Singapore clarifies

I refer to the article: Lee blasted as paranoid over remarks on hard-liners, which was published in The Jakarta Post on June 5, 2002.

Your report portrayed Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew and Singapore as being paranoid about Islam. This is not correct. On the contrary, in his speech at the IISS conference on May 31, 2002, Senior Minister Lee stated that nearly all Muslims, were tolerant and easy to live with. Senior Minister Lee also emphasized that "the war against terrorism is not a war against Islam. The majority of Muslims have nothing to do with terrorism of extremism."

Also he did not say that Indonesia is "a nest of Islamic militants".

The Senior Minister did not accuse "hard-line Islamic groups" in general of plotting to overthrow the governments in Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines and Singapore. He referred explicitly to Southeast Asian militant groups started by those who fought alongside and learned from the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan when they returned to their own countries.

The Jemaah Islamiah group arrested by Singapore's security authorities was one such group. Others included the Abu Sayaff (ASY) in southern Philippines and the Kumpulan Mujahidin Malaysia (KMM) in Malaysia. Operatives of these groups detained in Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines have admitted that their aim was to overthrow all these governments and set up an Islamic state.

Other governments in the region are also concerned over the threat posed by these indigenous al-Qaeda-like terrorist groups. Media Indonesia on June 6 reported that Malaysian Deputy Prime Minister, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, confirmed there were militant Islamic groups seeking to depose their governments by "extraconstitutional" means. "That is why the Malaysian government has taken firm action as preventive measures", he said to the chief editors of the print media and television stations in Jakarta as reported in Media Indonesia.

WILLIAM TAN

First Secretary

Singaporean Embassy

Jakarta

Note: Paranoid was the term used by one of the observers we quoted in the story. --Editor