London, Sept. 12 (PTI): Nobel Prize winning author Sir Vidia Naipaul has said countries like Saudi Arabia and Iran which foment religious war must be destroyed.

In an interview published in The Observer today, the 72-year-old India-born author, however, had a word of advice for the masses: ?Hate oppression, but fear the oppressed.?

On September 5, in a similar interview to Tatler magazine, the author had blamed Saudi Arabia for financing terrorism and ?filling gambling dens and brothels?.

In today?s Observer, Naipaul said the thing he saw in terrorism was the exulting in other people?s death. ?We are told the people who killed the children in Russia were smiling. The liberal voices were ready to explain the reasons for their actions. But this has no good side. It is as bad as it appears,? he said.

On a proper response of the West, Naipaul said: ?Well, clearly Iraq is not the place to have gone. But religious war is so threatening to the rest of us that it cannot be avoided.

?It will have to be fought... There are certain countries which foment it, and they probably should be destroyed, actually.?

Question: Saudi Arabia?

Naipaul: ?I would like to think so, yes.?

Question: Iran?

Naipaul: ?I think Iran has to be dealt with, too.?

Naipaul believes the world is yet to confront the implications of the rise of Islamic states. ?The blowing up of the twin towers ? people could deal with it as an act of terror, but the idea of religious war is too frightening for people to manage. The word used is jihad. We like to translate it as holy war, but it is religious war.?