The bridge project to replace the ageing Causeway had been brought up by former Malaysian premier Mahathir Mohammad but was scrapped by his successor Abdullah Badawi in 2006 after it ran into opposition from Singapore.

Hence, Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong reacted cautiously to Najib's suggestion, noting that he 'explained the history of this problem' to his Malaysian counterpart and leaving it to a joint ministerial committee to study the project.

It was the outspoken Lee Kuan Yew who clearly expressed Singapore's position.

The third link 'does not make sense to us if at the same time they punish us by making us barge sand from Vietnam', he said, stressing Singapore's desire that Malaysia lift its 12-year-old ban on sand exports to the growing city-state.

'The relationship is one of co-dependency enmeshed in race and national pride,' said Jim Baker, a history and economics teacher at the Singapore American School.

Despite all the unsolved problems inherited from the past, both sides heavily depend on each other economically and share common interests in the region.

The neighbours, it seems, are now willing to improve their ties.

But new obstacles keep coming up, as, for example, the Sultan of Johor, the closest Malaysian state to Singapore, who has already rejected the proposal for a third link.

And from the back seat former Malaysian premier Mahathir, who exchanged verbal blows with Lee Kuan Yew over several issues during his administration, still drops vitriolic remarks in his popular blog on all matters related to Singapore.

During his visit to Malaysia, said Mahathir, Lee had made clear that Singapore regards itself the centre of the region.

'The rest are peripheral and are there to serve the interests of this somewhat tiny Middle Kingdom,' Mahathir claimed.

DPA

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