A war of words between Malaysia and Australia warmed up with Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad responding sarcastically to jibes by a leading Australian politician.

Mahathir, told to take a "running jump" over his remark that Australia could not be accepted as an Asian country if it played "deputy sheriff" to the United States, suggested the Australians were arrogant and should pipe down, the official Bernama news agency reported.

"We say less things about Australia than Australians say about us, calling me a dictator, authoritarian government.

"I am the first authoritarian government elected to become a dictator and then resigning as a dictator. So this is the first dictator in the world who has resigned while still quite healthy," Mahathir told reporters on his arrival home from a trip to Europe yesterday.

The row began when Mahathir, who has announced his intention to step down in October next year, told an Australian newspaper in an interview that Australia had gone too far in identifying with US aims and tactics in the war against terrorism.

'Change your ways'

"If you (Australia) take the position of being a sheriff, or deputy sheriff, to America, you cannot very well be accepted by the countries of this region," he said.

This prompted Australian Labor opposition foreign affairs spokesman Kevin Rudd to say in a television interview Monday: "I think frankly it's time the prime minister of Malaysia took a running jump".

Mahathir said yesterday it was possible for Australia to be welcomed in Asia provided it was willing to change its ways but suggested that was unlikely.

"If it chooses to become a truly Asian country and stop giving advice to everybody, assuming that it knows better about other countries than they know about themselves, I think we will welcome them," he said.

But that would be a big change and "I don't think they can achieve it," he said.

Relations between Australia and Malaysia have been strained on numerous occasions and went close to breaking point when then Prime Minister Paul Keating described Mahathir as "recalcitrant" over his refusal to attend an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in the United States a decade ago. AFP