Excerpts from Asia News Network's dialogue with PM Lee

Smoke rising from cleared forest land in Pelalawan Regency, Riau province. Sustainable agricultural practices and law enforcement are needed to stop the burning of forests, said PM Lee.  Thai pro-government protesters holding Prime Minister Yingluck
Smoke rising from cleared forest land in Pelalawan Regency, Riau province. Sustainable agricultural practices and law enforcement are needed to stop the burning of forests, said PM Lee. Thai pro-government protesters holding Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra's picture during a rally in Bangkok on Saturday. PHOTO: AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE PHOTO: AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Smoke rising from cleared forest land in Pelalawan Regency, Riau province. Sustainable agricultural practices and law enforcement are needed to stop the burning of forests, said PM Lee. -- PHOTO: AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
  • MALAYSIA'S SEARCH FOR MH370

I think your government has had a very tough time managing this crisis because it is quite unprecedented. You have been searching now for one month, and you have had no clues, or rather, you have no hard evidence of the aeroplane. In that situation, you have to deal with not just the engineering and the actual operations of it, conducting the search, but also the communications, with the families, with the relatives, with the international public who are watching this. So it's a very difficult situation which your government is in, and I think they have done a very manful job.

  • HAZE

Stop burning. But to stop burning, you must have the laws and you must enforce the laws. And then you must have sustainable agricultural practices. The climate is changing. We are having more extreme weather, more extreme droughts as well as rain. And when you have extreme droughts, dry weather, then even if you don't start a fire, a fire may start by itself. But if you do start a fire, it is very unlikely that you can control it.

  • THAI POLITICAL CRISIS

We are concerned about it because Thailand is a very important member of Asean, and if Thailand is preoccupied with domestic difficulties, you will not be able to contribute your full weight to Asean endeavours and deliberations. And we see this as a very difficult problem which Thailand, the Thai people and Thai society will have to solve.

  • CHINA AND SINGAPORE

We are both very different societies, at different stages of development. You are in very rapid progress, and you have gone beyond the initial take-off now to sustaining that development and transforming your economy. We are a very small microcosm, a small model of how one can do things in a country which is also a city, and you might find something interesting to pick up from us. And we certainly find a lot of fascinating things to learn from China.

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