UN Secretary General's appeal on Ukraine

 Secretary-General, in Statement on Ukraine, Calls Russian Federation’s Military Offensive ‘Wrong, against Charter, Unacceptable, But Not Irreversible’

Following is UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ statement on Ukraine, in New York today:

We are seeing Russian military operations inside the sovereign territory of Ukraine on a scale that Europe has not seen in decades.

Day after day, I have been clear that such unilateral measures conflict directly with the United Nations Charter.  The Charter is clear:  “All members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.”

The use of force by one country against another is the repudiation of the principles that every country has committed to uphold.  This applies to the present military offensive.  It is wrong.  It is against the Charter.  It is unacceptable.  But it is not irreversible.  I repeat my appeal from last night to President [Vladimir] Putin:  stop the military operation.  Bring the troops back to Russia.

We know the toll of war.  With deaths rising, we are seeing images of fear, anguish and terror in every corner of Ukraine.  People — everyday innocent people — always pay the highest price.  That is why the United Nations is scaling up our humanitarian operations in and around Ukraine.

Today, I am announcing that we will immediately allocate $20 million from the Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) to meet urgent needs.  We and our humanitarian partners are committed to staying and delivering, to support people in Ukraine in their time of need.

United Nations staff are working on both sides of the contact line, always guided by the humanitarian principles of neutrality, impartiality, humanity and independence.  We are providing life-saving humanitarian relief to people in need, regardless of who or where they are.  The protection of civilians must be priority number one.

International humanitarian and human rights law must be upheld.  The decisions of the coming days will shape our world and directly affect the lives of millions upon millions of people.  In line with the Charter, it’s not too late to save this generation from the scourge of war.  We need peace.

Why the Russian Federation Recognized the Independence Movements in the Donbas BY AJAMU BARAKA

 “Minsk, Minsk, Minsk,” they cried after Russia recognized Donetsk and Luhansk. But those Western diplomats and pundits did not hear those of us in the Anti-war, pro-peace and anti-imperialist movements who insisted that Minsk II was the only conceivable way out of the crisis!

There will be reams of words attempting to provide a coherent analysis of the manufactured crisis dramatically unfolding in Ukraine, which took another unanticipated turn when Russia extended recognition to the Peoples’ Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk in the territory referred to as the Donbas in Eastern Ukraine.

I will not add to that mountain of ink because, for me, the story is relatively simple. I have argued since 2015 that it was greed informed by miscalculations that drove the U.S. — with the support of European capital salivating from prospect of profits generated by gaining full control of the Ukrainian economy through the European Association agreement — to decide to overthrow the government of Viktor Yanukovych when he turned to Russia instead of surrendering Ukrainian sovereignty to U.S. and European capital.

This was the genesis of the crisis. For U.S. policymakers it did not matter that the coup government was made up of literal neo-Nazis and extremist white supremacists and antisemitic ultra-nationalists from the neo-Nazi Svoboda party — the National Socialist Party of Ukraine.

Nor was there any concern that one of the former commanders of the Azov Battalion, a violent right-wing gang that was merged into the Ukrainian National Guard and is now being trained by the British, said that Ukraine’s mission is to “lead in a final crusade … against the Semite-led Untermenschen” (sub-humans).

No concern because aligning with rightist elements in order to advance the economic and geostrategic interests of the U.S. state and capitalist class behind the backs of the U.S. public is nothing new. That is why it is so ironic, or perhaps contradictory, that while Democratic Party activists are mobilized to struggle against the far-right in the U.S., Biden’s Ukrainian policies are affirming once again that the neoliberal right does not mind aligning with naked fascism to advance the imperial interests of capital.

From rightist Islamic forces to right-wing apartheid state of Israel, to anti-democratic monarchs of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), there is usually never a state too odious for the U.S. to deal with as long as there was the possibility of a buck to be made.

