The United States is a proud member of the Indo-Pacific and the relationship that it has with the nations in that region is an enduring relationship, US Vice President Kamala Harris said Tuesday.
"The United States is a proud member of the Indo-Pacific, and the relationship that we have with the nations in that region and with Singapore is an enduring relationship," Harris said in her joint media appearance with the visiting Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong of Singapore.
"It is a relationship we value and we prioritize for many reasons, including the shared principle that we have about what is important in terms of world order and international norms and standards," she said in the Vice President's Ceremonial Office of the White House.
Harris told reporters that she and the prime minister discussed the issue of Russia and Ukraine.
"We in the spirit of our work together being global, discussed our support for the people of Ukraine and also the importance of acknowledging the economic costs that Singapore levied as a result of our shared concern about the advancement that Russia and and the aggression that Russia has taken, and the threat that it has posed to an issue that we hold dearly -- and I'll speak for the United States, and I know that we share this concern -- about upholding the importance of sovereignty and territorial integrity," she said.
"But the bigger issue is not only about what we must do to maintain and fight for, for the United States, European security, but what we must do as a matter of principle and priority for our nation in standing up to the importance of rules and norms and international rules and norms -- again, in this case, as it relates to sovereignty and territorial integrity," Harris said.
Harris had travelled to Singapore last August.
Lee said that the US has played an important and constructive role in the Asia Pacific for nearly eight years. Singapore has consistently supported a strong US presence in the region, both through words and actions. "And our two countries enjoy close economic relations," he said.
"Our US-Singapore Free Trade Agreement signed in 2004, nearly 20 years ago, was the US's first FTA with an Asian country. Singapore is home to nearly 5,500 US companies, and US FDI stock in Singapore exceeds US investments in China, India, and the Republic of Korea combined," he added.
Singapore is also the second-largest Asian investor in the US. So, Singapore's investment in the US and US exports to Singapore support more than a quarter million US jobs.
"Our security and defense ties go back many decades. We're a major security cooperation partner of the US. Our Memorandum of Understanding on Defence Cooperation, signed in 1990 and renewed recently in 2019, provides the US military with access to Singapore's air and naval bases," Lee said.
