Foreign Minister Syed Hamid Albar must reveal how much was the cost of the rare timber which former premier Dr Mahathir Mohamad gave Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe for the latter's palatial mansion.

In a media statement, Opposition Leader Lim Kit Siang said the foreign minister will be quizzed on this during the parliament sitting, which resumes this week.

Mahathir last week was given a guided tour by Mugabe of his RM34 million mansion during his three-day visit to Zimbabwe.

"Up to now, however, neither Parliament nor Malaysians have been informed how much Mahathir's gift to Mugabe had cost the country," said Lim.

In view of this, he said Syed Hamid should report to Parliament the cost to Malaysian taxpayers of this "fatal attraction between the 2Ms" when the House debates the foreign ministry estimates under the 2006 budget.

"Maybe, Mahathir should give a briefing to parliamentarians about his impressions of Mugabe's mansion which he helped fund a 25-bedroom palace with bathrooms and spas in a 'shoot and kill' area, three times the size of the official presidential residence in Harare, which involved the construction of two sizable dams and extensive landscaping work," he added.

'Love fest'

Terming Mahathir's visit as a three-day 'love fest', Lim also noted how the former premier lauded Mugabe as a 'shining African leader'.

"The building of the mansion in a country when nearly half of Zimbabwe's population is dependent on international food aid is both obscene and criminal waste of public funds and Malaysia's support of such presidential obscenity and criminality is no less deplorable.

"It is most shocking that the 2M love fest had blinded Mahathir to the ruins and disasters which Mugabe had wrought on Zimbabwe, a once-prosperous African state sinking ever deeper into mass hunger, economic ruin and authoritarian rule," he said.

He said Mugabe had reduced Zimbabwe to one of the most disastrous failed African states, with hyperinflation from 400 to 600 percent, 80 percent unemployment, per capita income shrunk to half of what it was when he came into power 25 years ago, tens of thousands of people killed or tortured every year and haunted by one of the world's highest incidence rates of Aids with more than a quarter of its 12.7 million citizens infected with the deadly virus.

Zimbabwe, he added, is in the throes of multiple humanitarian crises and United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan had just raised the alarm about the latest crisis - 700,000 people uprooted by the president's 'operation drive out trash' targeted at slum dwellers.

"Did Mahathir have any time to spare during his 'love fest' with Mugabe to raise some of these stark humanitarian crises with the Zimbabwe dictator?" asked Lim.