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Foreign minister miffed about being out of loop

Singapore Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew's (李光耀) visit to Taiwan hit another snag yesterday as Minister of Foreign Affairs Tien Hung-mao (田弘茂) admitted that his ministry had no prior notice of the trip, nor was he invited to meet Lee during the Singaporean's four-day stay in Taiwan.

"The Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not take a part in arranging Lee's trip, nor was he scheduled to meet the foreign minister. Apparently he has no intention of meeting the foreign minister," Tien said at a press conference yesterday morning, drawing laughs from a roomful of reporters.

Tien went on to complain about the lack of ministerial involvement in Lee's visit. "It is my personal hope that this kind of visit should at least include the foreign minister so that the overall arrangements could have been more complete," Tien said.

Despite Lee's insistence that he was visiting Taiwan in a private capacity, he is after all, the senior minister in Singapore's Cabinet, and therefore his visit to Taiwan is a significant event for both Taiwan and Singapore, Tien said.

"And if any accident occurs during his visit here, it's not advisable for the ministry to be totally ignorant of developments. The foreign minister should have played an appropriate role," the scholar-turned-foreign minister said.

Tien, who returned on Saturday from a 12-day confidential trip to Europe, said he would try to "understand" how related government agencies had arranged Lee's visit and whether the respective officials had insisted on "including the foreign minister" throughout the process.

The National Security Council sent Lee a formal invitation after the Singapore Trade Office in Taipei informed the government of Lee's intention to visit Taiwan, sources said. The trip is Lee's first since he halted his regular visits to Taiwan some six years ago.

Responding to Tien's comments, Chen Che-nan (陳哲男), acting secretary-general of the Presidential Office, admitted that the security council was placed in charge of arranging Lee's trip after Singapore contacted Taiwan, so the foreign ministry was not informed of Lee's tour.

Chen said Taiwan and Singapore do not have diplomatic ties and therefore the foreign ministry was not assigned to arrange the visit. Because Lee is a political figure, the Presidential Office had instructed the national security council to be in charge of related affairs for security reasons, Chen added.

Although he declined to comment on the way Lee's trip was arranged, Tien said the "foreign ministry cannot have any opinion [on the issue] at all."

When asked whether he thought Lee could act as an effective mediator between Taipei and Beijing and help improve cross-strait relations, Tien said it was too early to reach any conclusion.

Although some political leaders in Taiwan hold high expectations of Lee's role as a third-party go-between in cross-strait talks, it remains unclear whether China and Lee himself would be willing to become involved, Tien said.

Lee had shuttled between Taiwan and China since the 1970s and helped facilitate the 1993 talks between Taiwan and China held in Singapore. But Beijing authorities have expressed "reservations" about Lee's role as a mediator, said Lee Tai-to, a political scientist at National University of Singapore.
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