That is why it is almost surreal to read U.S. propaganda messages that still frame U.S. intentions in themes that suggest a benevolent character to U.S. behavior — and getting away with it! And even among African/Black radicals who should know better, instead of educating Africans on what was in play in Ukraine with the expansion of the white supremacist NATO structure, the gangster move being made on Ukraine in order for U.S. capital to continue to assert control over the European market, and the crude attempt to divert attention away from the failures of Biden’s domestic policies — some Africans, along with elements of the white left, were more interested in having abstract discussions on the class nature of the Russian state and economy — as if there was anything to debate there!

Like other subversive actions by the U.S. state, the destabilization and then capturing of the Ukrainian state, and the installation of a puppet government had nothing to do with any concerns for democracy. It is impossible for the U.S. to be concerned about democracy when it is the principal state undermining democracy around the world. If the U.S. were committed to upholding democratic processes, it would not have overthrown a democratically elected government in Ukraine.

And U.S. policy certainly did not reflect any concern for human rights in Ukraine. The war that was sparked after the coup government decided to attack its own citizens in the Donbas who rejected its legitimacy resulted in thousands of Ukrainians losing their lives.

The U.S. was not concerned with the territorial integrity of Ukraine either, because it was the coup government, backed by their bosses in Washington, that forced the separation of the Donbas from Ukraine by defining them as non-Ukrainians. Ukrainian citizens in Donbas became “pro-Russia separatists and terrorists,” which made them eligible for massive human rights violations, including murder as foreign entities.

Yet, with all of that, up until February 21, 2022 the 57th anniversary of the assassination of the Black internationalist revolutionary Malcolm X, a route to a peaceful resolution to the crisis existed — the Minsk II agreement.  It was the Minsk II agreement, put in place after the independent republics fought the Ukrainian neo-fascists to a military stand-still, along with provisions for a ceasefire, that provided a path to peaceful resolution. The agreement would have provided political autonomy for the Donbas within the Ukrainian state, thus preserving the existing borders of Ukraine before the coup of 2014.

Unfortunately, with the election of Joe Biden, who was the Obama administration’s point person on Ukraine, the Democrats immediately picked-up where U.S. policy left off in 2016 and started to encourage the Ukrainian government to ignore the Minsk II agreement and to consider taking back the Donbas by force.

Today, after the U.S. flooded Ukraine with weapons, including long-range artillery that was introduced into the conflict area in violation of the Minsk ceasefire deal, the deployment of 150,000 Ukrainian troops positioned along the contact line between Ukraine and Donbas, and the shelling from the Ukrainian forces right during the period that the U.S. predicted that Russia would invade, the Minsk agreement has become another casualty of war.

On February 18, 2022, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov stated that he was “alarmed” by a reported spike in Ukrainian artillery attacks against rebels in the eastern region of Donbas with weapons prohibited by the Minsk agreement. Reports from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which was tasked with the responsibility, since 2015, to monitor and report on violations of the agreement, indicated that in Donetsk, between February 18 and February 20, 2022, there were 591 ceasefire violations, and in Luhansk it recorded 975 ceasefire violations, including 860 explosions.

What was the response from the Ukraine government? The government claims that OSCE is biased because the data it is gathering seems to indicate that it is the Ukrainian forces that are responsible for the increase in military actions.

But that controversy and debate over that data failed to find itself in the daily coverage of the situation by the Western press, even though the empirical data clearly showed that Ukrainian forces were responsible for escalating the military engagement.

Ukraine is just the symptom; the Disease is U.S. Doctrine of “Full Spectrum Dominance”

The U.S. has its pretext to move the Europeans to impose economic sanctions against Russia, even though it is clear to many in Europe that the Biden administration’s policies are no more than the “liberal” version of “America First” as it relates to Europe.

European capital, especially the Germans, are expected to take another hit for the team like it did during the first round of sanctions against Russia and the money they all lost with the Trump administration’s abrogation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (the Iran Nuclear Deal).

The capitalist oligarchy that is the base of Putin’s governing coalition may understand something that U.S. policymakers in their arrogance are underestimating, namely, that European capital is getting closer to a breaking point with the U.S., especially when money can be made in a context of relative stability in Europe as opposed to the destabilizing effects of conflict.

They also know that the world is changing and that multipolarity is rapidly becoming the new reality and that European capital will have to make careful choices.

