Washington, Nov. 2 (PTI): Favouring the idea of a regime change in Iraq, Salman Rushdie said the ouster of President Saddam Hussein must be in line with the UN resolution rather than a unilateral US military action.

“Saddam Hussein and his ruthless gang of cronies from his home village of Tikrit are homicidal criminals, and their Iraq is a living hell,” Rushdie wrote in The Washington Post today. “He has impoverished them, murdered them, gassed and tortured them, sent them off to die by the tens of thousands in futile wars, repressed them, gagged them, bludgeoned them and then murdered them some more,” he wrote in an opinion piece.

Though he favoured ousting Saddam Hussein, Rushdie did not approve of the US approach saying a pre-emptive strike policy would make Washington a more likely target of terror.

“If the US reserves the right to attack any country it doesn’t like the look of, then those who don’t like the look of the US might feel obliged to return the compliment.” Rushdie noted that the connection between Hussein and al Qaida remains comprehensively unproven, whereas the presence of the al Qaida leadership in Pakistan, and of al Qaida sympathisers in that country’s intelligence services are well known. “Yet nobody is talking about attacking Pakistan,” he said. Rushdie said that though a war of liberation might just be one worth fighting, the war that America is currently trying to justify is not.