Against All Odds: Singapore's Successful Lobbying on the Cambodia Issue at the United Nations 9789814762625

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Against All Odds: Singapore's Successful Lobbying on the Cambodia Issue at the United Nations

The ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute (formerly Institute of Southeast Asian Studies) was established as an autonomous organization in 1968. It is a regional centre dedicated to the study of socio-political, security and economic trends and developments in Southeast Asia and its wider geostrategic and economic environment. The Institute’s research programmes are the Regional Economic Studies (RES, including ASEAN and APEC), Regional Strategic and Political Studies (RSPS), and Regional Social and Cultural Studies (RSCS). ISEAS Publishing, an established academic press, has issued more than 2,000 books and journals. It is the largest scholarly publisher of research about Southeast Asia from within the region. ISEAS Publishing works with many other academic and trade publishers and distributors to disseminate important research and analyses from and about Southeast Asia to the rest of the world.

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Occasional Paper

Against All Odds: Singapore's Successful Lobbying on the Cambodia Issue at the United Nations Barry Desker

I5EA5

YUSOF ISHAK INSTITUTE

First published in Singapore in 2016 by ISEAS Publishing 30 Heng Mui Keng Terrace Singapore 119614 E-mail: [email protected] Website: http://bookshop.iseas.edu.sg All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute. © 2016 ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute, Singapore The responsibility for facts and opinions in this publication rests exclusively with the author and his interpretations do not necessarily reflect the views or the policy of the publisher or its supporters. ISEAS Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data Desker, Barry. Against All Odds : Singapore’s Successful Lobbying on the Cambodia Issue at the United Nations. (ISEAS Occasional Papers series ; no. 97) 1. ASEAN. 2. United Nations. 3. Vietnam War, 1961–1975—Cambodia. 4. Singapore—Foreign relations. 5. Cambodia—Foreign relations. 6. Cambodia—Politics and government. 7. Southeast Asia—Foreign relations. I. Title. II. Series: ISEAS Occasional Papers series ; no. 97. DS501 I59 no. 97 ISBN 978-981-47-6250-2 (soft cover) ISBN 978-981-47-6262-5 (e-book, PDF) Typeset by Superskill Graphics Pte Ltd Printed in Singapore by Markono Print Media Pte Ltd

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CONTENTS

ASEAN Responses after the Communist Take-overs in Indo-China

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Learning the Art of Lobbying

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Neophytes in Lobbying

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Institutional Changes in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs 8 Developing Our Approach to Lobbying 9 Lobbying Approaches 12 Honing Our Lobbying Skills 15 Operating in the Non-Aligned Movement 19 Reaching out to Capitals 21 Counter-lobbying 23 The End Game 26 About the Author 28

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ISEAS Occasional Papers offer analyses of Southeast Asian issues that have historical and continued relevance. They identify and discuss impactful aspects of politics, economics and cultures in the region, with a focus on organizational and historical dynamics.

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Against All Odds: Singapore’s Successful Lobbying on the Cambodia Issue at the United Nations1 Barry Desker

For the Singapore Foreign Service, Vietnam’s invasion and occupation of Cambodia on 25 December 1978 was a coming of age. Throughout the 1970s, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) had faced criticisms from its political masters as well as from civil servants who did not attach much significance to foreign policy and felt that Singapore could not make much of an impact at global or regional institutions. This was reflected in the MFA’s staffing. The MFA was not a priority Ministry and capable officers were assigned to it only if they expressed a clear wish for it when being interviewed by the Public Service Commission. Cambodia changed all that. The MFA took the lead, not just in implementing the political direction of the Prime Minister and Cabinet within Singapore but also in galvanizing international

1. This article has relied considerably on the work of Ang Cheng Guan, Singapore, ASEAN and the Cambodian Conflict 1978–1991 (Singapore: NUS Press, 2013). I was closely consulted by Ang in the writing of this study which was path-breaking as he obtained access to the official records of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Singapore, and is likely to be the definitive work on the subject.

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and regional support to resist the occupation being accepted as a Vietnamese fait accompli.

ASEAN RESPONSES AFTER THE COMMUNIST TAKE-OVERS IN INDO-CHINA But the story had started earlier. When the Khmer Rouge took over Phnom Penh on 17 April 1975, Thailand had pushed its fellow members in the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) for a joint recognition of the new regime by 0700 hours (Bangkok time) the following morning. This was done. On 30 April 1975, when Saigon fell to the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) forces, Thailand once again took the lead in seeking joint ASEAN recognition of the Provisional Revolutionary Government (PRG) of South Vietnam by 0700 hours (Bangkok time) the following morning. Lee Chiong Giam and I were the senior officers in the Foreign Ministry handling the issue (although we were barely 34 and 28 years old respectively). The Minister for Foreign Affairs, S. Rajaratnam, held firm on his view that ASEAN should respond in a measured style, without the appearance of panic or fear. He opposed an immediate joint recognition, arguing against acceptance of the political fiction represented by the PRG. For Mr Rajaratnam, a contest of political wills was beginning in Southeast Asia and ASEAN should not be seen as caving in at the very onset of the struggle. By taking a firm position in the discussions among the ASEAN countries, a critical aspect in shaping a discussion in a situation of uncertainty, Singapore helped to shape the ASEAN position against separate recognition of the PRG. All five ASEAN states had already established diplomatic relations with the DRV. The failure of the manoeuvre led Vietnam to eventually push for unification as the Socialist Republic of

