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."