‘Singapore walk-over impossible’

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33819, 16 April 1975, Page 22

‘Singapore walk-over impossible’

(N.Z. Press Association) WELLINGTON, April 15,

Singapore was now strong enough militarily to make it impossible for an aggressor to achieve a walk-over victory against it, said its Prime Minister (Mr Lee Kuan Yew) tonight.

In a television interview on the eve of his departure for home after a two-week stay, Mr Lee was asked whether his statement five years ago — that by the mid-70s he hoped to have enough men trained to dissuade anyone from believing that the capture of Singapore would be easy — was now a reality. “I think we have, yes,” he said. Asked if the idea of neutrality appealed to him, Mr Lee replied: “That’s a very ambiguous word — can you be neutral if you’re going to be eaten up? You can be neutral if two big powers are fighting. You don’t have to

join because you can’t influence the outcome. “You’ve got to live with whatever emerges. Can you be neutral if regional powers are involved and the outcome affects you?” Mr Lee was then asked who intended to eat him up.” “There are several possible scenarios — it doesn’t help to spell them out. One thinks up the most horrendous.” “Which would that be?” “The most likely one,! given the situation as it is: today, is a Thailand that has over-accommodated as a result. of what has already happened.” Mr Lee said the Thai attiture could “bring problems down into peninsula Malaysia and Singapore. N.Z. WELCOME Earlier, he reiterated that New Zealand’s forces were a welcome presence in Singapore. Asked if Singapore felt secure at the moment, despite the Indo-China situation and did not require overseas aid, Mr Lee replied: “When vou’ve been living next to a volcano you develon a degree of eouanimity which must not allow you to be lulled into a sense of placid indifference. That’s fatal. Nor can you afford this high tension all the time or you’ll become neurotic.”

Mr Lee said he thought that more than the 20-odd detainees now being held in Singapore should be in custody. but the number of people antagonised as the result of each arerst had to be taken into account. ‘GOVT RIGHT’

He was emphatic that his Government believed itself right in its crackdown on Singnaore youth aping Western fads such as lone hair, He did not want to be mis-

understood as a critic of the West in this respect but the fact remained that Singapore had two heroin factories within 500 miles of it and was obliged to take measures to protect its young. “In our situation, if we went in for ‘withitism’ with every fad. fetish, and fancy of the West —primarily with Americans as the pacesetters —that’s just the end. We’ve got to live with a certain degree of conscious self!restraint.”

Mr Lee said his Government’s attitude on this would not change “as long as the situation warrants it.”

“The majority of the people would be against us if we allowed this permissiveness.” “REAL TURMOIL”

Asked how Singapore had largely avoided the worldwide incidence of student turmoil, Mr Lee said: “We had real turmoil, not just bogus issues. We had real Communist cell leaders.”

Singapore had not experienced the imported problems of the American students taken wholesale into Australia and then filtered down in a less vicious virus into New Zealand.

“I think when you recover from such an experience you develop certain antibodies,” said Mr Lee.