China is the number one trade and investment partner with the European Union states, the Chinese-inspired “Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) ” is the largest “free trade” agreement on the planet constituting one-third of humanity and one-third of global GDP. Russia is sitting on top of the Eurasia Economic Union that, in terms of land, is the largest trade union on the planet, and of course the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). 

The Russian recognition of the republics of Donbas was no more than the open acknowledgment of the dismembering of Ukraine. A process that started with the U.S. coup and the imposition of a government that completely turned over Ukrainian sovereignty to U.S. and European capital.

The lesson for the colonized, working classes and nationally oppressed? Authentic national liberation, people(s)-centered human rights, and self-determination for peoples and nations are impossible in a world in which capitalist competition and war are the defining characteristics of global relations.

We must, as we say in the Black is Back Coalition and the Black Alliance for Peace, turn imperialist wars into wars against imperialism! That is our task and responsibility. To do otherwise is to fail the historical mission of our generation.

Ajamu Baraka is the national organizer of the Black Alliance for Peace and was the 2016 candidate for vice president on the Green Party ticket. He is an editor and contributing columnist for the Black Agenda Report and contributing columnist for Counterpunch magazine. 

Ukraine conflict: What is Swift and why are leaders divided on banning Russia?

 European Union foreign ministers have discussed banning Russia from the Swift payment network, which is pivotal for the smooth transaction of money worldwide.

According to diplomatic sources, the move is being considered as part of further sanctions on Moscow following the invasion of Ukraine.

Ukraine's president Volodymy Zelensky said an ban should be immediate to tighten the screw on Moscow. But several countries are reluctant to act.

Banning Russia from the system - used by thousands of financial institutions - would hit the country's banking network and access to funds. There would, however, be blowback on other countries and companies because, for example, buying oil and gas from Russia would be disrupted.

EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell said excluding Russia from Swift "was considered" by foreign ministers on Friday, but added the move didn't get the "necessary unanimity".

Mr Borrell said the move remained a possibility for "future consideration".

Defence Secretary Ben Wallace has been pushing for a ban, telling the BBC on Friday: "Britain wants the Swift system to be turned off for Russia. But unfortunately the Swift system is not in our control. It is not a unilateral decision."

But ahead of Friday's meeting, Germany's foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, said Berlin did not believe excluding Moscow from the Swift was the right thing to do at this moment.

She told reporters: "I can understand - I feel the same way - that in these minutes, in these hours, emotions are running high and that words like 'Swift Agreement' sound very, very strong, but at these moments you have to... keep a cool head."

Earlier on Friday, France's Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said a Swift sanction would only be used as a last resort.

What is Swift?

Swift is the global financial artery that allows the smooth and rapid transfer of money across borders. It stands for Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication.

Created in 1973 and based in Belgium, Swift links 11,000 banks and institutions in more than 200 countries.

But Swift is not your traditional High Street bank. It is a sort of instant messaging system that informs users when payments have been sent and arrived.

It sends more than 40 million messages a day, as trillions of dollars change hands between companies and governments.

More than 1% of those messages are thought to involve Russian payments.

Who owns and controls Swift?

Swift was created by American and European banks, which did not want a single institution developing their own system and having a monopoly.

The network is now jointly-owned by more than 2,000 banks and financial institutions.

It is overseen by the National Bank of Belgium, in partnership with major central banks around the world - including the US Federal Reserve and the Bank of England.

Swift helps make secure international trade possible for its members, and is not supposed to take sides in disputes.

However, Iran was banned from Swift in 2012, as part of sanctions over its nuclear programme. It lost almost half of its oil export revenues and 30% of foreign trade.

Swift says it has no influence over sanctions and any decision to impose them rests with governments.

How would banning Russia from Swift affect it?

Russian companies would lose access to the normal smooth and instant transactions provided by Swift. Payments for its valuable energy and agricultural products would be severely disrupted.

Banks would be likely to have to deal directly with one another, adding delays and extra costs, and ultimately cutting off revenues for the Russian government.

Russia was threatened with a Swift expulsion before - in 2014 when it annexed Crimea. Russia said the move would be tantamount to a declaration of war.

