The stalled water talks between Malaysia and Singapore can now restart only with a meeting between the two prime ministers. The two negotiating teams cannot overcome the impasse, for one does not understand the other and the other only too well. For the talks to resume, Singapore must ask for it. But she would not without some guarantees from Malaysia.

That she would not get Singapore botched the talks, in the Malay mind, when she revealed confidential documents in an unresolved issue. And proved she would in future in a regional dispute when she published confidential correspondence between Singapore and Indonesia over

trade statistics. Singapore insists the letter of the law must be honoured.

Malaysia has now released a series of advertisements putting her case public for Singapore to rebut when, if, talks resume.

The National Economic Action Council (NEAC) is behind the advertisements but behind it is Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad. It is brilliant. It tells Singapore what she must resolve before an amicable settlement.

It is also pointless. Malaysia need not have to make its case public. For Singapore is painted into a corner. It is all but impossible for the talks to resume until the two prime ministers, Mahathir and Goh Chok Tong, meet in Putrajaya. Both Malaysia and Singapore know this.

But Mahathir is on his way out, and it would be Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, who would be in his place. Would Singapore allow it or send in the deputy prime minister instead? More than the water talks, Mahathir has raised the spectre of, to use the current buzz-word, regime change in Singapore.

Historical past

Singapore ignores the historical past. Why did Malaya, as she then was, agree to three cents (the sen came later) per 1,000 gallons in the agreements of 1961 and 1962. Johor had wanted a far higher price, but Singapore was making its case to join Malaysia, and the then prime minister Tunku Abdul Rahman decided that since this would soon be an agreement between two states in the newly formed Malaysia, there was no need to force the island state to pay too high a price.

The agreement provides for a review after 25 years, and when the purchasing value of the dollar declines. Singapore does not accept this. She did not in 1986 and 1987, and that was unravelled only when the then Singapore prime minister Lee Kuan Yew, came to pay, in the Malay mind, homage to Mahathir. That is how it is viewed here. Nothing can erase that.

Singapore goes for broke in talks when there is political uncertainty in Malaysia. In 1986 and 1987, Mahathir was fighting for his political life. Umno had been declared an unlawful political organisation by the courts, and few concentrated their attention on the water talks. It is an issue now when there would be a new prime minister of Malaysia in three months. And stumbled in both because the Malays close ranks when there is an external threat like this, when an outsider tries to take advantage of internal mayhem. If anything, the new prime minister, Abdullah, must, indeed would, be unbendable in the water talks.

Malaysia has over the years created an efficient smokescreen with a number of pointless issues, which Singapore grabbed as proof of Kuala Lumpur's perfidy. The second bridge, the needless quarrel over the CIQ, the railway land, and others brought out for the end game. At first I wondered why but it was a deliberate plan of Mahathir to seize the advantage in Malaysia's favour. He has. It would not be easy for Singapore under his successor, or the successor of his successor.

In the next stage of the talks, over raising the price Singapore pays for water, a similar deadlock has occurred: the Singaporeans insist on its pound of flesh and if it is not agreed presses for a public humiliation of Malaysia. All that matters in Singapore is the present, devoid of the historical past, framed in graphs and pie charts.

And she cannot understand a Malaysia, for all its commitment to a technological future, is still mired in a cultural and religious mindset. In Malaysia, there is an acceptance that nations, no matter how powerful, blunder through, and that must be taken into account in every matter. Especially in talks.

Open hostilities

Singapore does not understand or accept this. Which is why a think tank in the republic holds a seminar on the Malay mind, with two prominent Malaysians, neither Malay, leading it in an attempt to find an instant answer. Could cultural forms be understood and learnt at seminars like these if the national mood is to drag the other side's nose to the ground?

When Singapore positions itself, with Israeli help, as a Chinese island in a hostile Malay sea, as Israel in the Middle East, and believes its military might could flatten its neighbours armed might at the onset of hostilities, and conducts its talks with its neighbours as it does, is it not inevitable that many in Malaysia believe that this issue must result in open hostilities?

Especially when it was Singapore that began the military arms race with Malaysia when she bought tanks in the late 1960s. And continue to taunt the Malaysian armed forces by her military aircraft straying deep into Trengganu and Kelantan and back into international waters when the RMAF jets scrambled from Kuantan.

Malaysia believes this tough talk on water is to force the issue to be resolved on the battlefield. A book on Singapore's armed forces suggest it as a way of reinforcing its own security and ensuring the republic gets all the water she needs. When Jordan said she would divert a river from the Lake Galilee for agriculture, Israel warned Amman that would be a cause for war.

Malaysian defence planners say that its armoury is outclassed by Singapore's. But the Malaysian fighting machine after the war is not. Besides, neither Israel nor the United States would rush to

Singapore's aid should hostilities break out. Not after the quagmire of one in the Middle East and engaging another Muslim nation of the other.

As one military planner asked: "Would Singapore cut its nose to spite Malaysia's face? For should war break out. Singapore would be destroyed no matter what happens. Is that the brinkmanship it displays?" The talks are preferable, but it is Singapore which must ask for it.