He said the unilateral attack on Iraq by the United States and its allies would be a "black page in world history" for they had rendered meaningless all aspects of international law.

Through their unilateral action on Iraq they had ignored international law as well as the humanitarian aspect and denied justice for a defenseless people, he said.

"They have returned to the Stone Age where might is right. We can predict that in the future, the borders of independent nations will be breached at the whims and fancies of the superpowers," Mahathir said when moving a motion calling on the House to strongly condemn the unilateral military action of the US and its allies on Iraq.

Mahathir, who is on a two-month leave from March 6 to May 4, came to Parliament to move the motion which also called for an immediate cessation of hostilities in Iraq.

"The people of Iraq who had been suffering for the last 12 years from economic sanctions, so much so 1.5 million of them died from starvation and lack of medicine, are now being attacked with bombs and rockets," he was quoted by national news agency Bernama as saying.

Mahathir said there was no longer the slogan "the rule of law" coined by the superpowers as they themselves had breached it.

He said the claim that Iraq was dangerous and threatened the whole world with its weapons of mass destruction was incomprehensible and could not be accepted as a reason for launching the attack.

It was most unjustified and saddening that the military action involving use of sophisticated weapons and large scale bombing was being carried out after Iraq was forced to destroy its weapons for defense purposes on the orders of the UN Security Council.

Mahathir said the number of killed and injured would indeed be many among the defenseless people of Iraq.

(Xinhua News Agency March 24, 2003)