The Kuala Lumpur High Court today fixed Nov 25 to decide on Anwar Ibrahim's RM100 million defamation suit against New Straits Times Press (M) Bhd.

Judicial Commissioner Harmindar Singh Dhaliwall fixed the date after hearing submissions from lawyer Karpal Singh, acting for the opposition leader, and Nad Segaram representing NSTP.

NONE Anwar's suit was over an article published in the New Straits Times on March 2, 2002, which had claimed that Anwar had stashed RM3 billion in foreign accounts and had foreign links to Western interests.

In his submissions, Karpal argued that New Straits Times (M) Press Bhd - which published the New Straits Times, Berita Harian and Harian Metro - does not practise "responsible journalism". As such, he said, their defence of qualified privilege cannot sustain.

Karpal also said Anwar had testified that the article was baseless, untrue and appeared to make him to be a person of no integrity.

The senior lawyer said Anwar had also publicly challenged the government to conduct an independent inquiry into the allegations as contained in the article.

"It must be noted this evidence was not challenged by the defence and must therefore be deemed accepted," said Karpal.

"Furthermore, it is submitted that Anwar's evidence was also supported by the former Anti-Corruption Agency director of investigations Abdul Razak Idris' testimony and this builds the opposition leader's case," he said.

Yesterday, Abdul Razak testified that the ACA had cleared Anwar of stashing RM3 billion in foreign accounts and having foreign links to Western interests.

He said the ACA had investigated the matter following allegations made in a statutory declaration by former assistant governor of Bank Negara Abdul Murad Khalid.

He added that the case was closed following probes in Singapore and the United Kingdom.

Anwar had sued New Straits Times Press (M) Bhd and its former group editor-in-chief Abdullah Ahmad for RM100 million over an alleged defamatory article - 'Anwar's link to US lobbyist' - which was published on March 2, 2002.

The NSTP article was based on another article - 'The Bush Administration's dubious envoy to Taiwan' - that was published in the political weekly magazine New Republic's March 2002 issue. Anwar filed the suit on July 4, 2003.

Daily: No bad faith

Karpal in his submission also said the author of the NST article, Rose Ismail, had relied on previous articles written on the subject and thus does not enjoy the defence of qualified privilege.

He said that Rose could have sought appointment with Anwar (who was in prison then) to verify the truth. He also added that the writer had failed to mention the fact that the ACA investigations had cleared Anwar.

Meanwhile, NSTP's lead counsel Nad argued the article was not libellous.

"Furthermore, the daily claims it has qualified privilege to publish the article as it was written in a neutral way. It was also a follow-up on the New Republic article," he said.

"The article was written due to the public interests," he added.

Nad dismissed the notion that the daily had acted in mala fide (bad faith) in publishing the article.