Minister Lee's difficult chapters
| Far
Eastern Economic Review July 20, 2000 RELATED: LKY going to Kuala Lumpur: Intelligence ASIAWEEK SINGAPORE'S senior minister, Lee Kuan Yew, is headed for Malaysia this month on a delicate mission. Malaysian sources say he has been quietly asked to drop or modify two chapters of the forthcoming second volume of his biography, which is due out in mid-September. The chapters in question deal with the highly emotional separation of Singapore from the Malaysian Federation in 1965. The Malaysian sources say the problem for them is Lee's citation of documents Kuala Lumpur considers secret (and therefore covered by a stringent Official Secrets Act). Lee apparently considers the documents personal. As with the first volume, Lee has apparently arranged for certain neighbouring countries to look over a preliminary draft of the book. An earlier bid by Lee Kuan Yew to meet Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad when they both attended a seminar in Tokyo in early June failed after Mahathir begged off because of time constraints, a Malaysian source said. However, they did speak on the phone. |