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Vietnam and a single application for membership of the United Nations (UN). The outflow of boat people from South Vietnam began after the take-over of Saigon, and increased dramatically after the sharp downturn in Sino-Vietnamese relations in 1977. Singapore played a leading role in galvanizing ASEAN opposition to Vietnam’s efforts to push its ethnic Chinese population to leave the country by dumping them as boat refugees onto the ASEAN countries. MFA’s role lay in highlighting to regional neighbours that the Vietnamese actions were a threat to ASEAN solidarity as they led to each ASEAN member state blaming other members for refugees landing on their shores after being refused entry, especially by those countries located geographically closer to Vietnam. In Jakarta, for example, I spoke to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on the need both to recognize that Vietnam was to blame, and to avoid criticizing Malaysia and Singapore for not letting refugees or economic migrants land on their shores. Senior Indonesian Department of Foreign Affairs (DEPLU) officials were approached and briefed on Singapore’s concerns while key journalists and editors were engaged on a one-on-one basis over lunch or dinner even as Vietnamese boat refugees turned away from Singapore were landing on Indonesian shores. Colleagues in other ASEAN countries did the same and MFA HQ officials engaged interested parties, including ASEAN Embassies, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the American and Western European missions as well as Australia and New Zealand. At the ASEAN level, Mr Rajaratnam engaged in megaphone diplomacy to push the ASEAN position in opposition to the European Community, the predecessor of the European Union, which called for the non-refoulement of refugees.

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LEARNING THE ART OF LOBBYING When the invasion and occupation of Cambodia occurred, there was as yet no formal consultative forum or organ in Singapore for the conduct of foreign policy. Policy direction was set by the Prime Minister, the Minister of Defence and the Minister for Foreign Affairs at the Cabinet Defence Council, with officials of the relevant ministries in attendance. MFA officers did not have well-crafted briefs or position papers. Instead, there was merely an understanding of the broad directions of Singapore policy and we were expected to operationalize these objectives in the field. Young MFA officers learnt to hone their lobbying skills, developed situational awareness and quickly mastered the formal and informal rules of procedure of the UN and the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) with the tutelage of Ambassador Tommy Koh, whose command of these aspects was the envy of his UN counterparts. Effective lobbying was facilitated by the leeway provided for them to exercise initiative and to use discretion on the ground. MFA officers learnt that the ability to think on their feet, to recommend appropriate policy responses and to use their initiative in a fast-changing situation were key skills to be developed. Over the next decade, Singapore began playing a leading role in shaping ASEAN’s response, especially after the Vietnamese invasion and occupation of Cambodia in December 1978. Mr Rajaratnam’s skill in marshalling the evidence, arguing the case and shaping the debate was demonstrated in key speeches at the UN, Non-Aligned meetings as well as in a series of widely-circulated pamphlets and opinion pieces in major international newspapers. The most memorable of these pieces was a hard-hitting attack on the Soviet Union and its regional allies entitled “From Phnom Penh to Kabul” published by

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the MFA in 1980 and circulated at the UN General Assembly, which focused on the issue of sovereignty in the Cambodian conflict. The trenchant language, well-researched quotes from the Soviet and pro-Soviet press and radio broadcasts and his willingness to make a stark argument led the New York Times to describe his writing style as the “purple prose” of Singapore diplomacy when he produced another pamphlet “Havana and New Delhi: What’s the Difference” released just before the NAM Summit in New Delhi in 1983. Most importantly, this willingness to reach out to the international media sensitized young MFA officers to the need to win the public argument. These officers realized that they needed to engage in public diplomacy if policy objectives were to be attained, an often neglected aspect of lobbying which some in the MFA associated only with quiet diplomacy. For Singapore, lobbying at the UN and NAM on an issue — Cambodia — in which there were critical domestic interests, was a new development. Since independence in 1965, Singapore had largely played the role of a strong institutional supporter of the UN. As a small state dependent on the maintenance of global peace and the support of the international community, Singapore saw the UN as a bulwark of international security. But MFA officers were neophytes learning to lobby as they went along. While Ambassador Tommy Koh was a leading light among UN ambassadors, the Ministry as a whole did not have well-developed institutional capabilities in multilateral diplomacy in 1979.

