Preliminary talks on Muslim unity go ahead

Preliminary talks on Muslim unity go ahead

KUALA LUMPUR (Agencies): Preliminary talks between Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad's party and a powerful opposition group went ahead on Friday after earlier being called off by officials on the government side.

Officials from Mahathir's United Malays National Organization, or UMNO, and the fundamentalist Pan-Malaysia Islamic Party, PAS, met for almost two hours Friday afternoon to discuss details of a planned leaders' meeting on ways to heal political rifts among the country's predominant Muslim community.

Earlier Friday, an UMNO official said the meeting would not go ahead. Officials leaving Friday's talks did not explain the turnaround or give details of what was discussed. "The talks went OK," PAS secretary-general Nasharudin Mat Isa told reporters as he left the meeting. He did not elaborate.

Mahathir earlier this week announced that he and an UMNO delegation would meet with PAS leaders on Monday.

PAS on Thursday accused Mahathir of pre-empting an announcement on the talks and threatened to pull out unless he agreed to put sensitive political topics such as alleged violation of democracy, the government's management of the economy and the jailing of former deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim on the agenda.

PAS officials said after Friday's meeting that UMNO officials wrote to the opposition group apologizing for announcing leaders' talks before officials on both sides were ready.

Mahathir has said the talks should focus on unity among ethnic Malay Muslims, who make up 60 percent of the population of this Southeast Asian country of 22 million people.

PAS delegates would be free to raise any topic they wished at the talks, Mahathir said, but he did not agree to any agenda. PAS leaders on Thursday accused Mahathir of ignoring their demands.

Mahathir has been cautiously courting PAS since it made inroads into UMNO's powerbase among Muslim Malays at 1999 elections, forcing the prime minister to rely on the support of non-Malay parties in the governing National Front coalition.

PAS, which controls two of Malaysia's 13 states, tripled its seats in Parliament at the elections and made gains in several other Malay Muslim provinces including Mahathir's home state of Kedah.

Support for Mahathir has been waning since he fired Anwar in 1998 during disputes about the government's economic policies. Anwar was later convicted at two trials of corruption and sodomy and is serving jail terms totaling 15 years.

Anwar says his treatment was part of a political conspiracy to block his ascent to power. Mahathir says he fired his former protege for immorality.

The opposition says Anwar's treatment has cost UMNO support among Muslim Malays.

Meanwhile, the editor of a Malaysian news website critical of Mahathir's government said on Friday there was a deliberate campaign to discredit it.

"We're feeling the pressure (but) we're not worried," Steve Gan, editor of malaysiakini.com (Malaysia Now), told Reuters. "I don't see them coming down hard on us. I think their aim is to discredit us."

Malaysiakini reporters were blocked from a Mahathir press conference on Thursday, said Gan, who in December received the International Press Freedom Award from the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists.

He said the government could not afford to shut down the site as it had promised international investors in Malaysia's high- tech industry that it would not censor the Internet.

Foreign Minister Syed Hamid Almar on Thursday accused malaysiakini of "unethical" and unprincipled reporting.

He also advised the United States embassy, which recently bought an ad on the site, to "exercise wisdom" when dealing with malaysiakini.

Syed Hamid also swiped at a former U.S. ambassador to Kuala Lumpur, John Malott, who left Malaysia in December 1998 and occasionally writes letters to malaysiakini.

The minister accused Malott of overstepping diplomatic protocol in his support for former deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim, who is serving 15 years in jail for corruption and sodomy after challenging Mahathir's leadership.