August 17, 1991 6:59 am
Ferney-Voltaire, France
A story has appeared in the Malaysian press reporting that the
Prime Minister of that country, Datuk Seri Dr Mahathir Mohamad, has
announced that Malaysia will not attend the Earth Summit in Brazil.
News of the announcement swept through the Third PrepCom for
the UNCED late yesterday afternoon causing a flurry of diplomatic
activity.
The Bernama News Service For Malaysian Diplomatic Missions,
which carries edited versions of Malaysian news articles, reported
the following stories:
MAHATHIR: WE WILL NOT ATTEND EARTH SUMMIT IN BRAZIL
Prime Minister Datuk Seri Dr Mahathir Mohamad today indicated
that Malaysia will not attend the Earth Summit in Brazil next year.
He said that if the international environmental movements had
already decided to oust Malysia from the world,"there is no longer
a need for us to attend."
"If this is their intention, it is therefore not a conference
to seek a solution to environmental problems. We all know that our
environment is polluted by the industrialised nations, not by
Malaysia."
"But they insist on this for political mileage," he told
reporters after opening the 18th annual general meeting of the
Malaysian College of General Practitioners in Petaling Jaya.
He was referring to a report which states that Malaysia has
been chosen as the first target of international hatred and
hysteria. According to the report, this is because Malaysia is a
small, isolated and a more vulnerable country. (see story below)
ENVIRONMENTALISTS LAUNCH GLOBAL WAR ON MALAYSIA
In what promises to be another in an escalating series of wars
against sovereign governments, the environmentalist movement has
launched a global assault on Malaysia.
On July 5, eight environmentalists assaulted and took over
several log barges and cranes in the state of Sarawak, to protest
the harvesting of timber.
The assault and subsequent arrest of the perpertrators have
been used to mobilise environmentalists worldwide to put pressure
on Western governments to ban the importation of wood and other
products from Malaysia.
Although Malaysia is the immediate target, the
environmentalists have made it clear that Indonesia is to follow
soon, and the ultimate target is Brazil and India, yet too powerful
to challenge.
The war against Malaysia is part of a sequence of actions
scheduled to take place before the UN Earth Summit in Brazil in
June next year.
------------------ end of Malaysian press report
At the end of the day yesterday the area surrounding the
Malaysian chair in Working Group I at PrepCom III was quite busy.
Representatives of various governments, the press and members of
the UNCED Secretariat were huddled around the Malaysian
representatives. Maurice Strong's office issued an official
statement regarding the affair, saying that no word had officially
reached his office of Malaysia's decision. Many NGOs said that it
was a bargaining attempt by Malaysia to gain leverage in the
upcoming negotiations. In a more plausible explanation, given by a
Western diplomat familiar with Malayasia, the announcement was
given little importance. He said that in the past the Prime Minister
has frequently announced that his country would not attend
international conferences and that this has little to do with
whether they actually would attend or not.