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.