Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said on Monday the country's open and culturally diverse society was its greatest weapon against terrorism.

Harper told the opening of the Third World Urban Forum in Vancouver that there have been misguided suggestions that Canada was a more vulnerable target for terrorists because of its culturally diverse society.

"I believe that exactly the opposite is true," Harper said in his keynote speech to applause from many of the 5,500 participants at the conference. "Canada's diversity, properly nurtured, is our great strength."

Canada has been spared the horrors that visited on New York, London, New York, Madrid and many other cities thanks to "our superb domestic security forces," but "its best protection is its freely mingling ethnic groups", he said.

"Visit almost any city in the country and you'll find Chinatown, a Little Italy, a French quarter, an East Indian commercial or residential enclave. These and many more reflect the amazing ethnic diversity of Canada, but they flourish because they are not isolated from the larger community."

"On the contrary, the shops in Chinatown, the restaurants in Little Italy attract people from all over. We've largely avoided ghettoization, the bane of urban existence in so many other places, the impoverished crime-ridden and ethnically polarized no-go zones. " the prime minister said.

Vancouver is hosting the week-long forum, which has brought delegates from 150 countries to exchange ideas on developing sustainable cities in a rapidly urbanizing world.

Issues to be discussed include the environment, sanitation, safety, housing, poverty, alternative transportation and energy sources, as well as the widening disparity between developing and developed countries.

Canada's Calgary, Toronto and Vancouver were ranked by the United Nations as among the top 10 cities in the world to live in, with Vancouver ranking first.

Source: Xinhua