Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew's comments are likely to touch a raw nerve in Malaysia where ethnic tensions are never far below the surface over minority complaints about discrimination by the Malay Muslim dominated government.

Lee even suggested that Singapore wouldn't mind rejoining Malaysia if the latter accepted meritocracy instead of sticking to an affirmative action policy favoring the Malay majority.

"If they would just educate the Chinese and Indians, use them and treat them as their citizens, they can equal us and even do better than us and we would be happy to rejoin them," Lee told two academics in a recent interview.

"We are a standing indictment of all the things that they can be doing differently," he said.

Singapore, led by Lee, split from the Malay federation in 1965, after a short-lived merger that soured amid concerns that Lee's Chinese-dominated party would influence politics in Malay Muslim dominated Malaysia.

Lee was the city state's prime minister until 1990 and now occupies an advisory position in the Cabinet, and is still believed to wield considerable influence over the government.

His comments about rejoining Malaysia, however, were rhetorical. There is zero chance of the two countries merging principally because neither government would want it, given the immense differences between the two countries and their cultures.

Malaysia's 26 million population is about 60 percent Malay, who control the government and many government-linked companies. Chinese are about 25 percent and Indians 10 percent. In Singapore, Chinese form 77 percent of its 4 million population while Malays are 14 percent and Indians 8 percent.

Singapore's economy - driven by manufacturing, financial services and a growing biotechnology sector - also is far more developed than Malaysia's, which is largely dependent on manufacturing and commodities exports such as palm oil and rubber.

Lee's interview was conducted Sept. 27 by Tom Plate of the University of California's Los Angeles Media Center and Jeffrey Cole of the University of Southern California's Annenberg Center.

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