawing Arab and Islamic assets from
U.S. investments because of new laws, which represent a danger of freezing
or confiscation under decisions that spring from September 11," Sheikh
Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah said.
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- Fadlallah was referring to financial restrictions imposed
on funds from countries like Saudi Arabia -- home to 15 of the 19 men accused
of hijacking planes in the September 11 attacks on the United States.
-
- He told worshippers at Friday prayers that Arabs should
also examine Washington's hidden motives in threatening to oust Iraqi President
Saddam Hussein.
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- "The Arab and Islamic people must study the hidden
background to the American action, which will not stop in Iraqi territory
but will go on to contain and control all that it can ... in order to affirm
American leadership of the sources of oil in the region and the world,"
said Fadlallah, former spiritual mentor of Lebanon's Shi'ite Muslim Hizbollah
guerrilla group.
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- Anti-American feeling is high across the Arab world because
of U.S. support for Israel as it tries to crush the Palestinian uprising
against Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
-
- "The American cover for Israel's invasion of Palestinian
cities is strong, America financially supports Israeli military actions
against Palestinians. ... We hear no voice in America, Europe or the United
Nations, even the Arab and Islamic voices have died down and become timid
in a way that is shameful," Fadlallah added.
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- He said Arabs should create a mechanism whereby they
can influence U.S. policy as Israel has done with its Jewish lobby in the
United States.
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- "The Israeli policy puts pressure on the United
States through the Jewish vote in presidential and congressional elections
while Arabs and Muslims in America have no such plan to exert any pressure,"
he said.
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