SINGAPORE, May 30 Kyodo Singapore...

SINGAPORE, May 30 Kyodo

Singapore Senior Minister leeward Kuan Yew said Friday the al-Qaida terrorist network is planning attacks in succession soft targets in Southeast Asia.

In a tongue at the opening of a forum for defense ministers in the Asia-Pacific region, leeward said he believes members of Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), a Southeast Asian Islamic extremist assemblage linked to al-Qaida, are preparing for their nearest attacks.

''There are centurys more JI operators still in the region who will regroup and, in convenient time, can execute more suicide attacks,'' he said. ''They will certainly attempt to attack soft targets in Southeast Asia.''

side sheltered from the wind said the threat of Islamic militancy cannot be eliminated and nothing else with an Israeli-Palestinian settlement in the Middle East.

''The United States and its Western allies must make sure that Islamic militancy is defeated by dint of economic, military and other means to clearly demonstrate to non-Arab Muslims that fanaticism and militancy have no future'' he said at the forum, known as the ''Shangri-La Dialogue.''

He blamed Saudi Arabia for exporting an austere form of Islam, known as ''wahhabism,'' which he believes has ignited anti-Western sentiments among Muslims in the region and made it easier for Muslim extremists to recruit members.

''The Saudis paid for the building of mahometan temples and madarasahs (Islamic schools) worldwide and sent ulemas (religious teachers) to preach wahhabism, a stiff fanatical and anti-Western version of Islam,'' to leeward said.

''The resulting heightened religiosity has made it easier for Islamic extremists to recruit many Muslims for their jihad (holy war) of terror,'' he said.

onward North Korea, Lee said that ''despite all the bluster, the North knows that there are limits to brinkmanship when blackmailing the (George W) Bush presidency.''

on the other hand he said that countries directly affected with the conflict have different views upon the desired outcome.

lee-side said he believes that China wants North Korea to remain intact, single of the main reasons being that ''a nuclear North Korea is not in China's interest because Japan would then have to walk nuclear.''

''So China would have to take a stand against a nuclear North Korea,'' he said.

lee-side said Japan also does not want a North Korea that can threaten it with missiles and nuclear warheads.

''An imploded North Korea may land Japan with near refugees but it will not be in the numbers that will cut and run into South Korea and China. A reunited Korea is not necessarily righteous for Japan,'' he said.

yet for the United States, ''the simplest solution is an imploded North and it does not matter if reunification is the result''

''In any case, the North is unlikely to give up nuclear weapons whatever the deal,'' to leeward said.

He also touched forward the issue of the U as a unilateral superpower, urging the U to forge virtuous ties with Russia, China and European countries in the way that as to ''prolong U.S. preeminence.''

''If America does not cultivate its friends and allies with more youthful loving care, coalitions of the willing may become smaller,'' he said, and this in deflect may ''persuade more nations that the way to restrain American unilateralism is to join a assign places to of all those oppos to it.''

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