MM Lee to receive inaugural award in Washington DC
SINGAPORE: Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew will make an eleven-day visit to New York and Washington DC from Wednesday.
He will attend the JP Morgan Chase International Council meeting
in Washington DC from October 29 to 30, and will meet with the Council
on Foreign Relations and business leaders in New York.
Mr Lee will also meet the chairman of the Federal Reserve, Ben
Bernanke, director of the National Economic Council, Lawrence Summers,
and the president of the World Bank, Robert Zoellick, in Washington.
The minister mentor will deliver a speech and receive the inaugural
Lifetime Achievement Award from the US-ASEAN Business Council during
its 25th Anniversary Gala Dinner in Washington on October 27.
- CNA/so
Good luck to him, hope he won't return.
Lifetime Achievement Award? For being the oldest politician still alive in the world?
MM Lee receives lifetime achievement award in Washington DC
WASHINGTON: Singapore's Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew has been given a lifetime achievement award in Washington.
He used the occasion at the US-Asean Business Council event on
Wednesday to urge the United States to remain engaged in Asia or risk
losing global influence.
Former US presidents George H W Bush and Bill Clinton sent messages
of support, as did President Obama whom he will meet at the White House
on Thursday.
Mr Clinton said: "His work as Prime Minister and now as Minister
Mentor has helped literally millions of people from Singapore and all
across Southeast Asia live better, more prosperous lives."
Mr Bush said: "All of us who have worked with him have benefited from his wisdom, his insight and his dedication."
The Minister Mentor received the lifetime achievement award witnessed by US foreign policy giants like Henry Kissinger.
Mr Kissinger said: "He has become a seminal figure for all of us.
As I've said, I've known him for 40 years. I would say I have learned,
I've not learned as much from anybody as I have from Lee Kuan Yew."
After receiving the award, Mr Lee praised President Obama for
effectively replacing the Group of Eight group of nations with the
broader G20 at a recent summit in Pittsburgh.
Mr Lee said: "The American President has taken a realistic view of
the changed world, although for the next two or three decades, America
will remain the sole superpower."
And on the evening before his visit to the White House, the Minister Mentor also offered some advice to President Obama.
Mr Lee said: "If the US does not recognize that the Asia-Pacific is
where the economic centre of action will be, then it loses that
economic superiority or that lead that it has in the Pacific; it will
lose it worldwide."
The advice comes as America's Commander-in-Chief prepares to visit
Asia, where he will attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC)
summit in Singapore.
- CNA/ir