SINGAPORE (July 4): Two of Singapore’s heavyweight diplomats have clashed in a rare public disagreement over the city-state’s foreign policy.

This comes after Kishore Mahbubani in a Straits Times commentary on Saturday suggested that the decision by Bahrain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to break off diplomatic relations with Qatar holds an important lesson for Singapore.

“Small states must always behave like small states,” says Kishore, Singapore’s former permanent representative to the United Nations. “Exercise discretion. We should be very restrained in commenting on matters involving great powers.”

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