Malaysia, Singapore still on track to resolve rail dispute

Malaysia, Singapore still on track to resolve rail dispute

By Valerie Lee

SINGAPORE (Reuters): One Malaysian minister called it a
"goodwill train", while analysts joked about bilateral ties not
being derailed.

But the eleventh-hour way in which Malaysia and Singapore
avoided a face-off over railway immigration facilities this
weekend threw into sharp relief the often fractious relations
between the two ASEAN neighbors -- and the way many bilateral
issues heat to a simmer but never quite boil over.

Last Saturday the most recent diplomatic row between both
countries, over the location of railway immigration facilities,
was defused, or at least ratcheted down a few notches.

Malaysian immigration officials at the Tanjong Pagar station
in downtown Singapore did not stamp passports of departing
passengers, preventing a showdown with Singapore officials.

Singapore had said there could be difficulties for departing
passengers at its own new facilities on the north side of the
island if their passports already had Malaysian endorsements.
But with Malaysia choosing to process passengers without stamping
passports, immigration and the trains ran smoothly.

Singapore wants Malaysia's immigration operation to move out
of Tanjong Pagar in downtown Singapore to the new station at
Woodlands on the northern border, but the two sides had been
unable to agree on arrangements.

The Malaysian state-owned railway Keretapi Tanah Melayu (KTM)
owns about 200 hectares (500 acres) of Singapore land under a
1918 agreement drawn up by the British colonial authorities. The
agreement gave the company the land for as long as it operated
train services.

Singapore television quoted officials from Malaysia as saying
the new immigration measures for rail passengers were interim and
only for the next three months.

"They have left something open-ended, somewhere. But whatever
it is, at least it is a relief that there was no international
incident," Malaysian opposition leader Lim Kit Siang told
Reuters.

"There is a need for both governments...to act with restraint
and not to aggravate and escalate the tension," Lim said.

"The most sensible thing for both sides to do is just simply
keep quiet for a while," said a Singapore analyst. "What Malaysia
did was very sensible. At least coolness prevailed."

Temperatures were a notch higher than cool in Singapore's
parliament last Friday on the eve of the railway facilities move.
Singapore members of parliament, opposition and ruling party
alike, questioned what they saw as Malaysia's test of the city-
state's sovereign rights and patience.

An editorial in the last Saturday edition of the Straits Times
newspaper jumped into the fray, commenting on Malaysia's
"bristling nationalism".

"...however it plays out, one thing is already clear:
Singapore is the chief target of Malaysia's descent into muscular
nationalism and deliberate brow-beating, aimed at testing the Goh
Chok Tong government."

It said that on issues from developing Malaysian railway land
in Singapore, to water negotiations, to the transfer of the
railway facilities, "Kuala Lumpur has displayed a worrying
disregard for the normal courtesies and proprieties that should
obtain in relations between sovereign states."

As Singapore sees it, the issue of Malaysia keeping its word
is the sticking point in a range of agreements the city-state
wishes to finalize on such matters as the guarantee of water
supply for Singapore, development of the railway land and the
freeing of funds that expatriate Malaysian workers in Singapore
put into the city state's compulsory pension fund scheme.

Analysts said Malaysian leaders have looked to Singapore as a
possible source of investor funds to help it out of the current
economic crunch.

Resource-needy Singapore, on the other hand, would like a
"formal, legally binding water agreement" from Malaysia from
which it currently buys the bulk of its supplies.

"The problem is Malaysia gets the money now and we get the
water past 2061. if they flip-flop on (immigration facilities),
can the Singapore GLCs (government-linked corporations) and the
government give money now as part of the trade-off to help each
other?" said Singapore nominated member of parliament Simon Tay.

"That is part of the dilemma that anyone in the Singapore
government must be thinking about," Tay said.

Finger-pointing and heated rhetoric have marked relations
between the two countries since Singapore's separation from the
Malaysian Federation in 1965.

But political analysts are optimistic there is light at the
end of the tunnel as far as an amicable settlement between the
two countries is concerned.

"I think both sides wanted to make a point over the railway
issue, and after they have made their point they'll go back to
negotiations and come up with a resolution," said Bruce Gale,
regional manager of the Political and Economic Risk Consultancy.