NEOPHYTES IN LOBBYING MFA’s first setback was at the NAM Summit in Havana in August 1979. The Cuban hosts unilaterally excluded the Khmer Rouge representatives representing Democratic Kampuchea (Cambodia),

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hoping to seat the Heng Samrin regime installed after the Vietnamese invasion. They were blocked by the opposition of many NAM members but the Cuban chair unilaterally declared a “vacant seat”. In Havana, we were not aware who our potential allies were, why they supported Prince Sihanouk and the ousted Khmer Rouge regime and what the likely tactics of our opponents were. One example here should suffice for illustration. In Havana, the Foreign Minister of Senegal who was strongly supporting Prince Sihanouk had the microphone shut down as he was speaking and was called “a rat” by the Cuban chair. We had not realized that Sihanouk had considerable support in Francophone Africa. One consequence of this episode was that Senegal became a strong supporter of ASEAN when it sought support for its position at the UN, eventually serving as the Chairman of the International Conference on Kampuchea held in New York in July 1981. Our second setback was the failure to secure the election of Ambassador Tommy Koh as President of the 34th UN General Assembly in 1979. He was involved in a three-cornered fight with his counterparts from Iraq and Bangladesh. Although the MFA had obtained more than eighty confirmed Third Person Notes and letters of support as well as verbal commitments, which would have meant that Tommy Koh would be elected, in fact, he placed third with barely forty votes for his candidacy. We learnt that our involvement in the Cambodia issue meant that we had become a controversial candidate and that the UN General Assembly would choose a safer choice. (Ironically, the President of Iraq decided to invade Iran in September 1980 at the end of the term of the Iraqi Permanent Representative as President of the UN General Assembly).

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The third challenge took place at the beginning of the 34th UNGA in September 1979. While we secured the support of a majority of members at the Credentials Committee meeting, our first taste of lobbying on the Cambodia issue took place when the Report of the Credentials Committee was considered by the General Assembly. India proposed an amendment calling for a vacant seat to be declared, taking its cue from the Cuban decision in Havana. Instead of the amendment being voted on first, Ambassador Tommy Koh had to argue that the Indian proposal was not an amendment but a completely new resolution which should only be taken up after the vote on the Report. The outcome was very encouraging: 71voted in favour of the adoption of the Committee’s report, 35 against, 34 abstained, and 12 did not participate in the vote. But we did not know our level of support or opposition until the vote took place, although we had spoken to delegations that had backed our position in Havana, contacted influential delegations like Saudi Arabia and tried to convince West European delegations that they should not abstain because of their opposition to the Khmer Rouge. Our expectation was a narrow margin of victory similar to the close fights on the credentials of Cambodia after the ouster of Prince Sihanouk’s government and his replacement by Lon Nol in 1970, with many Third World countries abstaining on the issue. A fourth setback was the Vietnamese submission of their draft resolution on “The Question of Peace, Stability and Cooperation in Southeast Asia” at the 35th UN General Assembly in 1980 and the inscription of the item in the following years. ASEAN could not object to the inscription of this item. But it took considerable diplomatic finesse and firm political direction from the ASEAN Ministers to prevent the Vietnamese from presenting a consensus

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resolution that could be adopted without a vote. It required Ambassador Koh’s diplomatic skills to steer ASEAN away from this course while “killer” amendments were prepared in the event that some ASEAN members wanted to proceed with a merged resolution.

INSTITUTIONAL CHANGES IN THE MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS Mr S.R. Nathan, who had been closely associated with the MFA from 1965 to 1971, returned to the Ministry as First Permanent Secretary in February 1979, two months after the Vietnamese invasion and occupation of Cambodia. Singapore was facing its greatest foreign policy and security challenge and Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew had told Mr Nathan that he gave him two years to build up MFA or he would close down the Ministry and make it part of the Prime Minister’s Department. Mr Nathan’s task was to make the MFA function as well as leading foreign services such as the British diplomatic service. As the aftermath of Vietnam’s invasion and occupation of Cambodia took centre stage in Singapore’s international diplomacy, Mr Nathan instituted measures to build up the MFA’s capabilities in international negotiations and lobbying. To keep the political leadership and key decision-makers briefed on breaking news, he instituted the practice of issuing Information Notes of one to two pages. The first Information Note was on the Chinese invasion of Vietnam in February 1979. Singapore policymakers were kept updated on developments as Singapore’s diplomats engaged in the twists and turns of diplomacy on Cambodia over the next decade, highlighting an often neglected aspect: the need to win and retain support at home, even as the task of convincing

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external parties was being pursued. Mr Nathan also instituted the practice of holding “Morning Prayers”, daily meetings at 10 am of the senior MFA management to review breaking news and to provide direction to the staff. This resulted in a quick response by the MFA to issues raised by the Mission in New York or MFA participants at Non-Aligned Meetings or ASEAN caucuses. Following the setback at the NAM Summit in Havana in September 1979, Mr Nathan met with Tony Siddique and me just before we left for New York to attend the 34th UN General Assembly. He was clear that Singapore would be facing a major challenge in ensuring that the Democratic Kampuchea delegation continued to represent Cambodia and that there would be a need for strong backing for the resolution which the ASEAN states would be sponsoring. The message was that this was the primary focus of our role at the coming UN General Assembly session. Mr Nathan harboured no illusions and was adamant that this was the only standard of judgement for the performance of the UN team that year.

