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LAHORE, Nov 25: US scholar Dr Noam Chomsky on Sunday said America wanted Osama bin Laden dead and not alive because it did not have any proof to get him convicted in a court of law.

"If captured alive it will be difficult for America to try Osama in a court of law and that is why it considers it better to kill him," he said while replying to questions at a forum of a local newspaper.

The Sept 11 plane attacks on America did not mark a beginning of its end. The happening merely changed the history, as it involved the first-ever massive attack this time on a major developed country in hundreds of years. But it will not change the social and economic and political system of America and the world, he said.

Prof Chomsky said it was true that all past empires fell. But the peak of the US power was in 1945 when it possessed half of the world's wealth and a huge military force. But by 1970 this wealth was reduced to 25 per cent.

Now, he said, there were three major power centres, the US based west, the German based West and the Japan and China based South East Asia. The events on Sept 11 will not change this set up.

Prof Chomsky said the Kashmiri people had the right to self- determination but the dispute could be resolved only by Pakistan and India through the sympathetic recognition of each others stand point.

"America is not favouring any of the parties to the conflict. It wants to go its own way and is showing one side of the picture to Pakistan and another to India. It merely wants both the countries to be nice subordinates, desiring that Islamabad must stop support to violence in the held Kashmir," the US scholar said.

He termed the attack on Afghanistan merely an act of establishing the power and credibility of America and its allies. Even bombing Taliban soldiers was a crime, an illegal act and sheer exercise of power, he said.

Prof Chomsky said the CIA, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries created mercenaries in Afghanistan. "Yes, Afghans had the right to defend the USSR invasion but America and Muslim countries had no right to raise mercenaries in Afghanistan," he said

He said the USSR invaded Afghanistan in December 1979, which was a crime, but the US started supporting the Mujahideen there six months earlier to fight against their government and to "invite and trap" the USSR in Afghanistan. "The plan was successful," he said.

Prof Chomsky said China and Iran too were playing their game in the region before 1978. Pakistan also got involved and they all destroyed Afghanistan, he claimed.

He said both the USSR and the US used the cold war as a pretext to establish their hegemony in the world and to block each other. But the same policy continued even after the demise of the USSR as the US invaded Panama using this time not to defend the country against "Moscow but against Spanish drug lords". The cold war was an illusion and the Third World was its victim.

The US scholar said the Central Asia had oil reserves but these were much less than those in the Gulf region. The Central Asian states were not the major source of attraction for their oil reserves as the cold energy (technology) will soon replace the hot energy.

He said sarcastically referred to the pro-establishment intellectuals as wise men and said they were the associates of policy makers. "If you don't support the power, you are not considered intellectual," he said.

Prof Chomsky said people in the US were not given full information but still there were occasions when public opinion led to a change in the policy. To prove his point he quoted the examples of the Kennedy and Reagan administrations which made military experiments in Vietnam and Central America and had to worry about the public reactions against it.

He said the long war in Vietnam had created strong public opinion against the US administration but it stopped the aggression when the business community, which matters and not the people, said that the conflict had become costly. "A delegation of the business community went to Washington and asked the president to resign, stop bombing and start withdrawing army as the war is costing too much," he said.

Prof Chomsky said the Reagan administration tried to duplicate the action of the Kennedy administration in Vietnam and the media supported both the regimes. "But, the US action against weaker nations must end rapidly because the public support erodes quickly," he said.

America raised the slogan of the star war to eliminate nuclear weapons whereas it was meant to accelerate the arms race and was opposed by the people. "They do respond to public voice, but as they defend the power, it happens occasionally," he said.

Prof Chomsky said those who press for democracy were not serving the West because this was the last thing the West would want. "The West want subordinate system no matter it is being run by military dictator," he said.

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