Former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad yesterday lashed out at Australia's participation in next week's inaugural East Asia Summit, saying Canberra will pressure Asian countries into accepting Washington's views on issues such as trade and globalization.
Mahathir, who had conceived of an East Asian caucus as a way to counter US influence in the region, appeared bitter that his vision has been corrupted with the entry of Australia and New Zealand, two culturally European nations that are close allies of Washington.
"Australia is basically European and it has made clear to the rest of the world that it is the deputy sheriff for America," Mahathir told reporters.
"Therefore Australia's views would represent not the East, but the views representing the stand of America," he said.
He predicted that the East Asia Summit in Kuala Lumpur on Dec. 14 will not find a common voice on anything because of the two Pacific nations' presence, as well as Japan's pro-US policies.
"I am not very optimistic because East Asian countries tend to yield to strong pressures, which makes the whole grouping quite useless," he said.
The East Asia Summit originally was planned as a gathering of the 10 countries that form ASEAN plus China, Japan and South Korea. But it was expanded to include India, Australia and New Zealand after ASEAN decided against a narrow geographical definition of East Asia.
Mahathir, who stepped down in October 2003 after 22 years in power, said the new grouping no longer honors his vision of "a consultative group where people of East Asia can sit around the table and take a common stand on WTO and globalization."
"I have always opposed the idea of Australia and New Zealand being in the group simply because Australia and New Zealand are not really East nor are they Asian," Mahathir said.
"I am afraid that knowing Asians -- who are always very polite and do not like to appear to be recalcitrant -- the views of Australia are likely to dominate this East Asian-Australasian grouping," he said.
This comment showed that he has not forgotten the description by Australia's then-prime minister Paul Keating of Mahathir as recalcitrant in 1993. Keating's remark plunged Malaysia-Australia relations to an all-time low and led to Mahathir's visceral dislike for Australia.
Mahathir also warned that Japan might be US spokesman in the East Asia Summit.
"We cannot take Japan's stand as being East Asian. It is likely to reflect Japan's very strong relations with the United States," he said.
Mahathir said India's participation was fine because it is Asian.
In months, Lo Yuet-ping would bid farewell to a centuries-old village he has called home in Hong Kong for more than seven decades. The Cha Kwo Ling village in east Kowloon is filled with small houses built from metal sheets and stones, as well as old granite buildings, contrasting sharply with the high-rise structures that dominate much of the Asian financial hub. Lo, 72, has spent his entire life here and is among an estimated 860 households required to move under a government redevelopment plan. He said he would miss the rich history, unique culture and warm interpersonal kindness that defined life in
AERIAL INCURSIONS: The incidents are a reminder that Russia’s aggressive actions go beyond Ukraine’s borders, Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said Two NATO members on Sunday said that Russian drones violated their airspace, as one reportedly flew into Romania during nighttime attacks on neighboring Ukraine, while another crashed in eastern Latvia the previous day. A drone entered Romanian territory early on Sunday as Moscow struck “civilian targets and port infrastructure” across the Danube in Ukraine, the Romanian Ministry of National Defense said. It added that Bucharest had deployed F-16 warplanes to monitor its airspace and issued text alerts to residents of two eastern regions. It also said investigations were underway of a potential “impact zone” in an uninhabited area along the Romanian-Ukrainian border. There
A French woman whose husband has admitted to enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her while she was drugged on Thursday told his trial that police had saved her life by uncovering the crimes. “The police saved my life by investigating Mister Pelicot’s computer,” Gisele Pelicot told the court in the southern city of Avignon, referring to her husband — one of 51 of her alleged abusers on trial — by only his surname. Speaking for the first time since the extraordinary trial began on Monday, Gisele Pelicot, now 71, revealed her emotion in almost 90 minutes of testimony, recounting her mysterious
The governor of Ohio is to send law enforcement and millions of dollars in healthcare resources to the city of Springfield as it faces a surge in temporary Haitian migrants. Ohio Governor Mike DeWine on Tuesday said that he does not oppose the Temporary Protected Status program under which about 15,000 Haitians have arrived in the city of about 59,000 people since 2020, but said the federal government must do more to help affected communities. On Monday, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost directed his office to research legal avenues — including filing a lawsuit — to stop the federal government from sending
RSS