DEVELOPING OUR APPROACH TO LOBBYING Initially, our UN Mission operated according to its well-established practice at the UN General Assembly. Each of the staff handled his assigned committee responsibilities while Ambassador Koh and Kishore Mahbubani handled the Cambodia issue. However, as we recognized the magnitude of the task in drafting a UN resolution on Cambodia that could win wide support, the need to obtain a credible list of co-sponsors and the challenge of ensuring that influential supporters would take the floor in the UN General Assembly debate, the Mission accepted that it was not a case of business as usual. For the purposes of the General

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Assembly, we were effectively a “one issue” delegation, with our delegates looking at their responsibilities in the committees in the context of the need to secure strong support for the ASEAN resolution. There was also the time-consuming effort to bring along reluctant ASEAN colleagues such as the Philippines (which was more concerned with its fight for election as a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council for 1980–81) and Indonesia (which was burdened by its invasion and occupation of East Timor and saw Vietnam as the only other state to have obtained independence through revolution, not by diplomacy or as a gift of the departing colonial power). Although we did not include as part of our lobbying efforts, our briefings to the Philippines on its level of support (based on our meetings with diplomats covering the Security Council elections) or our efforts to keep the Indonesians informed of the deliberations of supporters of the Timorese resistance who were drafting the resolution on East Timor, tracking these issues was a critical part of our approach to keeping ASEAN’s support. Considerable effort was also spent on keeping in touch with our ASEAN colleagues and in getting them to contact definite supporters (whose support had already been canvassed) so that they would feel that they were part of the overall lobbying effort. The Malaysians were the most useful of our colleagues, a reflection of the very capable Wisma Putra team built by Tan Sri Ghazali Shafie during his years as Permanent Secretary. Ambassador Tommy Koh provided the necessary leadership and was the main drafter of the ASEAN resolution. As the most articulate of the ASEAN ambassadors, he led ASEAN in debates at the UN General Assembly and NAM. He also played a key role

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in lobbying his ambassadorial counterparts and in shaping the discussions at meetings of the ASEAN ambassadors. When we decided that our focus at the 34th UN General Assembly had to be on Cambodia, it struck us that by coincidence, we had a well-balanced team that had come for the UN General Assembly. Kishore Mahbubani, Tony Siddique and I were the most senior officers in MFA who had not attended a General Assembly and were therefore selected for the UN General Assembly. Kishore was articulate and played a particularly useful role in public diplomacy speaking at Harvard and Columbia Universities, briefing American think-tanks and talking to the media, Siddique worked the ground very effectively and I was a specialist on Southeast Asia who worked closely with Siddique. The fourth HQ delegate was Tommy Chung, who was the Vietnam Desk Officer and had spent a year in Australia undertaking Vietnamese language training. T. Jasudasen, then a young Second Secretary in the Mission, demonstrated his potential by engaging his wide-ranging contacts at the UN and ensuring that we had a good sense of the perspectives of different delegations. As Tony Siddique recalled, For five years, I had the privilege to work with our UN team, headed by Ambassador Tommy Koh. We learnt the “fine art of lobbying” (some will call it the black art of lobbying). The approach was indeed simple. First, ASEAN was a credible organization both in the West and in NAM. Second, we had a sound and credible policy that was not confrontational. Third, we had a fine UN team that had built up a lot of credits over the years and we were able to cash in on our goodwill. Fourth, our lobby approach was inclusive in that every member country of the UN was important to our cause. Fifth, we were given a

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free hand by the headquarters in the field to work the ground. This trust was very important. We were not micro-managed. So we were “cowboys on the loose” completely unorthodox in doing things outside the box, but always bearing in mind the policy and making sure of the “deliverables”.2

LOBBYING APPROACHES Tony Siddique and I used to spend most of our time at the Delegates Lounge meeting with contacts or effectively “cold calling” delegates we had seen in the UN General Assembly plenary hall or in our committees or whom we bumped into in the Delegates Lounge. We concentrated in 1979 on delegates who were coming from their capitals as well as the small missions where the representatives had greater leeway in deciding to vote on UN resolutions. Jasudasen concentrated on the delegates from UN Missions. The Delegates Lounge had an interesting arrangement. It had a bar with a magnificent view of the East River at the end of the hallway, which opened at 11 am and operated until the late evening. Directly above it was a mezzanine floor which housed a coffee house. Invariably, delegates from Western Europe or Latin America would select the coffee house during the day, adjourning to the bar if we met them around 6 pm. By contrast, several of our Third World contacts would take us up on our offer to buy drinks and head for the bar as early as 11 am. We developed a “Trader Vic’s” strategy in lobbying (after a Polynesian restaurant in New York which had a wide-ranging

2. Tommy Koh and Chang Li Lin, eds., The Little Red Dot: Reflections by Singapore’s Diplomats (Singapore: World Scientific, 2005), pp. 272–73.

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assorted barbecue menu). I soon realized that at the UN General Assembly, drafts flew back and forth. Many people were interested in these drafts but yet most of the time we in Singapore took the position that if it was marked “secret”, we treated it as if it was a secret document. As far as Tony and I saw the situation, it was “secret” for 24 hours, and afterwards once two, three or four people got the document, it was public knowledge. So what we did was exchange the document with other delegates. If we got documents, we just used the UN photocopying machine to make 8 or 10 copies to pass to our friends, and this meant that we got “IOUs” in return. People responded to the fact that we were giving them advance information which was of use to them visà-vis their own Embassies and their own headquarters. The flow of documents on a range of issues, many of no direct interest to Singapore, eventually overwhelmed us so that we obtained the assistance of an Australian First Secretary and a New Zealand Second Secretary to photocopy and staple draft documents for us. They were happy to do this as this meant that they were the first in their Missions with such documents and with background briefings on breaking developments. A good example would be the draft resolution on East Timor, which was drafted by friends of the Revolutionary Front for an Independent East Timor (Fretilin), the Timorese resistance movement led by Mozambique and other Portuguese-speaking former colonies. Unlike the other ASEAN countries, we did not ignore the East Timor resistance leaders present in New York. I developed a friendship with the Timorese UN representative, Jose Ramos Horta, later to be the President of Timor Leste. He passed me copies of the draft resolution almost as soon as their drafting group met, after learning that I was a Portuguese Eurasian and

