Albright Brooks No Criticism From APEC Host

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia —  Secretary of State Madeleine Albright had flown 20 hours nonstop, spent an exhausting night working the phones on Iraq, endured a numbing day of talk on trade and tariffs, and was rushing to catch another 20-hour flight home.

So Albright was understandably testy Sunday afternoon when a Malaysian government minister criticized her planned meeting with the wife of Anwar Ibrahim, the former deputy prime minister who is imprisoned here on charges of sodomy and abuse of power.

“Maybe perhaps when I go to the States, I’d like to meet Ken Starr,” Rafidah Abdul Aziz, Malaysia’s minister of international trade and industry, told a crowded news conference in Kuala Lumpur, the capital.

“He is not in prison!” Albright snapped back, her face hard and cold.

That tart exchange fairly captured the tense climate that Vice President Al Gore will step into here when he arrives today as stand-in for President Clinton at the 21-member Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit. In few capitals this side of Baghdad is U.S. policy on human rights, economics and Iraq so openly criticized.

Earlier Sunday, for example, Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad repeated both his staunch opposition to U.S. policy on Iraq and his annoyance at Albright and other foreign officials who met with Anwar’s wife, Wan Azizah Wan Ismail.

“Other people want to set agendas for us,” Mahathir complained at a news conference of his own. “Other people think interfering in other people’s affairs is legitimate.”

In a speech, Mahathir also fiercely defended his decision in September to effectively withdraw from global free markets by imposing strict currency exchange controls. The move put him in open defiance of APEC, the International Monetary Fund and Washington-led efforts to liberalize world trade.

As he has before, Mahathir blamed the “greed” of international currency traders, rather than misguided policies, for Asia’s economic meltdown.

“Allegations about bad governments . . . are just excuses,” he said.

U.S. officials have grown increasingly impatient with the prickly prime minister, whose 17-year rule has become steadily more authoritarian. To show outrage at what Washington sees as persecution of Anwar--who until he was fired Sept. 2 was widely regarded as Mahathir’s likely successor--Albright held no bilateral meetings with any Malaysian officials during her visit, in a rare and direct snub to the host of an international forum. Nor does Gore plan to formally meet any Malaysian official.

“Anwar Ibrahim is a highly respected leader,” Albright told the APEC news conference. “We believe he is entitled to due process and a fair trial.”

That led to Rafidah’s icy comment and, later, to a withering response from James P. Rubin, the State Department spokesman.

“That comparison with Ken Starr was pathetic,” Rubin said. “It says more about them than anything I’ve heard. And that’s on the record.”

Albright’s 30-minute chat later Sunday with Azizah and her 18-year-old daughter, Nurul Izzah, took place without incident over tea and cookies in a plush hotel drawing room. An aide later said Albright told Azizah that she was “appalled” at Anwar’s mistreatment.

“The symbolism of this meeting is very important,” the aide said, adding that Washington is seeking to show concern about the Anwar matter at the highest levels and that Azizah “wants to be assured this case is alive in the court of world opinion.”

Shortly after the meeting, and after only 24 hours on the ground here, Albright boarded a special long-range Air Force jet back to Washington. She had planned to spend a week in Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia but cut the trip short to attend to the Iraq crisis. Clinton sent Gore in his stead so he too could focus on Iraq.

Clinton’s no-show pleased at least one delegation. Philippine officials are convinced, apparently without proof, that Clinton used a gift from then-President Fidel V. Ramos--a Philippine cigar--in one of his more notorious dalliances with former White House intern Monica S. Lewinsky.

Clinton was supposed to meet here with Philippine President Joseph Estrada, a onetime B-movie actor who has admitted fathering four children out of wedlock as well as engaging in heavy drinking and brawling during his former career.

“I’m sure Estrada will ask him about the cigar,” a Philippine diplomat worried aloud last week in Washington. “He’s bound to make some crack.”

Estrada, in fact, has taken the lead among Asian leaders in criticizing the jailing of Anwar, a personal friend. Mahathir’s government refused Estrada’s request to visit Anwar in prison, but the Philippine leader was expected to meet with Azizah. Reaching her won’t be easy, however. Her home phone was cut Sunday, according to two people at the family compound, a red-roofed hilltop villa in a leafy suburb.

Two Canadian officials, Foreign Minister Lloyd Axworthy and International Trade Minister Sergio Marchi, met with Azizah on Saturday and later expressed concern about Anwar’s treatment. Unable to contain his pique, Mahathir told reporters that he was equally concerned about human rights in Canada. Pressed to explain, he noted that Canada was originally inhabited by Indians but that he didn’t see “any Indians” in Canada’s APEC delegation.

A slight, soft-spoken eye doctor who wears conservative Muslim garb, Azizah has quietly if reluctantly assumed the mantle of her husband’s nascent political reform movement since he was jailed Sept. 20, after he was fired and began leading mass protests against Mahathir.

Anwar has denied all 10 charges against him and insists that he is the victim of a political vendetta orchestrated by Mahathir, his former friend and political mentor, to stop him from exposing corruption. Anwar’s trial has been recessed until the thousands of delegates and journalists gathered here for the APEC forum leave town. But the uproar over his case threatened to overshadow the APEC meetings.

After several weeks of quiet, Anwar’s followers took to the steamy streets of this gleaming capital Saturday night and Sunday to protest his jailing and demand Mahathir’s resignation.

“There’s no justice in Malaysia,” said Jeya Kumar, one of about 150 anti-government protesters who stood beside a busy street Sunday waving placards and chanting “Mahathir must go!” Passing cars honked in support, and a police helicopter circled overhead.

Later, witnesses said, riot police used a water cannon to disperse protesters. No injuries were reported.