KARACHI, Dec 28: The American unilateralism and western double standards were criticized by intellectuals and politicians at a book launch here on Tuesday.

Speaking as the chief guest at the launching of 'No Clean Hands -Sceptical Chronicles of 9/11,' authored by Sayeed Hasan Khan and Kurt Jacobson at the Karachi Press Club, the former editor-in-chief of Dawn, Ahmad Ali Khan, said the international law did not recognise any country's right to go for a pre-emptive strike.

He said the idea of selling a new interpretation of Islam was not new. Elaborating, he said the United States had in the 1980s floated the idea of "jihad" in the wake of the first Afghan War and today it needed "moderate Islam" after the 9/11 tragedy.

Mr Khan said the American casualities in Iraq were alarmingly high and the US imperialism, which was protecting the big business interests, had targeted the huge oil reserves of Iraq and was suffering immensely.

He said the "War on Terror" was not confined to eliminating Osama bin Laden. On the contrary, the United States was adamant to suppress freedom struggles as was evident from the US bullying of Iran, Syria and other countries.

He said the book was a useful addition to the scores of publications in the post-9/11 period. Chris Harman, editor of the International Socialist Journal published from the United Kingdom, said the book exposed the lie after lie before the attack of the US-led forces on Iraq. He said the attack on Falluja in Iraq compared with what Germans did to Stalingrad during World War II.

He said the comparison of Iraq war with the Vietnam War was extremely apt, but the Americans initiated Vietnam War in 1960-61 and it was in 1968 they realised that they could not win it.

On the contrary, in the case of Iraq it took only one year to reach such a realisation. He said the US was sending more transport planes to Iraq because it was unable to send ground troops there.

He said the resistance controlled the whole central part of that country. He added that two years ago they were talking about attacking a number of countries, but today the aggressors were not even able to control Iraq.

Mr Harman said when US President George W. Bush visited London, as many as 350,000 people took to the streets. "We said we have placed him under house arrest when he was in London," he remarked.

He said millions of people across the world protested against the US aggression of Iraq. He said some people said it was a war of Christianity against Islam, but in fact it was a war of the rich against the poor.

"We are fighting for world's poor against world's rich," he said. He said he hoped that the people of Pakistan like other people of the world would stand against the so-called "War on Terror."

Sindh education minister and scholar Hamida Khuhro said one of the "most terrible" thing that had happened in the 1980s and 1990s was that a moderate Pakistan society was transformed into a fundamentalist one, a phenomenon which was more terrible than drugs and arms culture.

She said when the western media talked of terrorism, it did not look to its causes which were of "western making". She regretted that Pakistan was also sucked into the first Afghan War that was responsible for the problems being witnessed today.

The minister said US policies produced Osama bin Laden and "the net result has been contamination of Islam". She said the last few years had exposed the West of being civilized or of high culture. Everything had been exposed after the demolition of the twin towers, she said, and added that it had been a "great exposure and a great disillusionment."

Ms Khuhro said the book was "a very welcome addition to our current literature" and it was the outcome of the two cultures: one author hailing from the subcontinent with a very rich western exposure and the other from the West.

Senior politician Mairaj Mohammad Khan said the book revealed the power politics in the wake of 9/11. He said with 34 per cent people in Pakistan living below the poverty line, it was a formidable job for a publisher to publish a book.