Mr Burns
HKD 243
عالم mms
PA
58
Beette
File
CONFIDENTIAL
15N616
FROM: D H Gillmore W37 270 2156
CC:
1 June 1988
PS
PS/Mr Eggar PS/PUS.
Mr Boyd
Mr Goulden
Cu
Mr Melavni
Mr Fearn
FED
- SEAD
HKD
MY VISIT TO WASHINGTON
1. You will have seen reporting telegrams on my conversations with Mr Abrams and his colleagues in ARA on the Falklands/Argentina/ Chile issues. I should report on a couple of other points.
LUNCH WITH DR SIGUR, ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF STATE FOR ASIAN AFFAIRS
2. Dr Sigur kindly asked me to lunch with him on 26 May. Mr Kelly of the NSC and Mr Roy from Dr Sigur's department were also present.
3. Dr Sigur and his colleagues were much exercised over recent events in Singapore. They could not understand why the Singapore Government had chosen to press so vehemently and so publicly their case against the Embassy diplomat accused of interfering in Singapore's internal affairs. They claimed, I know not how correctly, that the diplomat in question had been doing no more than keeping in touch with extra-parliamentary opposition leaders (by definition in Singapore, most opposition is extra-parliamentary). Singaporean allegations that he had been engaged in encouraging such people to organise opposition to Mr Lee Kuan Yew more effectively had been totally groundless. I was asked if I could throw any light on the affair. I was not, I fear, very illuminating. I suggested that Lee Kuan Yew's suspicion of opposition from whatever quarter, as well as his fundamental believe that a small new city state like Singapore could not afford full-blown party politics on the Westminster model, probably went back to his experiences between 1962 and 1965, the period in which Singapore achieved independence as part of the Federation of Malaysia, only to leave it and become fully independent 18 months later. Mr Lee Kuan Yew's persecution of Mr Jeyeratnam, for long the only opposition MP in the Singapore Parliament, bordered on the paranoic. I feared, therefore, that the Americans were dealing with something pretty irrational, but perhaps all the more profoundly felt. One had to hope that the next generation of Singapore leaders would be more sensible. Dr Sigur expressed some doubt about this; one of the prime movers behind the rumpus had been Brigadier General Lee, the Prime Minister's son. Dr Sigur said, however, that the Foreign Minister had that day made a sensible and calm speech on the subject in Parliament and the Americans had been told that the Prime Minister would wind up the debate on 31 May with an equally calm speech. The Americans hoped that they could put the incident behind them.
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