Former premier Mahathir Mohamad said today he feared things would become "worse and worse" during the second term of recently re-elected US President George W Bush.

"It is very likely that this idea about preemption, about regime change, about enforcing democracy, applying sanctions, these things are going to be seen perhaps more and more in the next four years," he said in Beijing.

"Things are going to get worse and worse. That is my view, I hope Im wrong," he told the Businessweek CEO Forum in the Chinese capital.

Since Bush was re-elected for a second term, Mahathir referred to his administration as "an old leadership with an old mindset" that had done nothing good to the United States or to the rest of the world.

Not anti-American

"Instead of focusing on fighting against terrorism, that leadership has actually expanded the scale of terrorism in this world, adding Iraqis and Afghans to the ranks of the terrorists," he said.

"I think the old leadership will think that being re-elected means an endorsement of what that leadership has been doing in the past four years," added Mahatir, who retired in October 2003 after 22 years in power.

He said he was not anti-American. "Most of them are very decent, but I also discovered a lot of Americans think that America is the world."

On Sunday Mahatir, who attacked Bush's foreign policies while in office, said Muslims would be "tortured" by the "heartless and merciless" US president.