'Malaysia shouldn’t help Europe on debt crisis'

Europe should sort out its own sovereign-debt problems, said Malaysia's
former prime minister Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad, who as Malaysia’s prime
minister refused to seek International Monetary Fund assistance during
the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis.

“I don’t think Malaysia
should contribute anything,” Mahathir, told reporters today in
Putrajaya. “Why should we? If I’m in the government I won’t.”

European
leaders meeting in Brussels last week to rescue the euro region from
its two-year debt crisis agreed to lend the IMF as much as 200 billion
euros (US$266 billion), opening the way for aid from nations such as
Brazil and South Korea.

Dr Mahathir, who blamed speculators
including George Soros for a plunge in the Malaysian ringgit, drew the
ire of the IMF when he rejected the lender’s call for spending cuts and
interest-rate increases and instead imposed capital controls and a
currency peg in 1998.





“They tried to bankrupt us before when they undermined our currency,” Dr
Mahathir said today, without elaborating. “Now they are having the same
dose of medicine, so let them solve it,” he said, referring to Europe.
-- Bloomberg