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was able to use a few words in creole Portuguese (about the limit of my knowledge of the language). When I introduced Horta at a public lecture in Singapore many years later, he recalled how much he had enjoyed the lunches with us at an Indian restaurant, as he otherwise subsisted most of the time on bread, butter and jam! We gained influence as we shared the draft resolution (after stamping it “Secret”) with the Indonesian and Australian ambassadors and later with other important contacts. Sometimes, you had to be willing to break with established norms and engage in “tricks”. While we were seated waiting for the start of an afternoon plenary session, Tony Siddique noticed that the two Vietnamese delegation members who were their most effective “operators” on the ground were going through the General Assembly Hall systematically and leaving a document on the tables of selected delegations. We realized that these were delegations that had either voted against the acceptance of the report of the credentials committee, abstained or did not participate. Tony went to an empty seat amidst the Jordanian delegation and received a copy from one of the Vietnamese. When the Vietnamese delegate asked him if he was from Jordan, he replied “Singapore”, working on the assumption that the Vietnamese would not want to report to his political masters that he had given a copy to a Singaporean. This was a coup as the document argued the Vietnamese case for their humanitarian intervention in Cambodia, including using the example of the Tanzanian invasion of Uganda in late 1978 to April 1979 to rid Uganda of the dictator General Idi Amin, who had begun the war against Tanzania. With this information, we spoke to East African delegations to highlight the difference between the Cambodian and Ugandan cases as the Tanzanian forces had immediately

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withdrawn while the Vietnamese were occupying Cambodia and had pushed for a Federation of Indo-China in 1975 shortly after the take-over by communist regimes in the three Indo-China countries which had been strongly opposed by the Khmer Rouge. During the 34th UN General Assembly in 1979, in speaking to delegations, we concentrated on the delegations that had supported our position on the credentials issue in seeking cosponsors and shared drafts of the proposed resolution. We also targeted delegations that had abstained or did not participate in the vote. The ASEAN-sponsored draft resolution was adopted by 91 votes to 21 against, with 29 abstentions.

HONING OUR LOBBYING SKILLS Each year, the Singapore delegation aimed to increase the support for the ASEAN resolution as well as the number of co-sponsors, or to retain the level of support at the very least. The record shows that support for the ASEAN position did in fact increase each year. As this support increased, especially after the holding of the International Conference on Kampuchea in New York in July 1981 and the formation of the Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea in June 1982, we turned to cutting the support for the Vietnamese position by lobbying those who abstained and even those who had backed the Vietnamese position but whom we felt could shift if we could make a persuasive case. To shape the debate on Cambodia, the Mission engaged the media and developed close ties with the media corps accredited to the UN. Background briefings were provided to journalists covering UN debates, going beyond contacts with the leading US media to cover Third World journalists as well as stringers writing for Asian newspapers. Speaking engagements at American and

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Canadian campuses were also accepted. The Mission also took part in round table discussions (what would today be known as Track Two level discussions) aimed at finding pathways to a solution. While the participants were mainly North American, we felt that it was important to engage the new Reagan Administration and to disarm its critics. At the UN, the Mission met regularly with influential sub-groups, countries and individuals who could shape opinion. As Ambassador Kishore Mahbubani noted of his visits to the UN Delegates Lounge in 1985, it was “a time-consuming task requiring a great deal of patience, drinking many cups of coffee and wasting many hours waiting around till the right delegate appears. One has to have the patience of a fisherman, waiting for the right catch to appear.” While lobbying on Cambodia was a year-round activity for the Mission, it reached fever pitch during the three months of the annual UN General Assembly from September to December. In the inter-sessional months, the Mission engaged the UN bureaucracy to ensure that the leadership of organizations such as the World Food Organization, World Food Programme and UNDP did not reach agreements with the Vietnamese-installed Hun Sen administration that undermined the ASEAN position. The Mission met the staff of these organizations regularly to minimize the risk of surprises as well as to demonstrate that we were following the issue closely and would be prepared to oppose any actions that undermined our position. The Mission also built ties by regularly entertaining key delegation members from targeted missions. Regular lunches were organized on a one-on-one basis to put across our views and to build mutual confidence. Where particular delegates were helpful, we hosted meals for them after the resolution was adopted and made it a point to continue these contacts during the following

