Author:
Publication: The Times of India
- Internet Edition
Date: September 6, 2001
Southeast Asia's elder statesman
Lee Kuan Yew wrapped up a four-day visit here on Wednesday warning the
region to be on alert for growing "anti-Zion" Islamic crusade spawned by
fighting in Afghanistan.
The Singapore Senior Minister said
there had been "a kind of Islamic globalisation" in the past 20 years,
with many Muslim volunteers taking up arms in Afghanistan and training
to be mujahiddeens.
"It's become a kind of internationalised
anti-Zion, anti-crusade," Lee told a press conference.
"I think there would be a flow of
this and we have to watch it carefully because if they take root in Indonesia,
come up to Malaysia and come up to Johor, then we're vulnerable."
Johor is Malaysia's most southern
state neighbouring Singapore. Lee said Islamic militancy was "not yet as
deeply rooted" as the communism had been in then-Malaya and Singapore in
the 1960s.
"I do not want to downplay the capabilities
of the Islamic radicals. I think they could over time develop the same
skills (as the communists)... they certainly have the determination.
"If they develop the same degree
of penetration in society, then we are into a very different situation."
In Malaysia, Lee noted the prominence
of the opposition Parti Islam SeMalaysia (PAS) which aims to set up an
Islamic state and said it would be "problematic" for Singapore if PAS ever
comes into power.
PAS came into the spotlight in the
1999 general elections, at the expense of Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad's
United Malays National Organisation (UMNO).
"It is quite unlikely that PAS can
win in 2004 (general election) or most unlikely, but it is not unlikely
that UMNO may lose a few more (parliamentary) seats and even a few more
states to PAS," Lee said. "It is not a disastrous outcome but it could
be the erosion of the moral authority of UMNO... it can be reversed if
certain policies are adopted."
(AFP)
