Mahathir accuses Apec of anti-Asian bias

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Updated at 2.08pm:

Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, who is skipping this weekend's annual summit of Pacific Rim leaders, described the grouping as biased against Asia and interested only in prying open markets in the region.

The Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation (Apec) forum ''is either unwilling or powerless to help the East Asian countries during the economic and financial turmoil'', Dr Mahathir wrote in an article published in Tuesday's New Straits Times.

Dr Mahathir last Friday cancelled his trip to Auckland, New Zealand, for the meeting this Sunday and Monday of world leaders, including President Jiang Zemin and US President Bill Clinton.

Few people were surprised, since Dr Mahathir has been a vocal critic of the 21-member group since its inception six years ago.

Deputy Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi will stand in for Dr Mahathir and lead the Malaysian delegation of Cabinet ministers. Foreign Minister Syed Hamid Albar said the move should not be interpreted as a snub to Apec.

Dr Mahathir boycotted Apec's inaugural 1993 summit, saying it was dominated by Western members who weren't considerate of the smaller Asian economies. A year after Apec was launched, Dr Mahathir proposed his own East Asian Economic Caucus, which would exclude the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

But Japan and South Korea never supported the grouping.

''It would seem that Asian countries cannot form their own grouping without the supervising presence of the US, Australia and New Zealand,'' he wrote in Tuesday's column, Dr Mahathir's World Analysis.

While new groupings have emerged in Europe and the Americas, East Asians were not being allowed to form a regional body, Dr Mahathir said. ''If one does not know better, one would be tempted to believe that the opposition to it is racial.''

Apec turned away from aiding collapsing Asian economies and instead delegated the task to ''a lesser organization, the Group of 22'', Dr Mahathir said. [PARA]''Apec is now focused only on prizing open the Asian markets as early as possible,'' he wrote. ''And we all know who will gain from that.''