ISLAMABAD, April 1: President Pervez Musharraf has urged the Muslim world to focus its energy on averting a looming crisis in the energy, water and food sectors.

Inaugurating a meeting of the OIC Standing Committee on Scientific and Technological Cooperation (Comstech), President Musharraf said the Muslim world faced the threat of being marginalised.

He said the Ummah could confront the formidable challenges facing it only through collective efforts.

“We have to show collective resolve to take the Muslim Ummah forward and realise the true potential of the collective powers of the Ummah by sharing and cooperating with each other,” he said.

“Comstech must specially focus on appropriate technologies to ensure energy, water and food security.”

He said that despite being rich in natural resources and raw materials, the Muslim countries were unable to fully exploit them.

He called for dialogue with the United Nations and other forums to address the existing gap and remove misperceptions in the West about the Muslim world.

“We believe that the new relationship between the Muslim world and the West has to be built on a dialogue and understanding which could effectively deal with the threat to world peace,” he said.

“However, we have to impress upon the West that extremism cannot be eliminated when economic inequalities continue to threaten national, regional and global peace,” he said.

The president said the best way to counter extremism was to “reduce socio-economic disparities around the world”.

He welcomed the decision taken by the Organisation of Islamic Conference summit in Dakar to restrict its membership to countries with a Muslim majority.

Otherwise, these countries faced the risk of being marginalised and dominated by world actors, he warned.

The president said Pakistan was the largest contributor to Comstech as it had provided $1 million to the organisation and collected another $5 million from member states, besides spending $8 million on its programmes. He called for more contribution from the member states for the organisation.

He said the Muslim countries had 70 per cent of the world’s energy resources and 40 per cent natural resources but its global trade share was only about eight per cent.

The president conferred the Comstech Award on Prof Ibrahim Al Tayyab of Sudan for Mathematics and Prof Mohammad Mehdi Sheikh Jabari of Iran for Physics.—APP