"They know how to destroy Iraq, so they must know how to reconstruct it," he told the official Bernama news agency in an interview.

Malaysia, he said, would not be involved in restoring the Iraqi economy except for providing aid such as food and medicines, and perhaps some business.

Asked about newspaper reports that the national Petronas oil company president Mohamad Hassan Marican would be asked to help in the rebuilding of Iraq's oil economy, Mahathir said: "Such an offer should only come from the United Nations, failing which we don't want to even think of it."

Mahathir, a veteran Muslim leader who was a strong opponent of the US plans to attack Iraq, said he still believed the war was unwarranted.

"We don't believe that the killing of people would help solve problems," he said.

Questioned on perceived threats by the US against Syria over its alleged pursuit of weapons of mass destruction and support for terrorism, Mahathir said: "They cannot hit at the terrorists so they hit at all these Muslim countries."

SPACE.WIRE