S’pore good for Trump-Kim meet

Its neutrality makes it an ideal venue

SINGAPORE: With one foot in the East and one in the West, ultra-modern and secure – to the point of sometimes being mocked as dull – Singapore was a natural choice for the historic first meeting between the unpredictable leaders of the United States and North Korea.

The stable and squeaky-clean city-state’s tropical setting will be the backdrop for the June 12 summit between Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un – the first between a sitting US president and a North Korean leader.

The two men threatened each other with annihilation just months ago, so the choice of a neutral venue was a matter of considerable speculation, which also touched on the Korean peninsula’s Demilitarised Zone, China and even Mongolia.

But Singapore – sometimes likened to Switzerland due to its non-aligned nature and its status as a banking hub – is in the rare position of having diplomatic relations with both Washington and Pyongyang, plus a track record of hosting sensitive encounters.

“As a neutral and objective country with much-admired consistent foreign policy principles and a small state with no desire or capacity to harm other states and their interests, Singapore fits that bill well,” said Lim Tai Wei, adjunct research fellow at the National University of Singapore’s East Asia Institute.

One of the world’s wealthiest countries per-capita, the island state of 5.6 million people has an advanced military, robust security infrastructure, and is considered one of the safest and least corrupt places on earth.

Situated between the much larger Muslimmajority nations of Indonesia and Malaysia, Singapore has long been vigilant toward radical Islamic elements.

Single-party rule since independence from Britain nearly six decades ago has kept a lid on dissent – prompting accusations of repression – eliminating the possibility of any summit-related protests.

A selection of first-rate hotels and other possible venues where events can be tightly controlled is also likely to have made Singapore attractive, especially to Kim, who heads one of the world’s most repressive regimes and will not welcome anything unexpected.

Kim is only known to have travelled abroad for the first time this year, with visits to China and a brief sojourn across the high-security border into South Korea for a historic meeting with President Moon Jae-in in April.

In 2015, Singapore hosted a historic meeting between Chinese President Xi Jinping and Taiwan’s then-leader Ma Ying-jeou, the first between presidents of the two sides since a 1949 civil war split that led to decades of estrangement.