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year. We also hosted meals for sub-regional groups. For example, as we recognized that the CARICOM delegations were composed of one- or two-man missions at that time, there was a risk that some of them might not turn up for the vote as they had full-time jobs in New York City. From 1982, we organized a CARICOM/ Singapore lunch on the day of the vote where we would provide a good Chinese meal and drinks, moving to the UN building when we were informed that the vote would be shortly due. Delegations from Latin America, North America, Western Europe and South Asia, in particular, were invited to dinners at home. Although such social dinners did not usually result in the gathering of useful information, the informal context strengthened relationships and facilitated approaches to these delegates when their vote was sought or their co-sponsorship needed. We learnt that there was a need to be flexible and that we had always to be aware of the negotiating environment. MFA facilitated this approach by allowing the operators on the ground considerable negotiating flexibility. One issue that engaged our attention was the annual battle to obtain co-sponsors for the ASEAN resolution. As this was regarded by many as a controversial resolution in the early years, we adopted the tactic of agreeing on the spot to co-sponsorship when our allies came with their own draft resolution. We were the first delegation to participate as a co-sponsor when the draft Afghanistan resolution was circulated and we would agree to co-sponsor non-controversial resolutions put forward by friendly countries, obtaining their “on the spot” co-sponsorship of our resolution. This led the Singapore delegation to be active on issues that were not directly connected with our critical interests. On Latin American issues, we played an active role in debates on Nicaragua and Puerto Rican independence and in support of allies

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like Colombia which backed the Contadora process aimed at a Central American peace settlement.3 The objective was to pass the message that opposing us carried political costs, a message which the Cubans, in particular, understood as they adopted a similar approach. This was seen most clearly in our decision to move away from consistently supporting Cyprus in its resolution calling for the withdrawal of Turkey after its invasion and occupation of northern Cyprus in 1974 following the decision by Greek Cypriot leaders to seek enosis, union with Greece. During the 1983 debate on Cyprus, we informed the Cyprus delegation that we would not be participating in the debate and in the vote on the resolution as an expression of our unhappiness with their practice of abstaining on the Cambodia resolution. On the ground, we went further, getting the Democratic Kampuchea delegation to agree not to participate in the vote, pointing out to the Caribbean states that Cyprus had joined in criticisms against them for their support of the overthrow of the pro-Cuban Bishop government in Grenada and letting the Malaysians know our position, which influenced Malaysia to support Turkey by moving from abstention to voting against the resolution. The result was that support for the resolution declined significantly, which attracted media attention.

3. The Contadora Group, made up of the Foreign Ministers of Colombia, Mexico, Panama and Venezuela, was initiated in the early 1980s to deal with the destabilizing effects on the entire Central American region of military conflicts taking place in El Salvador, Nicaragua and Guatemala.

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OPERATING IN THE NON-ALIGNED MOVEMENT The Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) was another area for political contest over Cambodia. Having suffered a major defeat at the Havana NAM Summit in 1979, Singapore’s MFA recognized that it was necessary to organize as most states likely to support ASEAN were not active at NAM meetings. Since there were no votes on issues, silence meant consent to proposals that were presented. By contrast, the NAM radicals were a well-organized group that met regularly before and during NAM meetings and acted as a cohesive group backing proposals by its members, speaking in unison in support of positions taken by the Soviet Union and taking strong group positions so that NAM statements were influenced by their positions, especially as their supporters offered to host meetings and prepared the drafts of communiqués. The result was NAM statements critical of the US by name but that avoided any criticism of the Soviet Union, going so far as Cuba and Nicaragua at the 1979 Havana summit and the 1983 Managua Foreign Ministers’ Meeting respectively, describing the Soviet Union as “the natural ally” of NAM. At the New Delhi NAM Foreign Ministers’ Meeting in 1981, Ambassador Tommy Koh therefore spearheaded the formation of an informal moderate caucus that challenged the stranglehold held on NAM meetings by the NAM radicals. Members of the moderate caucus had interests in different areas. For example, Egypt sought support for the Camp David accords; Pakistan pushed for firm language on Afghanistan; Colombia and Peru sought support on Central American issues raised by Cuba and Nicaragua; Nigeria, Kenya and Senegal were unhappy with language in the communiqué on Southern Africa which put them on a collision course with the West; and Tunisia and Morocco opposed the positions taken by

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Algeria and Libya on Maghreb issues. By bringing together these delegations, the NAM ASEAN members (Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore) were no longer isolated. We were in a position to push back on Cambodia (and for Indonesia, East Timor). The members of the moderate caucus provided mutual support, creating the impression of a critical mass of states prepared to address issues on the NAM agenda, resulting in other moderate states which were not part of this group speaking out in support of the group’s arguments. The 1981 New Delhi Ministerial meeting was important as there were for the first time critical references of the Soviet Union and its allies on the issues of Cambodia and Afghanistan, even though they were not directly named. While the moderate caucus was not as well-structured and was much looser than the radical caucus, it meant that the NAM radicals could no longer dominate NAM proceedings without being challenged. The moderate caucus formed a significant part of Singapore’s game plan in preparations for NAM meetings thereafter until the end of the Cold War. One memorable experience came after a NAM Ministerial Meeting in New York during the UN General Assembly. As we were concerned that Declarations circulated by the Cuban Chair might not include amendments made by the moderate caucus, we would carry out a check just before the finalized text would be circulated. On checking, I noticed that the Cubans had mistakenly put our draft amendments in the text, and not the compromise formulation. I immediately informed my Cuban counterpart on the need to change the section. We would have had short-term pleasure if we had left the mistake in the document (as it would have been withdrawn and a new copy issued) but we gained respect as a result of the manner in which we dealt with the

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issue. I met my Cuban counterpart at the Geneva UN building more than twenty years later, by then a senior Ambassador, and he shouted across the lounge, “Mr Singapore” and came to greet me with a bear hug!

