KUALA LUMPUR - Iraq will not attend the 10th Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) leaders' summit to be held in Malaysia next month, Malaysian Foreign Minister Syed Hamid Albar said Sunday, AFP said.

"There'll be no representative from Iraq attending the summit because the country is still under occupation," he said.

"As long as Iraq is not in the hands of Iraqis, its leaders are not legitimately elected by Iraqis, until then its seat in the OIC will remain vacant," he said.

Syed Hamid, however, said the OIC Credentials Committee would study Iraq's position on whether its seat could be occupied by the temporary government or its cabinet members.

Iraq's transitional Governing Council recently announced a new 25-member post-war interim government until elections are held next year.

The new cabinet is divided up among the country's various communities, with 13 ministries going to Muslim Shiites, five to Sunnis, five to Kurds, one to Turkmen and one to the Christians.

However, Syed Hamid said Malaysia would not recognise the council as it was not set up by Iraqis.

Malaysia would confine its diplomatic relations with the country only to humanitarian assistance, he said.

"We'll only recognise the Iraqi government after it is duly elected by the Iraqis and not by the occupying forces," he was quoted as saying by the Bernama news agency.

Asked on the U.S.-drafted resolution to push for a wider United Nations involvement in Iraq, Syed Hamid said it was the right decision but the move was "not far enough".

"It (the resolution) does not get the UN to be totally involved. The UN must be directly involved and everything must be subjected to the UN and not the other way round," he said.

He said although the move should be welcomed, additional steps ought to be taken to get the involvement of Muslim countries in a multinational force under the UN.

The U.S. has conceded to drafting a new UN resolution that will pave the way for a greater UN role in Iraq.

The Bush administration hopes the resolution will offer some relief to the 130,000 U.S. troops deployed in the war-torn country as well as to the budgetary pressures being applied to the nation's finances. The move represents a turnaround in policy compared to the months leading up to the U.S.-led war on Iraq, which Washington launched without endorsement from the UN and amid staunch opposition from other UN Security Council members. The government of mainly-Muslim Malaysia fiercely opposed the US-led war in Iraq with Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad warning that it would fuel anger among Muslims.