London: India-born Booker Prize winning author Salman Rushdie has said that a US attack on Iraq would have disastrous effect and it is just what Osama bin Laden wanted.

In the event of an attack on Iraq by the US, Saudi Arabia would almost certainly feel obliged to expel US forces from its soil (thus capitulating to one of bin Laden's main demands), Rushdie said in a commentary in 'The Guardian'.

"Iran, which so recently fought a long, brutal war against Iraq, would surely support its erstwhile enemy, and might even come into the conflict on the Iraqi side. The entire Arab world would be radicalised and destabilised. What a disastrous twist of fate it would be if the feared Islamic jihad were brought into being not by the al-Qaida gang but by the President of the US and his close advisers," Rushdie said.

The controversial author was also critical of UN's failure to intervene during recent India-Pakistan standoff on Kashmir and the Bush administration's failure to investigate US-based groups that are allegedly funding organisations responsible for killing of thousands of Muslims in Gujarat and wondered how long Pakistani-backed terrorism in Kashmir will be winked by America because of Islamabad's support to the allies in the war against terror.

"Just as American-Irish fund-raisers once bankrolled the terrorists of the Provisional IRA, so now, shadowy bodies across America are said to be helping to pay for mass murder in India, while the US government turns a blind eye," he alleged.

PTI