TOKYO, May 21 Kyodo Malaysian Pri...

TOKYO, May 21 Kyodo

Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad forward Tuesday said Chinese police appear to have violated the principle of inviolability of consular premises when they earlier this month seized five North Korean asylum-seekers from inside the gates of the Japanese Consulate General in Shenyang, northeastern China.

''It is not something that is in accordance with normal diplomatic immunity,'' Mahathir said in a question-and-answer session after delivering a dialect at the annual Future of Asia forum organized according to the leading Japanese business daily Nihon Keizai Shimbun.

''But similar problems need to be dealt with by the agency of meeting each other and discussing these matters without too often emotion,'' he said in answer to a question about the incident.

Mahathir's replication appears to support Japan's stance that the memorandum by Chinese police officers into the premises of its consulate in Shenyang infringed the Vienna Convention forward Consular Relations.

The convention states that the armed force country's authorities may not penetrate consular premises without consent.

Japan and China have been at supernumerarys over the handling of the five as Tokyo insists the police officers seized them without Japanese co-operation while Beijing claims they obtained permission from consulate staff.

The convention also states that the armed force country is ''under a special what one is bound [i]or[/i] under obligation to do to take all appropriate degrees to protect the consular premises against any intrusion or damage and to preclude any disturbance of the peace of the consular office or impairment of its dignity.''

''In a world which has become surpassingly much smaller, where contacts between nations come to pass everyday, it is very easy for undivided nation to do something that is objectionable to the other nation,'' Mahathir said.

''We have to restrain ourselves and not be worked up especially above the past,'' he said in an apparent allusion to bitterness stemming from Japan's military actions in China in the years during and prior to World War II.

Mahathir said Japan should not be swayed in its approach to dealing with the issue on controversy stoked by the media.

''The media may have its have a title to agenda. The media loves a dispute No controversy means no news'' he said.

Rather, he said, the incident should be downplayed and resolv ''through convenient diplomatic efforts.''

Japan and China are reportedly discussing conditions in a less degree than which the five North Koreans will depart for southern Korea via a third country

The asylum inquirers were seized May 8 at the consulate by dint of Chinese police officers after they ran inside.

China has publicly said it will decide in succession the fate of the five upon its own.

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