Mahathir's visit to boost relations with Australia
Mahathir's visit to boost relations with Australia
CANBERRA (Reuter): Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad will visit Australia this month for the first time in 12 years, heralding a dramatic turnaround in relations, Prime Minister John Howard said yesterday.
Mahathir, a frequent critic of Australia and its bid for a greater role in Asia, will briefly visit on March 25 en route to New Zealand and again on March 29 on his way home.
"This indicates the importance my government attaches to Australia's relationship with Malaysia," Howard, who took office on Monday, told reporters.
Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, who will meet Mahathir on his first stopover, said the visit underlined the new conservative Liberal-National government's Asian commitment and would help repair Canberra's battered ties with Kuala Lumpur.
"It's a relationship that has taken a bit of a beating over the last few years...it's a relationship that needs to be worked on in a constructive way and the coalition government will be doing that," Downer said.
"I think it is symbolically an extremely important visit because it illustrates our commitment to the region," he said.
"It illustrates the fact that we have a new government in Australia which is going to put many of the problems we've had in bilateral relationships with the region behind us."
Mahathir's visit was sealed after a meeting earlier yesterday between the Malaysian leader and a special Australian envoy, former foreign affairs department chief Richard Woolcott.
Downer said detailed agendas had not yet been set, but a range of multilateral and bilateral issues would be raised.
Reaffirming his government's commitment to boosting Asian links, Downer said Mahathir's visit disproved ousted Labor prime minister Paul Keating's claim that regional leaders would not work with a Liberal-National government in Australia.
"Mr Keating made an allegation that Asian leaders wouldn't deal with a coalition government. It's taken us three and a half days to prove him wrong," Downer said.
Malaysia-Australian relations have been rocky through the 1990s, fueled by personal rows between Mahathir and former Labor prime ministers Bob Hawke and Keating.
Mahathir has not visited Australia since he opened Malaysia's High Commission in 1984 and Keating's visit to Kuala Lumpur in January was the first official tour by an Australian leader in 14 years.
Australia-Malaysia bilateral trade is growing an average 20 percent a year, hitting US$2.6 billion in the fiscal year to June 30, 1995.
Australia's Transfield Shipbuilding is a leading contender for a US$1.5 billion contract to build Malaysian naval patrol vessels, one of the region's biggest pending defense deals.
Downer said Australia may raise the Transfield bid in his talks with Mahathir on March 25 in Darwin, or the scheduled Howard-Mahathir lunch in Brisbane on March 29.
He said Canberra would soften its stand on Malaysia's proposal for an East Asian Economic Caucus excluding regional European countries such as Australia and New Zealand.
Keating sparked a trade-threatening row in 1993 when he called Mahathir recalcitrant for boycotting the inaugural Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum leaders' meeting.