Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad lashed out at western critics of his rule on yesterday, delivering a stinging attack on globalisation and its effect on poor countries.

In addition, Mahathir demanded that the United Nations' most powerful members restructure the UN Security Council as a demonstration of their commitment to freedom and fairness by moving to eliminate veto power.

Mahathir, making his final address to the UN General Assembly before stepping down next month, accused the United States and Europe of seeking to re-colonise the world with excessive and unwarranted demands on countries that have gained independence since World War II.

"As independent nations we believe we have a right to manage our internal affairs ourselves without foreign interference," said Mahathir, whose regime has been criticised for increasingly authoritarianism and human rights abuses.

"We admit that there are abuses in the management of our countries by some of our governments," he said.

"But our detractors should remember that they have also abused their government's power when they seized land belonging to the indigenous people and exterminated them, claiming that it was their 'manifest destiny,' 'the white man's burden' to bring civilisation," Mahathir said.

Puppet regimes

He said the world was now witnessing a "resurgence in European imperialism" aimed at the physical occupation of countries as well seeking their financial ruin.

"Today, we are actually faced by the old physical occupation by foreign forces, puppet regimes are installed dancing as puppets," Mahathir said.

He said the United Nations had been eviscerated by powerful states bent on controlling the world.

"It's organs have been cut out, dissected and re-shaped so they preform the way the puppet masters want," Mahathir said, adding that the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the World Trade Organisation had been "turned into instruments of hegemony to impoverish the poor, to enrich the rich."

Mahathir, who has had a running battle with famed international financier George Soros since the 1997 Asian financial crisis, also renewed attacks on currency traders and other speculators, calling them "brigands" and "highwaymen."

He called for the creation of an international commission to set exchange rates and a ban on all but nominal commissions for currency traders.

Abolish veto power

Mahathir then said it was time to begin a radical structuring of the Security Council.

"If we want to have democracy, the rule of law and respect for human rights, the powerful must demonstrate their commitment to all these noble ideas and they can begin by restructuring of the United Nations," he said.

In particular he said the current system in which the five permanent Security Council members wield veto power should be abolished in favour of a scheme in which two permanent members would have to secure the support of three elected members to block a resolution.

"The veto powers vested on countries which had won a war 50 years ago should be removed," Mahathir told reporters after his address.

In time, though, even that revised system should be scrapped in favour of majority votes, he said. - AFP