WaybackWire

KUALA LUMPUR, Friday.—Millions of dollars of Malaysian-made goods have been turned back at the Causeway, choking godowns in Petaling Jaya and Kuala Lumpur, since Singapore restricted imports of 185 items.

They include tyres, refrigerators, textiles, soap, eggs and biscuits. Monday’s Gazette supplement also ended the exemption from special licences Malaysian manufacturers had enjoyed.

Licences will be based on 1963 performance, so Dunlop’s Petaling Jaya tyre factory, not in full production then, gets none, said the Minister of Commerce and Industry, Dr. Lim Swee Aun. Several factories have cut output; many sell nearly 40 per cent of their goods in Singapore.

Dr. Lim said: “Worse still we have now reached a situation where Singapore goods can be imported into Malaysia by paying duty and Malaysian goods cannot enter Singapore even by paying duty.”

He added: “But now, because of separation, all our efforts to bring about the common market have been wasted. We find ourselves where we started two years ago.”

In Singapore, the Chambers of Commerce’s joint standing committee will seek an interview with Mr. Lee to stress “the smooth inter-flow of trade between the two countries”. The Singapore Manufacturers’ Association welcomed Mr. Lim Kim San’s assurance of economic co-operation and hopes a joint council will soon ease free trade.

SINGAPORE, Friday.—Mr. Lee Kuan Yew today told Mr. Fred Emery of The Times of London, in a television interview, how the break came.

Mr. Lee said: “In a nutshell, the Tunku said to me, ‘I cannot live forever; and if I am not here, then you will have to face the consequences.’”

The quarrel began, he said, after last year’s Federal Budget debate, when the P.A.P. criticised Mr. Tan Siew Sin’s Budget. One looser arrangement proposed would have left Singapore running everything but the army: a colony of Malaysia, he called it.

He went up to the Cameron Highlands on Sunday, 1 August; on the Friday Dr. Goh Keng Swee, now Minister for Defence and Security, rang to call him down, and he came alone.

He became convinced that racial conflict would follow if they went on, not when he first met the Tunku on the Saturday but after a whole night with a few colleagues. “I would say myself that the Tunku, so long as he has got the strength, would never allow racial conflict to happen.”

He thinks the two will come together again in less than 50 years: “this is an artificial separation. It goes against geography. It goes against history. It goes against economics. It goes against demography.”

SINGAPORE, Friday.—Three-quarters of Singapore’s tap water comes from two Johore reservoirs, a quarter from its own, Mr. Lee told The Times. Singapore pays three cents a thousand gallons; he has thought about what would happen if it went to 30 cents.

“If I get a Government which is hostile to Singapore, we will have to dig wells, boil water, bathe once a week but we will still live,” he said. While the Tunku and his immediate colleagues are in charge, both sides will honour their obligations, joint defence among them.

Trade with Malaysia is 24 per cent of Singapore’s total. The 20 per cent with Indonesia has been lost anyway through confrontation and the boycott.

Of the bases, he said: “it so happens that I cannot survive without the bases.”

“I have never been anti the Indonesians,” he said. He will not take “No” for an answer in seeking an agreement with Indonesia; a few Indonesian sampans have brought vegetables.

“I am going to try and try and try,” he said.

KUALA LUMPUR, Friday.—Tunku Abdul Rahman and Tun Razak will visit Sabah and Sarawak to explain the separation, the Tunku said in a Radio Malaysia broadcast to the Borneo States. Tun Razak leaves “shortly”, the Tunku after clearing up affairs at home.

Separation leaves Malaysia’s set-up unchanged, he said, and Britain, Australia, New Zealand and Canada have all promised to stand by her. “You must have faith in my leadership and my determination to stand by you all, come what may.”

His dream had been to make Singapore the “New York of Malaysia”, but its politicians chose to make it “a hot-bed of politics”.

“Since Indonesia started her confrontation, the people of Sabah and Sarawak have suffered more casualties than the people in other parts of this country,” he said. Both, he was confident, would stay in Malaysia; an end to confrontation would free defence money for them.