Mr. Lee speech segment: Starts: "When I was first here..



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Background: Demonstrators continue to trail the Prime Minister of Singapore, Mr. Lee Kuan Yew, on hie 13-day Australian visit.

About forty demonstrators, many wearing hoods, gathered outside Sydney's Menzies Hotel to wait for Mr. Lee to arrive for a luncheon with the New South Wales premier, Mr. Neville Wran.

The demonstrators carried placards and banners: chanted and sang slogans against the Prime Minister, calling on him to free political prisoners.

About half Were Asians, with the mask and hoods hiding identity to prevent "repercussions by the Lee Kuan Yew government against our families in Singapore", according to student leaders.

Thirty uniformed police surrounded the hotel's main entrance as Mr. Lee and his wife were met by Mr. Wran. During the lunch Mr. Lee and Mr. Wran had a light he???rte??? exchange over the form of democracy operating in their respective states.

Later, on a televise on program, Mr. Lee referred to the masked demonstrators as "comic students who put on these Klu Klux Klan type of masks."
He said he knew of no returned student from Austral is who-had become an active dissident in Singapore, let alone a terrorist and he could see no reason why they should not continue to come Australia.

Singapore, he added, would not waste its resources on trying to identify the masked student demonstrators.