Malaysia’s Mahathir denies paying Abramoff

KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) – Former Malaysian prime minister
Mahathir Mohamad said lobbyists may have paid to arrange his
2002 meeting with President George W Bush, but denied any money
came from his government, Bernama news agency reported.

Mahathir said his White House meeting with Bush in May 2002
was arranged by a U.S. think-tank, the Heritage Foundation, to
discuss foreign policy issues, the agency said late on Monday.

“I understood some people paid a sum of money to lobbyists
in America but I do not know who these people were and it was
not the Malaysian government,” Mahathir, who retired in late
2003, told reporters on Monday in the northern state of Penang.

Mahathir said it was the practice of the U.S. government to
ask people who wanted to meet the president to use the services
of lobbyists and this was not viewed as a form of corruption,
Bernama added.

Bush welcomed Mahathir to the Oval office as an ally in the
U.S.-led war on terrorism following the September 11 suicide
airliner attacks, despite the outspoken premier’s frequent
criticism of Washington and the West.

The Los Angeles Times reported on February 15 that Malaysia
had sought the help of Abramoff, a major fund-raiser for Bush’s
2004 re-election campaign, to arrange the Mahathir-Bush
meeting.

The newspaper reported that Abramoff may have helped
arrange the meeting and received $1.2 million for his efforts.

Abramoff pleaded guilty in January to fraud charges and
agreed to help prosecutors in a corruption probe that has
generated bipartisan calls in the U.S. Congress for tighter
lobbying laws.

Mahathir had rocky ties with the administration of former
President Bill Clinton, which harshly criticised the 1998
jailing of former deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim.

Anwar, freed from jail by Mahathir’s successor Prime
Minister Abdullah Badawi, was beaten by Malaysia’s former
police chief while in custody and convicted of sodomy and abuse
of power in trials that human rights groups and some Western
nations condemned as politically driven.

Abramoff or his clients contributed campaign money to both
Republicans and Democrats, but most of the money went to
Republicans and Abramoff himself was a major fund-raiser for
Bush’s 2004 re-election campaign.

Democrats seeking to win back control of Congress in the
November elections have made Abramoff the centerpiece of their
charge that Republicans have a culture of corruption.