Last week on May 9th, the US Treasury Undersecretary Brian Nelson came to Malaysia to meet Home Minister, Dato Saifuddin Nasution to discuss a security matter but sugar coated as "focus on unified global response to threat" and "environmental risks" concern.
There were Malaysian businessmen nervously reading it as a sanction threat against Malaysia. Their suspicion being why an American civil servant not meet their civil servant counterpart at the Treasury, but with the Minister in charge of security had it not to deliver a message from their political master?
Saifuddin expressed willingness to engage with the US but he "nicely" told them off. Malaysia took the bold position that as a sovereign nation and member of the United Nation, it has the right in its refusal to recognise unilateral sanction towards another sovereign state and will only support a UN-endorsed sanction.
Malaysians, who understood the potentially serious implication it could have on the Malaysian economy, had cold feet to Saifuddin's reply and Anwar's "dangerous game" to meet Hamas leaders in Qatar yesterday.