KL urges rejection of EU investment pact

KL urges rejection of EU investment pact

KUALA LUMPUR (Reuter): Malaysia is urging developing countries to reject a multilateral investment agreement that is being pushed by the European Union (EU), Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said.

Speaking late on Sunday after returning from a 16-day trip to Africa and Europe, Mahathir said the EU planned to raise the agreement at December's meeting of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Singapore, the national news agency Bernama said.

The pact, Mahathir declared, would make developing countries "colonies of the West which is what they (the EU) intend".

"They still wish to dominate the whole world," Bernama quoted Mahathir as saying.

The multilateral investment agreement (MIA) seeks to give "national treatment" to foreign firms investing in any country. That means they would be given the same rights and operate under the same rules as local industries.

It also seeks to make more transparent the rules and regulations governing foreign investment and to criminalize bribery and under-the-table payments, Western diplomats said.

The European Union is pushing the pact under the auspices of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Geneva with a view to introducing it at the ministerial meeting in Singapore. But there has been no final agreement on the pact, diplomats said.

A separate market-opening agreement on telecommunications is being negotiated in Geneva.

Mahathir said the move to introduce the agreement showed Europe is seeking to dominate the finance and telecommunications sectors in particular.

By controlling the telecommunications sector, the Europeans could dominate the broadcasting industry "to spread their own propaganda", he said.

The draft of the telecommunications agreement was completed last week in Geneva but Malaysia and seven other developing nations have formally opposed it.

The United States has reportedly offered to open its domestic telecommunications market to foreign competition as part of a concerted bid with the EU to get a global pact in the booming sector.

But Washington has insisted it wants much better offers from key Asian powers, sitting on potentially lucrative telecommunication markets, before pledging irrevocably to open its markets to all comers.

Mahathir said he would raise the matter at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meeting in Manila later this month. "We will object...we will not agree," he said