Malaysia Leader Assails Liberals of First World : Third World: Prime Minister Mahathir says ‘high priests of democracy’ unfairly impose standards on struggling nations.

Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammed said Friday that First World liberals have become “high priests of democracy” using sanctions, trade restrictions and vicious campaigns to force their standards on struggling nations.

“There is fear that democracy has become the kind of religion that communism became,” Mahathir told the inaugural summit of the Group of 15 on North-South Consultation and Cooperation.

Mahathir, chairman of the three-day conference, blamed the North, or industrialized nations, for the staggering debt problems of the South, or developing world.

With the external debt of the 15 countries amounting to $600 billion of the $1.3 trillion total of all developing nations last year, Mahathir called on the lenders to devise workable solutions “and, if all else fails, to accept losses.”

“You cannot tell a people to live at subsistence levels until they pay off their debts,” Mahathir said.

“Liberal democrats in the West have now set themselves up as the high priests of democracy,” Mahathir charged. “There is a holier-than-thou attitude about them.”

Senegal President Abdou Diouf urged member nations to talk less and initiate more joint efforts for economic advancement.

Saying that cooperation in the South has been non-existent, he said it is up to current leaders to change the situation.

“We have to look for measures for more consistent results and set the guide for all developing countries,” he said.

Echoing Mahathir’s sentiments, Senegal’s president said, “The current international economic situation is not favorable for the Third World and the gap between the North and South is getting wider.”

The group, which includes Algeria, Argentina, Brazil, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Jamaica, Malaysia, Mexico, Nigeria, Peru, Senegal, Venezuela, Yugoslavia and Zimbabwe, was formed in Belgrade last September to explore trade and economic opportunities for the Third World.

“We fully realize that we are weak and we are very dependent on the North,” Mahathir said.

While welcoming the democratic reforms in Eastern Europe, the easing of the Cold War and the impending reunification of West and East Germany, he said, “The simple fact is that most of our problems arise from our relations with the North.

“For the liberal democrats, chaos, instability and retarded economic growth with the accompanying massive and debilitating poverty among their converts are a small price for these people to pay for the liberalism of democracy,” Mahathir said. “Murder and assassinations of citizens are regarded as much more acceptable than any governmental action to prevent violence and instability.

“Sanctions and trade restrictions and vicious campaigns that impoverish the already poor are the weapons they use to force their liberal democratic ideas on those they deem not measuring up to their standards,” he said.

Fearful of a general decline in Western aid to the South in the eagerness to rehabilitate Eastern Europe’s crumbling economies, Mahathir and other summit officials said it is time for the South to initiate its own solutions.

But he expressed hope that the 15-member group would foster a dialogue with the North, “the absence of which has caused the economic gap between North and South to widen further.”

Prime Minister Guillermo Larco-Cox of Peru said he will ask the summit to revive a dialogue with the Group of Seven industrialized countries to solve problems.

President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe said the summit will also consider developments in South Africa and Palestine.