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U.S. Department of Defense Press Operations News Transcript

(JOINED IN PROGRESS)

SECRETARY OF DEFENSE JIM MATTIS: ... but Minister Ng, welcome to the Pentagon, to you and your delegation. You're very welcome here.

Ambassador, good to see you here.

And it's just good to see you again. We've met before, of course, in Europe. And we in the United States are very proud to partner with Singapore to defend our shared security interests.

The Asia-Pacific, as you know, as we discussed, is a priority region for the United States, and both of our nations start from the common ground of democracies. In the U.S., we got our best assessments, I might add, from Singapore. That is where I get the best picture window into the Asia-Pacific region.

Your country brings quality to our mutual efforts to advance security in the region and beyond. Our extensive and longstanding military and economic ties have been instrumental to upholding international laws and principles, and in supporting the regional maritime security.

Singapore was the first Asia-Pacific country to join the defeat ISIS coalition, and we value your effort to counter terrorism regionally and globally.

Thank you for your support of U.S. forces, to include hosting some of our rotational deployments of littoral combat ships and P-8 aircraft. We are keen to build on this relationship. No relationship stays the same. It gets better or it diminishes. I'm committed to making ours better.

So again welcome, Minister Ng, and I look forward to our discussions.

MINISTER OF DEFENSE NG ENG HEN: Let me thank Secretary Mattis for receiving us, and the very strong honors for Singapore and our relationship.

I'm here to meet with Secretary Mattis and this new administration. I'm very thankful for the warm words and the strong words about the nature of our relationship. Our relationship is a longstanding one, and goes back to the substantive memorandum of understanding signed in 1990, where we have said and we continue to maintain our belief that it's as true in the last half century as it will be for the next half-century and the foreseeable future that the U.S. presence in the Asia-Pacific region is not only critical, but indispensable for Asia-Pacific stability.

And that is the reason why we have allowed naval -- your ships and planes to use our bases. And we want to continue to build on that relationship and we want to use this opportunity to not only from state-to-state relations, but hopefully on a more personal level. I know of your summit with Singapore in your previous career in the military, but I hope that this will be the start of a warm and good relationship with the defense secretary.

SEC. MATTIS: Absolutely. Thank you, Minister Ng.

And thank you.

Q: Mr. Secretary, do you have a reaction to North Korean missile tests?

SEC. MATTIS: Not at this time.

Q: Do you have a reaction to the Syrian chemical attack?

SEC. MATTIS: (inaudible) It was a heinous act and will be treated as such.

-END-

http://www.defense.gov/News/News-Transcripts/Transcript-View/Article/1141842/