KUALA LUMPUR, 7 October 2003 — Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, who retires this month after 22 years in power, said yesterday the worst moment of his political career was having to sack Anwar Ibrahim, his deputy and friend, in 1998.

The humiliation of Anwar, who challenged Mahathir and was subsequently jailed for 15 years on charges of sodomy and abuse of power, split Malaysia’s majority ethnic Muslim Malays and for a time made Mahathir an outcast in the West.

“A lot of people were saying that I was deliberately getting rid of him. I had no such intention at all but I had to have some responsibility for the future,” Mahathir said in a lengthy interview with The Star English-language daily.

“If someone is going to succeed me, he must be of some good character,” he said, mentioning Anwar several times by name — something he rarely does. Because of that I had to take an action which I hated very much because he was, after all, a friend.

“So that was something that was a very big regret,” he said, when asked what his toughest moment had been. Mahathir fired Anwar as the Asian financial crisis raged, and imposed capital and currency controls directly at odds with measures proposed by the International Monetary Fund. Anwar, who was finance minister as well as deputy prime minister, had been following the IMF’s recommendations.

Anwar was arrested less than three weeks later, after he led thousands of people in anti-government street protests. The IMF has since accepted that Mahathir’s formula worked.

Anwar’s trials were condemned by domestic critics and Western powers including the United States as politically driven. His appeals continue, but Mahathir washed his hands of the case: “That is not for me to decide. He did something, he broke the law.”

As Mahathir prepares to step down, the 78-year-old also addressed critics who say he indulged in nepotism, particularly toward his eldest son Mirzan. “I give them no support at all. They never apply to me because they know I will not approve,” he told The Star.

Mahathir also said yesterday Israel was becoming an unstoppable force as he condemned its incursion into Syria. Mahathir said Israel was inflaming the Middle East problem “and making things more difficult.”

Israel on Sunday launched an air attack in Syria on what it said was a militant camp used by Islamic Jihad, which carried out a deadly suicide attack in Israel a day earlier. It was the deepest military strike by Israel inside Syria since the Yom Kippur war 30 years ago.

“These things will never end,” said Mahathir, the 77-year-old veteran Southeast Asian leader. He was speaking in Bali, where he will attend a summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) today and tomorrow. Asked what could stop Israel, he said: “The only people who could stop Israel will be America but Israel now even defies America.”

Meanwhile, flash floods worsened in Malaysia’s northern states yesterday, with about 25,000 people evacuated from their homes and two deaths reported after four days of incessant rain, police and news reports said. A 14-year-old girl drowned while playing in floodwaters in Kedah, where waters rose above 3.7 meters (12.14 feet) in some places, Malaysia’s Bernama news agency said.

It said nearly 14,000 people had to be rescued and placed in relief centers in Kedah, often described as Malaysia’s “rice bowl” for its abundant paddy fields. About 1,000 students sitting for examinations in Kedah spent the night in their schools on Sunday as officials feared for their safety, the New Straits Times said. Police told Reuters that an eight-year-old boy had drowned over the weekend in Penang, the island state that is the nation’s high-tech centre and a popular tourist destination.

About 10,000 evacuated their homes in Penang, which houses several US electronic firms such as Intel and Advanced Micro Devices and is dubbed Malaysia’s “Silicon Valley”.