REACHING OUT TO CAPITALS The handling of the Cambodian issue established a benchmark for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In the early 1980s, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr S. Rajaratnam provided the intellectual leadership and spoke articulately at ASEAN meetings, Non-Aligned Summits and Ministerial Meetings and at the UN General Assembly. S.R. Nathan, as the First Permanent Secretary, played a key role in institution building, nurturing a band of politically alert and operationally skilled multilateral diplomats. When Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew mentioned to the US Permanent Representative to the UN, Jeane Kirkpatrick, during her visit to Singapore in May 1984 that the Singapore foreign service was like a DC3, slow and reliable, she responded that she thought that Singapore diplomats were more like F16s! Mr Nathan played a critical role in facilitating the formation of the Cambodian coalition government in 1980–81. He met Son Sann of the Khmer People’s National Liberation Front (KPNLF), In Tam, the Special Envoy of Prince Sihanouk and Khieu Samphan of the Khmer Rouge during their September 1981 visit to Singapore. Mr Nathan told MFA officers that despite their show of bravado when talking about Sihanouk, Son Sann and Khieu Samphan acted submissively in Sihanouk’s presence; they crawled to meet Sihanouk. He learnt from his interactions with Prince Sihanouk that Sihanouk saw himself as above the three factions and not as part of any of them. This recognition helped to reshape MFA’s

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interactions with the three Khmer factions. We had earlier leaned more in favour of Son Sann and the KPNLF. At the UN, while we continued to deal with the KPNLF representatives, we recognized that Sihanouk would be the key player once the coalition government was formed. The goodwill he enjoyed amongst Third World governments was used in our lobbying strategy in 1982–83 to win over those who had previously abstained from voting, while providing a basis for states that had voted in the past for our resolution to agree to co-sponsor the ASEAN draft. The focus of this discussion has been on the role of MFA in Singapore’s successful lobbying at the UN on the Cambodian issue. However, as earlier highlighted, the Prime Minister, Defence Minister and Foreign Minister were the key policymakers. Their visits to capitals and the way they framed arguments when meeting their counterparts were therefore critical. PM Lee Kuan Yew played a major role in lobbying directly President Ronald Reagan, Deng Xiaoping, Margaret Thatcher and other world leaders. He was particularly effective in obtaining support from the US for the supply of military equipment to the non-Communist resistance through his direct lobbying of the American President, Secretary of Defense and the CIA Director during visits to Washington. Mr S. Rajaratnam and his successors, Mr S. Dhanabalan and Mr Wong Kan Seng reached out beyond familiar ground. They made bilateral visits during the year and spent considerable time meeting their counterparts during the UN General Assembly, which was a notable change. Singapore had previously received calls from other Ministers of Foreign Affairs, and rarely initiated bilateral meetings in multilateral fora. They also took the initiative to support ASEAN meetings with counterpart regional groupings during the UN General Assembly and to discuss the

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Cambodian issue during the ASEAN Post-Ministerial Conferences and in bilateral meetings with their Post-Ministerial Conference counterparts. From 1985, recognizing that delegations were getting weary of the annual debate on Cambodia at the United Nations, the initiative was taken for ASEAN lobby missions to be sent to capitals. Delegations composed of special envoys of their Foreign Ministers visited sub-regions such as Central and Southern Africa, West Africa, the Maghreb, South Pacific and Latin America. The emphasis was on countries where ASEAN did not have a strong presence. While the initial visits were to countries supporting the ASEAN position, countries which had abstained were also included later. By presenting a united front, the impression was created that ASEAN was an influential organization and represented a new phenomenon in the Third World, as the European Community was then seen as the one example of a successful regional organization.

COUNTER-LOBBYING The ability to respond and react to the efforts of other countries to lobby against our interests was one aspect that we learnt to develop as a result of the Cambodia conflict. Three examples demonstrate the need for situational awareness — we could also be the targets of pressure or the use of more subtle lobbying. Sometimes, it was states friendly to us that acted against our interests and that needed to be effectively countered. At the International Conference on Kampuchea in New York City in 1981, despite its public criticisms of the Khmer Rouge and because of its strategic alliance with China at that time, the US supported China’s efforts to prevent the disarming of all

