(AFP) Malaysia hopes to "lessen misunderstanding" with the new US administration of President George W. Bush, Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said today.

He was commenting on his rare meeting Tuesday with US ambassador Lynn Pascoe.

"The US ambassador called on me. I explained the government's stand towards the new US administration," Mahathir told reporters.

"We thought that with the new administration, perhaps we can invigorate our ties with the US and lessen misunderstanding between us and the US," Bernama news agency quoted him as saying.

Mahathir reacted angrily to criticism from the Clinton administration of the treatment of his jailed former deputy Anwar Ibrahim.

He described the then vice president Al Gore as "uncouth" for supporting Anwar's reform movement during a speech at an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit dinner in Kuala Lumpur in 1998.

Political prisoner

Bernama said it was Pascoe's first formal meeting with Mahathir since the ambassador assumed his post in March 1999.

Mahathir, a frequent outspoken critic of the West, said he stressed to Pascoe that Malaysia would remain vocal on issues it felt strongly about. v The US State Department, in its annual worldwide human rights survey published in February, described Anwar as a political prisoner.

He was convicted of abuse of power and sodomy and jailed for a total of 15 years.

Anwar says Mahathir led a conspiracy to frame him, a charge which the government denies.

Last week the premier criticised diplomats from the United States and other countries who met Anwar's wife for a briefing on her husband's health.

"We don't want foreigners to meddle in our internal affairs," he said at the time.