Mahathir backs Mr Yen for 'eurocentric' IMF

Mahathir backs Mr Yen for 'eurocentric' IMF

TOKYO (AFP): Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad has
endorsed Japan's bid for the top job at the International
Monetary Fund (IMF) in a renewal of his attacks on Western
economic hegemony.

In his monthly Japanese newspaper column published Monday,
Mahathir described Eisuke Sakakibara, a former vice finance
minister for international affairs, as broadminded.

Mahathir said Sakakibara, who earned the tag of "Mr Yen" for
his sway over currency markets during his time at the finance
ministry, "does not confine himself to narrow needs."

"The IMF hasn't done a good job. It is too rigid and
eurocentric," the prime minister wrote in the Mainichi Daily
News. "It is not looking at the world as a whole but from the
view of Europe and the United States.

"It cannot understand Asian ways. For the IMF there is only
one way. We need to have a person with a broader world view, not
confined to just one ethnic group.

"Sakakibara has enough experience. He has a Western education
and is very familiar with Europeans and Americans, as well as
Asians," Mahathir wrote.

Since quitting his senior bureaucratic post last July,
Sakakibara has been working as a professor at Tokyo's elite Keio
University.

In a straw poll by the IMF executive board in Washington last
Thursday, Sakakibara won only nine percent of the vote to choose
a successor to Michel Camdessus as the Fund's managing director.

Despite U.S. opposition, Germany's deputy finance minister
Caio Koch-Weser finished first with 43 percent of the vote,
followed by interim IMF managing director Stanley Fischer, a US
national, with nearly 12 percent.

Japanese Finance Minister Kiichi Miyazawa hinted after the
vote that Sakakibara might have to pull out of the race.