(AFP) Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad today supported a decision by Malaysia's ruling party to suspend six officials for vote-buying attempts and said more corrupt members had escaped sanctions in the past due to lack of evidence.

The local officials of the United Malays National Organisation (Umno) were found guilty by a disciplinary board of providing overseas trips, throwing parties or giving cash bribes to try to influence divisional-level elections last month.

They will be barred from holding party office for six years if Umno's Supreme Council endorses the penalty.

Mahathir said he would support the sanctions when the matter came to the council.

"Even if they were to make appeals, to persuade, offer money, come crying, the decision is considered final," he told reporters during a visit to the northwestern state of Perlis.

Mahathir has made frequent - occasionally tearful - appeals to his party over the past decade to stamp out "money politics".

Umno would become repulsive if corrupt people were elected as leaders at divisional or branch level, Bernama news agency quoted him as saying.

From his experience as a doctor, he said, diseased parts must be cut out to save the rest of the body.

"If you love the party, reject leaders who are unclean," he said.

'Selfish' leaders blamed

Mahathir acknowledged that Umno had lost support to the opposition Parti Islam Se Malaysia (PAS) and blamed the actions of a few "selfish" leaders. He did not elaborate.

"Umno is strong but unlike before. PAS is not strong but gains from certain weaknesses in Umno," Mahathir said.

The premier admitted last month that many ethnic Malays shun Umno because they believe it "had absorbed a dirty culture - a culture of corruption".

He has proposed a ban on "extremely rich" people holding party posts.

Umno dominates the coalition which has ruled since independence in 1957.

But it lost 22 parliamentary seats in the November 1999 general election, mostly to PAS. Anger over the sacking and jailing of Mahathir's former deputy Anwar Ibrahim helped split the ethnic Malay vote.