London: Launching a scathing attack on the US and UK for their war against Iraq, Booker-winning writer Arundhati Roy and Jemima Khan, wife of cricketer-turned politician Imran Khan said, "No one in the Muslim world now believes that this is really all about making the world a safer place."

Writing in two separate British dailies on April 2, the two high-profile women warned that the economic "outposts" of the American empire are "exposed" and the world's sense of injustice was growing.

In an article titled "A strange kind of freedom" in 'The Guardian', Roy said, "Regardless of what the propaganda machine tells us, these tin-pot dictators (like Iraqi President Saddam Hussein) are not the greatest threat to the world.

"The real and pressing danger, the greatest threat of all is the locomotive force that drives the political and economic engine of the American government, currently piloted by George Bush.

"Bush-bashing is fun, because he makes such an easy, sumptuous target. It's true that he is a dangerous, almost suicidal pilot, but the machine he handles is far more dangerous than the man himself," Roy said.

"Bush's tactless imprudence and his brazen belief that he can run the world with his riot squad, has done the opposite. He has achieved what writers, activists and scholars have striven to achieve for decades.

"He has exposed the ducts. He has placed on full public view the working parts, the nuts and bolts of the apocalyptic apparatus of the American empire," she said.

"Now that the blueprint ('The Ordinary Person's Guide to Empire') has been put into mass circulation, it could be disabled quicker than the pandits predicted," Roy said.

Stating that she is angry and ashamed to be British, Jemima Khan, writing in 'The Independent', said, "Bush and Blair have already shown that they care little about world opinion, but what about when those feelings of resentment towards the US and Britain.

"Muslim countries translate into votes for virulently anti-Western fundamentalist parties. Despite their disingenuous talk of freedom and Democracy, Bush and Blair must know that bringing true Democracies to the Middle East, and the Muslim world in general, will have the opposite effect to the one they hope for and will go against their own interests."

It is unlikely that any Democratic Muslim country today will ever elect a pro- Western government, Jemima said.

"Pakistan is a good example. Popular anger at the government's co-operation with America's bombing of Afghanistan led to an unprecedented victory of the religious parties in the October 2002 election.

She said, "It is little wonder that Muslims around the world, pondering these questions while watching images of maimed Iraqi women and children as lucrative reconstruction contracts are doled out to US companies, are reacting with increasing incredulity, anger and trepidation.

"With British and US credibility in tatters, no one in the Muslim world now believes that this is really all about making the world a safer place, about al-Qaida and the war on terror, about Saddam and his weapons of mass destruction, about imminent threat to the civilised world or the violation of UN resolutions," she said.

PTI