Britain offers long-term trade package - Mahathir

Britain offers long-term trade package - Mahathir

KUALA LUMPUR (Reuter): Britain has offered Malaysia's government a long-term trade package to try to end its boycott of British businesses, Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said yesterday.

The national news agency Bernama quoted Mahathir as saying that British Trade Minister Richard Needham, who made a surprise one-day visit on Tuesday, had offered the package. It gave no details.

Needham told reporters yesterday he thought a trade row between the two countries was nearing an end.

Malaysia, angered by British news reports that Anglo-Malaysian trade was tainted by corruption, banned British companies from government contracts three months ago.

"I'm confident that that's on the way of coming to an end," Needham said on arrival at London's Heathrow airport.

"But I think that the most important thing is to make sure we have a proper strategy in our relationships with Malaysia where we can avoid these things happening in the future."

Needham described the talks with International Trade and Industry Minister Rafidah Aziz and Mahathir as very successful. He said he would return to Kuala Lumpur in 10 days.

"I put to them some proposals for them to consider about our future relationships and ways which I think we can build on in the future and they are considering it."

Rafidah said after meeting Needham: "I'm confident that (the ban) will be lifted, but as for the timing, we can't say."

Mahathir said the "dismissal" of Andrew Neil as editor of London's Sunday Times newspaper had improved the atmosphere between the two countries, Bernama reported.

The Sunday Times triggered the row in February with a story claiming a British construction company was prepared to offer Mahathir a US$50,000 bribe to secure a building contract.

Mahathir has denied the allegation, which came during a controversy over hundreds of million of pounds in British aid for a huge Malaysian dam and claims the aid was linked to a big arms sale to Malaysia.

Neil is being transferred to a Fox Television station in New York owned by Sunday Times proprietor Rupert Murdoch but retains editorship of the paper.

Neil told Reuters in London last weekend he stood by his newspaper's story, but that if Mahathir wanted "to use me as an excuse, that's fine".