Mahathir gives last UN speech

Mahathir gives last UN speech

Ranjan Roy, Associated Press, United Nations

For two decades, Malaysia's Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad has
used almost every international podium to lambast the West,
winning a reputation as a loud, and often blunt, champion of
Third World causes.

On Thursday, when Mahathir, now 77, speaks at the U.N. General
Assembly's annual ministerial gathering of 191 nations, he is
likely to do the same -- but for the last time to the world body.

After ruling the Southeast Asian nation for 22 years with a
firm hand, Mahathir has promised to hand over power next month to
his deputy, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, a mild-mannered politician who
was a longtime foreign minister.

With his prickly views and plain talk, Mahathir has etched
himself a place in global forums and rarely failed to accuse the
West of either trying to re-colonize its erstwhile subject states
or using trade rules to create an economic playing field where
the poor Asian and African countries always lost.

He has decried the U.S.-led war on terrorism as an excuse to
attack Muslims and accuses Washington of ignoring the root causes
of terrorism, especially the suffering of Palestinians which he
says feeds a sense of injustice in the Islamic world.

Only two surviving big-name leaders have lasted longer than
Mahathir -- Cuba's Fidel Castro and Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe.

Though he has amassed more power to himself than any of his
predecessors, he is no dictator, winning national elections five
times as head of a multi-racial coalition of parties.

Mahathir's comments and actions have rarely hurt Malaysia.
He has transformed his country into one of the richest in Asia,
and the United States is Malaysia's number-one trading partner.

Despite his outspoken criticism of globalization, Malaysia
remains a major exporter of electronics goods, palm oil and other
products and an attractive area for foreign investment and
tourism.

Mahathir was perhaps at his vitriolic best - or worst - after
currencies and stock prices started tumbling and foreign
investors pulled out of Asia in 1997.

He railed at George Soros and "rogue speculators" and accused
them of trying to destroy Asian economies. He charged the West of
plotting to re-colonize the East through economic control.

As contemporaries like Gen. Suharto fell in neighboring
Indonesia, Mahathir rejected free-market conventional wisdom and
imposed capital controls that protected Malaysia from the worst
of the crisis.

By 2001, Malaysia had recovered faster than many countries in
the region and Mahathir had been vindicated for rejecting the
International Monetary Fund's fit-all prescription of tight
monetary controls and squeezing public expenditure. Even the IMF
has since said he was right.

Mahathir also said he suspected the financial crisis might
stem from a Jewish "agenda," saying Jews "are not happy to see
the Muslims progress."

Love him or hate him, his speeches are frequently the
liveliest at international forums he attends. And because of his
successful track record in Malaysia, people listen to Mahathir
more than many other developing world leaders.

At the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in October
2001 in Shanghai, Mahathir warned against "being led by the nose,
by well-meaning and not-so-well-meaning missionaries" of Western-
style globalization.

APEC's 21 members include the world's biggest economies, the
United States and Japan, as well as some of the more vocal
developing nations, particularly Malaysia.

After the World Trade Organization talks collapsed last month
in Cancun, Mexico, Mahathir said rich nations "completely
disregard our views and want to decide according to their own
advantage."

"If no one is allowed to talk, then the rich countries will
get their way," said Mahathir.

In January at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland,
the Malaysian leader charged U.S. President George W. Bush was
trying to "out-terrorize the terrorists" with an ill-directed war
on al-Qaeda and the "axis of evil."

In his inaugural address at the summit of the 116-member
Nonaligned Movement this year, Mahathir urged member states to
join the millions of anti-war protesters in the West in opposing
war in Iraq.

He accused the West of ignoring Islamic world frustration over
the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which he said was a root cause
of the Sept. 11 attacks. "The blatant double standards is what
infuriates Muslims, infuriates them to the extent of launching
their own terror attacks," Mahathir said.

During a luncheon speech with some members of the U.S.
Congress last year, Mahathir blamed the West for being
"impatient" in demanding democracy in other countries.

"The West is very impatient. You want an overnight change," he
said. "Sudden change, even if it is for the good, is disruptive.
Democracy for people who are not used to it can undermine
stability, resulting in war even.

"It is well to remember that democracy is only a means and not
an end in itself," he said. "It is the good life that democracy
brings that counts, not democracy per se."

Mahathir has long been controversial in the United States,
even before he jailed his former deputy prime minister, Anwar
Ibrahim, in 1998.

He has consistently complained about what he considers the
tendency of the West, and specifically the United States, to
force smaller countries to accept alien values. He says
developing countries must evolve their own versions of democracy.

The Bush administration warmed up to Mahathir after the Sept.
11 attacks, however, mainly because his government quickly
rounded up terror suspects.

In Sweden before he arrived in New York, Mahathir was asked
what he would tell the United Nations.

Very typically, he shot back: "What can I say in seven
minutes. It's too short ... you just say the formalities and
after that you can't say anything."