KUALA LUMPUR, 10 August 2003 — Weapon sales by rich countries were responsible for the proliferation of wars, Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said yesterday.
The outspoken veteran leader said wars were being waged as an excuse to try out new weapons. “If there is no war then all these very expensive weapons would be a waste,” Mahathir told a peace conference in the Malaysian capital.
“Off and on a fairly major war would be launched deliberately for no very good reason. And the weapons are gleefully used in these real life tests.”
Mahathir, a fierce critic of the US-led war on Iraq, accused “high pressure arms salesmen” of forcing poor nations to buy weapons.
“To encourage (poor countries to buy), it was pointed out that their neighbors have already bought or are about to buy these weapons,” he said.
The 77-year old, who steps down in October after 22 years at the helm, earned US President George W. Bush’s praise a year ago for his help in the war against terror and has clamped down on Islamic radicals in mainly Muslim Malaysia.
But Mahathir raised the ire of Washington earlier this year with his stinging criticism of US foreign policy.
The veteran leader remained unflinching in his rebuke of the United States yesterday.
“While frustrated and angry young people crashed their aircraft into buildings, killing a few thousand innocent people, the retaliation that this triggered is no less brutal, killing innumerable innocent people, unconnected with Sept. 11,” Mahathir said.
Although not specific data was immediately available, Malaysia has boosted defense spending in recent years, allotting billions of dollars on new US and Russian jet fighters, submarines and Polish tanks among others. Last Tuesday Malaysia signed a $900 million deal to buy 18 Sukhoi Su-30MKs from Russia.
At the press conference, Mahathir pressed for democratic reforms in the United Nations so that the world would not always live in fear of war. He said the “risk of being invaded and occupied is real” because no one dared to criticize powerful countries.
He said it was unfortunate that countries had to invest heavily in defense because “warlike predators” remained in the world.
“Peace is possible if we make exceptions for no one in terms of submission to the only international authority that we have, the United Nations,” the Malaysian premier said.
“It is presently not a democratic organization, prevented from being so by the very people who preach democracy but it is still the only international authority that we have. We have to make it work. And it can work if powerful countries restore its credibility by respecting it and the decisions made by it,” he said.
Mahathir also condemned Islamic terrorist groups, saying Muslims can only fight in self-defense but “many Muslims invoke Islam when they commit un-Islamic things.”
He renewed a call for the rich to be taxed as part of “affirmative action” to narrow wealth gap between countries and to curb terrorism.
