Singapore, June 05, 2005, Geert De Clercq (Reuters)

Singapore is keen to formalise its budding defence links with India and sign an agreement on troop training, Singapore's defence minister said on Monday.

An initial agreement to allow Singaporean ground troops and air force to train in India in the past two years was the latest in a string of defence agreements for the land-scarce city-state.

Singapore already has similar arrangements with partners such as Taiwan, Australia, New Zealand, Brunei, Thailand, the United States and France.

"Both the Indians and ourselves feel that this is a worthwhile cooperative relationship and we hope to sign an agreement that will allow this relationship, in particular the training relationship, to go on into the future," Singapore Minister for Defence Teo Chee Hean told Reuters in an interview.

Singapore, which has held joint naval exercises with India in the past 12 years, last year held joint army and air force exercises with the Indian army on the subcontinent, involving artillery and some 500 Singapore ground troops over a period of more than a month.

It also deployed half a dozen F-16 fighter jets, Teo told Reuters at the end of the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) annual security conference.

Singapore now hopes it can formalise this cooperation with a memorandum of understanding.

On Saturday, Indian Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee told the IISS summit that Singapore is emerging as a hub for India's expanding economic, political and security ties with East Asia.

"New areas of defence cooperation, including joint training facilities are emerging and supplementing existing cooperation between India and Singapore in the naval, maritime and counter-terrorism spheres," he said.

TRAINING ABROAD CRUCIAL

Training facilities abroad are crucial for the highly urbanised city-state, which is so small that a fighter jet can fly across it in less than two minutes and which is surrounded by Malaysia and Indonesia to the north, west and south.

Teo, 51, said Singapore has "good relations with our Australian friends" and its air force and army hold training exercises there involving a few thousand troops per year.

Teo declined all comment about Singapore's military relationship with Taiwan, where it has training facilities.

"This is a topic which I cannot discuss with you ... out of respect to our friends on both sides of the Straits," he said.

But he said Singapore was keen to further develop its dialogue and cooperation with China.

In November, Teo visited Chinese Defence Minister Cao Gangchuan, who made a return visit to Singapore in April.

"We continue the exchange of visits and we have agreed to expand our security dialogue. We also agreed that we could do things like attend each other's training courses," Teo said.

Asked about a 2001 media report that China -- which sees Taiwan as a renegade province, to be reunited by force if necessary -- had offered Singapore training facilities on Hainan island as an alternative to Taiwan, Teo said "We have never discussed this".

Teo also said the Singapore army enjoyed good relations with forces in neighbouring Malaysia and Indonesia, two countries with which it has had testy relations in the past.

He said that regular joint exercises and exchange programmes with the Indonesian army had contributed a lot to the smooth functioning of the tsunami relief operation in early 2005, when Singapore sent supplies, army doctors and helicopters to Indonesia's Aceh province.

Asked whether recent warmer relations with Malaysia could lead to a reopening of Malaysian airspace for Singapore military planes, Teo said:

"We hope that at some point in time we can resume these arrangements, because we think it would be good for strengthening ties between the two countries and the two militaries."

In 1998, amid tense relations between the two neighbours, Malaysia announced that arrangements for the use of Malaysian airspace by Singapore Air Force planes were rescinded.

Use of Malaysia's airspace has since been bogged down in talks about Singapore's use of Malaysian water and Malaysia's desire to build a new bridge between the two countries.