KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 10 (AFP) - Malaysia's laws on homosexuality need to be amended says former deputy premier Anwar Ibrahim, whose conviction and nine-year jail sentence for sodomy were recently overturned on appeal.
Anwar, who spent six years in prison on a separate charge of abusing his position to cover up homosexual offences, spoke out on what he called a "sensitive" issue in an exclusive interview with AFP.
The popular politician who was widely expected to be Malaysia's prime minister by now maintained, as he has done since his arrest in 1998, that the charges against him were trumped up to destroy his political career.
But while insisting on his innocence and acknowledging that most people in mainly Muslim Malaysia objected to homosexuality, he said people's privacy needed to be protected.
"In the general view, among Muslims and many non-Muslims that I know, homosexuality is not accepted. Fair enough, but here the question is how do you use the law and intrude on people's privacy and their own private choices?
"This is the borderline. I think public display may be objectionable, but I think the laws need to be amended," he said.
"The issue is the invasion of privacy and we have therefore to design and make sure the law does not involve the overzealous groups trying to push their views or values outside the scope of the law.
"So I think while I endorse the general law against homosexuality -- I think it is against Islamic tenets and also the cultural practice here by most Malaysians -- I think we have to bear in mind that invasion of privacy is something that we need to look at."
Anwar, who is alternately hailed as a champion by Muslim fundamentalists and liberal democrats in Malaysia, chose his words carefully during the interview in the living room of his upmarket Kuala Lumpur home, which is decorated with Koranic verses in Arabic.
Visitors are welcomed by his eldest child, Nurul Izzah, a confident, outspoken 24-year-old in a Muslim headscarf who cannot stop smiling when she refers to "Papa" and what it is like to have him home after he was jailed when she was just 18.
"He makes jokes all the time," she says, while acknowledging the pain and social ostracism his arrest caused her and her four sisters and brother.
Anwar's wife Wan Azizah Wan Ismail is a member of parliament for the opposition National Justice Party set up to press Anwar's cause when he was sacked by former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad and later jailed.
She is the only party member to win a seat in March elections in which opposition parties were steamrollered by the man who took Anwar's place as Mahathir's successor, Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi.
Anwar has said he bears no grudge against Mahathir, a statement that Malaysia's acid-tongued leader for 22 years described as "generous" before going on to insist that despite the court ruling Anwar had indulged in homosexual acts.
"I think why Mahathir may have had these charges trumped up against me is because there is a general sentiment, and he is right in the sense of a very general sentiment, against homosexual practices," Anwar told AFP.
"But, however, he's wrong where the charges were trumped up and people were forced and abused to make confessions."
Anwar, who is barred from holding public office until 2008 under laws governing convicted criminals, remains engrossed by politics and spoke vigorously about domestic and international developments since his imprisonment.
He criticised US President George W. Bush and his conduct of the so-called war on terrorism -- both new on the international scene since he was jailed -- but was again cautious when asked about the role played by gay rights issues in the recent US election.
Some commentators have attributed Bush's re-election in part to his opposition to a movement in the US towards marriage between homosexuals.
"Gay marriages are going a bit too far," Anwar said. "I'm a liberal in many ways but I think that is going a bit too far."

11/10/2004 02:11 GMT - AFP