PUTRAJAYA: The Foreign Ministry is not happy with an article in a local daily about the post-war events in Iraq.
Describing it as “a personal attack beyond professional criticism, independence of the press and the freedom of expression,” Foreign Minister Datuk Seri Syed Hamid Albar said: “I think we’re going to respond to that article. It is an attack on the minister as well as the ministry, and showed a lack of understanding on what we have been doing.
“It is unfortunate that the person chose to write about us, rather than the problems in Iraq,” he said, when commenting on the article by The New Straits Times writer Shamsul Akmar which allegedly criticised him for insinuating that reporters covering the war had wanted to return as they were afraid after an ambush on their colleagues.
It also censured Syed Hamid as “being the least qualified” to talk about the situation in Baghdad when no one from the ministry had been there.
