Mahathir hits out at India for invading, occupying Kashmir – Newspaper

NEW YORK: Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said Friday that, despite UN resolutions on Jammu and Kahsmir, the territory has been invaded and occupied.

“There may be reasons for this action, but it is still wrong. The problem must be solved by peaceful means. India should work with Pakistan to solve this problem, ”he said in his speech to the UN General Assembly.

"Ignoring the UN would lead to other forms of contempt for the UN and the rule of law," he said.

He urged greater international control of sanctions, criticizing the United States' attempts to force all countries to stop doing business with Iran.

“We don't know under what laws the sanctions apply. It seems to be the privilege of the rich and the powerful, ”said the 94-year-old open leader.

"If you want to have sanctions, let us have a law to govern them," he said.

“The fact is that when sanctions are applied to one country, other countries are also sanctioned. Malaysia and many others lost a big market when sanctions were applied to Iran. "

The United States has increasingly used sanctions as a diplomatic tool, with President Donald Trump threatening to punish other nations if they buy oil from Iran.

Seeking to curb Iran's regional influence, Trump unilaterally imposed the sanctions after moving away from a multinational nuclear agreement.

Speaking to reporters after his speech, Mahathir acknowledged that Malaysian companies had few other options to fulfill for fear of being hit by US sanctions.

"In general, the world is helpless," he said.

Mahathir also renewed his criticism of the Transpacific Association, an 11-nation trade pact that includes Malaysia but from which Trump withdrew to the United States.

“Rich companies had given themselves the power to sue governments. The terms of the agreement were drawn up by them, and not everyone is like Bill Gates, who spends some money on charity, ”he said.

"The majority are determined to exploit the power that money gives them," he said.

Malaysia does not want to take a confrontational stance towards China over the disputed South China Sea and Beijing's alleged mistreatment of its Uighur Muslim minority, Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said in an interview published on Saturday.

Malaysia is too small to face the Asian power, although Chinese ships that inspect their waters for oil and gas in the South China Sea do so without permission, he told an online news service during a Visit to New York this week.

"We observe what they are doing, we report what they are doing, but we do not scare them away or try to be aggressive," Mahathir told BenarNews.

“The Malaysian states have existed near China for the past 2,000 years. We have survived because we know how to conduct ourselves. We don't try to be aggressive when we don't have the capacity, so we use other means. "

He said that in the past Malaysia used to send China "gold and silver flowers every year as a symbol that we are practically, well, subordinate to them." This month, China and Malaysia agreed to establish a joint dialogue mechanism for the South China Sea, as ties between countries improve. China is the largest trading partner of Malaysia.

Mahathir also said that the power of China was the reason why the Muslim majority in Malaysia did not speak much against Beijing's alleged repression of Uighur Muslims.

"Not only do you try to do something that will fail anyway, so it is better to find other less violent ways of not antagonizing China too much, because China is beneficial to us," he said.

"Of course, he is a great business partner of ours and you don't want to do something that will fail, and in the process, too, we will suffer." The United Nations says that at least 1 million ethnic Uighurs and other Muslims have been detained in what China describes as "vocational training centers" to end extremism and give people new skills.

Posted on Dawn, September 29, 2019