I fully support what Mary Chan has said ('A new McCarthyist witch-hunt', Aug 22) about Amy Ridenour's article in the extreme right-wing Washington Times .

Indeed, Malaysia's trading partners and security allies must take an active interests in the ongoing case of former deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim. The Americans had set a fine example in stopping the McCarthyist witch-hunt in the 1950s and exposed the cynical nature of McCarthyists who exploited the fear of Americans for communist subversion for personal political advantage.

The government and people of America must not allow another McCarthyist witch-hunt to happen in Malaysia as promoted by Ridenour.

The Bush administration must stand firm and principled to share the bipartisan policy with the former Clinton administration vis-a-vis the protection of human rights and democratisation in Asia, and particularly Malaysia. Long-term stability and peace in Asia, especially Southeast Asia can only be safeguarded by economic and political reforms towards greater openness, democratic space and extension of human rights.

Southeast Asia, including Malaysia, is strategically too important to be left in the hands of one perfidious, capricious, profligate and Bolshevik-like autocrat who survives and prospers on pitting one racial and religious groups against another, and East against West, North against South.

However, I personally trust that the outside world will not again (like Neville Chamberlain in the "peace of our time") be duped by the external propaganda of the desperate regime and its scribes.