Mahathir warns of global trade risks

Mahathir warns of global trade risks

SINGAPORE (Reuters): Malaysia's Prime Minister Mahathir
Mohamad, in his familiar stance as a defender of developing
countries, warned South East Asian nations on Monday to look
after themselves first before backing trade globalisation.

Mahathir, speaking in Singapore after receiving ASEAN
Achievement Millennium Award, said countries in the Association
of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) must first reach a consensus
before giving support to the formulation of a new international
trade and investment regime.

"If ASEAN is to be meaningful it must look after the interest
of all its members," he said.

Mahathir, still furious over currency traders' attack on the
region four years ago, also repeated his verbal attacks on them,
together with developed countries and the World Trade
Organization (WTO).

He said nowhere should ASEAN be more united than in any
negotiation of a new world economic order at the WTO's next
meeting in Doha, Qatar, in November.

The European Union and the United States hope to launch a new
round of world trade liberalization talks in Doha to help boost a
flagging world economy.

"We have had a foretaste of globalization when the currency
traders devalued our currencies and precipitated a financial
crisis of unprecedented severity," he said.

Mahathir said what was frightening was the preparation being
made by "the rich" to take full advantage of the WTO and the free
borderless market.

"We see the huge corporations and banks of the rich already
merging and acquiring each other so that they become colossal and
unbeatable," he said.

"But when business corporations become richer and bigger than
most nation states, they will want to dictate to the whole world
so as to cater to their unlimited greed. Nations will cease to be
independent," Mahathir said.

Singapore's Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew, was also given the
ASEAN award.

In his speech, he said that unless investors could use the
comparative and competitive advantages of ASEAN to manufacture
and carry out final assembly of different products for sale
within ASEAN and for export, the ASEAN region might be sidelined.

"The logic of the situation is simple. If ASEAN is a joint
market of 500 million people, though with less average per capita
purchasing power than China's 1.25 billion, the prospects must be
better for all in ASEAN," Lee said.

Mahathir and Lee were presented with specially struck
medallions bearing their portraits for creating dynamic economies
with political stability.

The WTO's last effort to launch world trade talks collapsed
amid street protests and teargas in Seattle in December 1999,
when countries failed to agree on a negotiating agenda.