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Khmer groups and the establishment of an interim administration. Following a confrontation between Foreign Minister Dhanabalan and Chinese Vice-Foreign Minister Han Nian Long, Dhanabalan met US Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and the Pacific John Holdridge at Holdridge’s request. Holdridge insisted that Singapore seriously consider the PRC request and not do anything to upset the Chinese. At the end of the meeting, he told Dhanabalan that he would go over his head directly to PM Lee Kuan Yew. There would be blood on the floor. Dhanabalan said he was free to do whatever he wanted. MFA officers involved learnt that lobbying pressure could sometimes be exerted directly and even brutally but in this case, it failed. (PM Lee later used this example in pointing out to Americans how they had undermined their own interests). A second example of successful counter-lobbying occurred during the 24th International Conference of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Manila in November 1981. MFA’s sole lawyer at that time, Michael Cheok, and a new officer, Bilahari Kausikan, were sent by Permanent Secretary S.R. Nathan to block the participation of a representative of the Heng Samrin administration in Phnom Penh. It was the first international meeting for Bilahari who had joined MFA barely six months earlier. No other delegation had MFA staff. Michael, in his elegant style, and Bilahari, with the directness of a sledgehammer, told the President of the ICRC and the President of the Assembly of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies respectively that if the Heng Samrin representative was allowed to attend, they were prepared to wreck the conference. Bilahari recalled that he said it “as menacingly as I could”. As Bilahari noted in his contribution to Perspectives on Singapore Security: The First Fifty Years, “The lesson I took away is that

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diplomacy is not just about making oneself agreeable: one does what one must, someone else will clean up the damage. It is all very well to talk abstractly about the long term, but one has to survive the short term in order to get the long term”.4 The series of Jakarta Informal Meetings (JIM) which began in July 1988 sponsored by Indonesia to seek a solution to the Cambodia conflict provide our third example. Indonesia was keen on regional solutions to regional problems and was unhappy with decisions on Cambodia’s future being reached in international fora. The JIM would be “the focal point for the ASEAN diplomatic initiative on the Kampuchean problem”. But Singapore felt that there were unresolved differences between ASEAN and Vietnam. Even if Indonesia was unhappy with Singapore’s firm opposition to a fait accompli, and it resulted in a stalemate at the JIM meetings and in working-level meetings of senior officials, we were prepared to oppose Vietnam. Our concern was that the JIM process reflected the Indonesian assessment that Indonesia and Vietnam, as the two major powers in the region, should shape regional order and not let external powers dominate. As the Ambassador in Jakarta, I argued that the regional approach could increase the pressure to conform to the dominant approach favoured by the major regional powers, especially Indonesia, and that there was a need to resist Indonesian pressures.

4. Bilahari Kausikan, “Pragmatic Adaptation, Not Grand Strategy, Shaped Singapore’s Foreign Policy”, in Perspectives on the Security of Singapore, edited by Barry Desker and Ang Cheng Guan (Singapore: World Scientific/ Imperial College Press, 2016), p. 298.

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THE END GAME As the 1980s wore on and the Gorbachev revolution took place in the Soviet Union, Cambodia became a less significant issue for MFA. As the Permanent Members of the Security Council (P5) became involved, ASEAN’s role diminished. France, for example, convened the International Conference on Cambodia (ICC) in July/August 1989. Tommy Koh has summarized Singapore’s assessment succinctly, What lessons can we learn from the ICC about multilateral negotiations? First, it is always helpful, perhaps necessary to prepare carefully before convening an international conference. If France had held preparatory meetings at the level of senior officials, it would either have improved the prospects of the Conference or convinced France that Vietnam was not ready to strike a compromise. Second, in the case of regional conflicts in the Third World, the agreement of the five permanent members of the Security Council is a necessary, but not sufficient reason for success. The Soviet Union was either unwilling or unable to persuade Vietnam to seek a compromise in Paris. Third, in the case of regional conflicts in the Third World, the key to the solution of regional conflicts is often held, not by the great powers alone, but in concert with regional players. Fourth, although it is preferable to have a single Chairman to two Co-Chairmen preside over a conference or committee, the system of Co-Chairmanship can sometimes work if the co-Chairmen are carefully chosen and if they work in tandem. Fifth, timing is of the utmost importance. In the case of the Cambodian conflict, the Vietnamese had not given up their aspiration for hegemony over Cambodia. This is why

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Vietnam and its surrogate, Hun Sen, rejected compromise at the Conference table.5

As the five permanent members of the UN Security Council became involved in resolving the issue in 1990, Singapore’s role declined. The end of the Cold War facilitated the peace process. Superpower rivalry declined and great power cooperation became a feature of the 1990s. The October 1991 re-convening of the ICC by France led to the adoption of the Final Act by participating Ministers and the end of the conflict on the ground. ASEAN was defined by the success of its diplomacy on Cambodia. It was regarded as the most effective Third World regional organization and gained many admirers within the UN system. With peace in Cambodia, Myanmar, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia were keen to join ASEAN. It was said that they attributed greater cohesion and effectiveness to ASEAN than was the case. They did realize ASEAN’s weaknesses when they joined the club in the 1990s.

5. “The Paris Peace Conference on Cambodia: An Example of a Multilateral Negotiation” in Tommy Koh, The Quest for World Order: Perspectives of a Pragmatic Idealist (Singapore: Times Academic Press, 1998) pp. 87–96.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR Barry Desker is Distinguished Fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore. He joined the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1970, serving eventually as Ambassador to Indonesia from 1986 to 1993. He was Deputy Permanent Representative at the United Nations in New York from 1982 to 1984. After his posting as Ambassador in Jakarta, he became the Chief Executive Officer of the Trade Development Board from 1994 to 2000. He was the Director of the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies (IDSS) from 2000 to 2014, and was concurrently inaugural Dean of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies from 2007 to 2014.

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