BERLIN - Germany's foreign ministry summoned the Malaysian charge d'affaires here to protest against Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad's "absolutely unacceptable" remark that Jews rule the world by proxy.

"The Europeans killed six million Jews out of 12 million. But today the Jews rule this world by proxy. They get others to fight and die for them," Mahathir, 77, had said in an opening speech of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) summit in Putrajaya, Malaysia.

Irresponsible speech

The ministry told the charge d'affaires that "repetition of such prejudices and mixing them with such a tragic chapter of European and German history, the Holocaust, was irresponsable." It condemned the "anti-Jewish" statements "very severely," the ministry said.

In a typically provocative speech at one of his last appearances on the world stage, Mahathir called on the Islamic world to unite on an economic, religious and political level to fight against what he termed Muslim "humiliation and oppression."

The OIC summit, which ends Friday, is the biggest gathering of Islamic leaders since the Sept 11, 2001 attacks in the United States, drawing more than 30 heads of state and government from throughout the Muslim world. - AFP