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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 its 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
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