THE current international system was such that the world could do nothing to compel Indonesia to bring a halt to recurrent widespread burning of agricultural land that resulted in transboundary air pollution, Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad said.

The same applied to the forest fires of Brazil, he said.

“As you know the new president of Brazil believes in burning the forest for more agriculture and nobody has stopped him yet. So I think the system does not allow us to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries,” he said, yesterday, at the World Leaders Forum at Columbia University in New York.

“You can blame Indonesia, you can criticise them but they’ll continue to have their fires.”

Dr Mahathir was responding to a question on whether stronger actions such as economic sanctions were needed to address the smoke problem originating from Indonesia that regularly plagued the Southeast Asian region.

He said there would come a time when forest fires grew so severe that the whole world was enveloped in smoke.

“At that time I think the United Nations might say, well, this is not a national problem, this is not a domestic affair (any longer), this is a problem for the world, and that the world should exercise the right to take action.

“If we have that frame of mind, then we can do something, (such as) when somebody refuses to accept help to put out the fires, for example,” Dr Mahathir said, alluding to Indonesia’s stubborn  rejection of repeated offers of fire-fighting assistance from its neighbours Malaysia and Singapore.

But for now, the prime minister said “the UN can do nothing, but we should try persuasion.”

He said as the Indonesians were also choking on the smoke, perhaps their government would take a more serious view of its uncontrolled forest fires. – Bernama, September 26, 2019.