This is vital if America is to prevail over terrorism and maintain its position of global leadership, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong told a high-level security conference last night.
The fourth annual Shangri-La Dialogue is attended by defence ministers and armed forces chiefs from 20 countries, including US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who arrived yesterday.
By Lydia Lim, Senior Political Correspondent
Singapore has urged the United States to make more use of its "soft power" to win over international opinion and build trust, especially in the Muslim world.
This is vital if America is to prevail over terrorism and maintain its position of global leadership, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong told a high-level security conference last night.
The fourth annual Shangri-La Dialogue is attended by defence ministers and armed forces chiefs from 20 countries, including US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who arrived yesterday.
In a wide-ranging speech on security and other issues in Asia, Mr Lee also identified another role for the US — providing regional stability and thus helping China and India to grow dynamically.
"America as the pre-eminent player in the region has the rare opportunity to assist these two emerging giants and Japan, no light-weight in industrial power, in settling the parameters for long-term cooperation and competition," he said. The economic rise of the two Asian giants, the hotspots of Taiwan, Kashmir and North Korea, and terrorism remain the key issues in Asia's security and were the focus of his speech.
He set out why, four years after the Sept 11 attacks on America, terror groups such as Al-Qaeda and Jemaah Islamiah are still a highly-dangerous threat.
While South-east Asian governments have disrupted the. JI’s operational capacity, the basic infra-structure supporting their terrorist activities remains intact, he said.
Madrasahs, where a new generation of terrorist fighters are talent-spotted, indoctrinated and groomed, continue to operate. And separatist Muslim groups in the region still host training facilities.
The threat to the region's trade lifeline, the Malacca Strait, is "real and urgent". He said Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore must harness the resources of major users of the strait, which include the US and Japan, to ensure security.
But beyond such counter-terror operations, it is Muslims themselves who must ultimately decide the fate of extremist Islam.
One reason moderate Muslims are reluctant to condemn and disown the extremists is "the wide gap that separates the US from the Muslim world", he said.
"The sources of this Muslim anger are historical and complex, but they have been accentuated in recent years by Muslim perceptions of American unilateralism and hostility to the faith."
Surveys in Indonesia, the world's largest Islamic country, showed attitudes of Muslims changed between 2000 and 2003, when the US invaded Iraq. The percentage of Indonesians who said they were attracted to the US fell from 75 per cent in 2000 to just 15 per cent in 2003.
US relief efforts in Aceh after December's tsunami have moderated but not eliminated such feelings of antipathy towards the US.
Deadly riots in several Muslim countries after Newsweek reported that US interrogators at Guantanamo Bay flushed a Quran down the toilet bear witness to this.
"The US needs to make more use of its soft power to win over international opinion, correct misperceptions, and build trust and credibility, especially in the Muslim world," he said. "In the long-term, this is vital if the US is to prevail over terrorism, and to maintain its position of global leadership."
He also urged the US to engage Asian countries, particularly Asean. These links ensure that the growing cooperation among Asian countries does not lead to a closed arrangement that splits the Pacific down the middle, he said.
