Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad warned that poor, weak countries would come under "tremendous pressure" from rich nations following the collapse of the WTO talks in Cancun.

"Some countries will be threatened after this with sanctions or with deprivation of aid or forcing them to pay back to loans or not to give loans and all those kinds of things," he told a news conference.

"I am quite sure tremendous pressure will be brought to bear on the group of developing countries which have made a stand.

"They are going to be made to feel life is going to be difficult for them to prevent them from coming together."

The veteran Southeast Asian leader was asked if developing countries should get together to map out a joint strategy to seek a better deal from future global free-trade talks.

Agricultural reforms

Developing countries, led by Brazil, India and China, pressed for agricultural reforms and removal of First World subsidies to their farm sectors at the World Trade Organisation talks which collapsed Sunday.

They also refused to open negotiations on new rules for investment, competition, trade red tape and government contracts.

The 77-year-old Mahathir, long a critic of Western economic domination, said no deal was better than a bad deal because "if it goes through, then the developing countries will suffer."

He blamed rich countries for trying to include new clauses on issues such as government procurement, which would allow them the same right as local companies to bid for government projects.

"They completely disregard our views. They wanted to decide according to their own advantage so I don't think we can agree to that... we don't see how it can benefit us if they were to dominate our economy," he said.

To reach an agreement, he said the WTO must "accept the need to listen to the problems of the poor countries and not try to bulldoze the views of the rich countries."

The premier, who will step down at the end of October after 22 years in power, said the Group of Eight developed countries tried to "decide what the world economy should be like and we are supposed to just accept them."

But Malaysia, which is currently the chairman of the Non-Aligned Movement of developing countries, will not bow to pressure and will continue to speak its mind, he said. - AFP