Western allies did not go ahead, but the threat did prompt Russia to develop its own, very fledgling, cross-border transfer system.

To prepare for such a sanction, the Russian government created a National Payment Card System, known as Mir, to process card payments. However, few foreign countries currently use it.

Why is the West divided over Swift?

Removing Russia would hurt companies that supply goods to and buy from Russia, particularly Germany.

Russia is the European Union's main provider of oil and natural gas, and finding alternative supplies will not be easy. With energy prices already soaring, further disruption is something many governments want to avoid.

Companies owed money by Russia would have to find alternative ways to get paid. The risk of international banking chaos is too large, say some people.

Alexei Kudrin, Russia's former finance minister, suggested being cut off from Swift could shrink Russia's economy by 5%.

But there are doubts about the lasting impact on Russia's economy. Russian banks might route payments via countries that have not imposed sanctions, such as China, which has its own payments system.

There is some pressure from US lawmakers for a ban, but President Joe Biden says his preference is for other sanctions, largely because of the hit to other economies and countries.

And a decision to halt Russia's access would still need the support from European governments, many of which are reluctant because of the possibility of harming their own economies.

Russia vetoes UN Security action on Ukraine, China abstains

Russia has vetoed a draft UN Security Council resolution that would have deplored Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, while China abstained from the vote – a move western countries view as a win for showing Russia’s international isolation.

The United Arab Emirates and India also abstained from the vote on the US-drafted text. The remaining 11 council members voted in favor. The draft resolution is now expected to be taken up by the 193-member UN General Assembly.

Russia’s invasion ‘threatens international system’, US envoy to UN says

Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the US envoy to the United Nations, has accused Russia of threatening the international system with its invasion of Ukraine.

“Russia’s latest attack on our most fundamental principles is so bold, so brazen that it threatens our international system as we know it. We have a solemn obligation to not look away,” she told the UN Security Council.

Echoing Biden’s comments from earlier this week, Thomas-Greenfield said Russia is engaged in a “war of choice” in Ukraine.

“Russia chose to inflict untold suffering on the Ukrainian people and on its own citizens,” she said. “Russia chose to violate Ukraine’s sovereignty, to violate international law, to violate the UN Charter.”

The Next Step in Palestine’s Anti-Apartheid Struggle is the Most Difficult BY RAMZY BAROUD

 When Nelson Mandela was freed from his Robben Island prison on February 11, 1991, my family, friends and neighbors followed the event with keen interest as they gathered in the living room of my old home in the Nuseirat Refugee Camp in the Gaza Strip.

This emotional event took place years before Mandela uttered his famous quote “our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians”.  For us Palestinians Mandela did not need to reaffirm the South African people’s solidarity with Palestine by using these words or any other combination of words. We already knew. Emotions ran high on that day; tears were shed; supplications were made to Allah that Palestine, too, would be free soon. “Inshallah,” God willing, everyone in the room murmured with unprecedented optimism.

Though three decades have passed without that coveted freedom, something is finally changing as far as the Palestine liberation movement is concerned. A whole generation of Palestinian activists, who either grew up or were even born after Mandela’s release, was influenced by that significant moment: Mandela’s release and the start of the official dismantling of the racist, apartheid regime of South Africa.

Even the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993 between Israel and some in the Palestinian leadership of the PLO – which served as a major disruption of the grassroots, people-oriented liberation movement in Palestine – did not completely end what eventually became a decided anti-Israeli apartheid struggle in Palestine. Oslo, the so-called ‘peace process’ – and the disastrous ‘security coordination’ between the Palestinian leadership, exemplified in the Palestinian Authority (PA), and Israel – resulted in derailed Palestinian energies, wasted time, deepened existing factional divides, and confused Palestinian supporters everywhere. However, it did not – though it tried – occupy every political space available for Palestinian expression and mobilization.

With time and, in fact, soon after its formation in 1994, Palestinians began realizing that the PA was not a platform for liberation, but a hindrance to it. A new generation of Palestinians is now attempting to articulate, or refashion, a new discourse for liberation that is based on inclusiveness, grassroots, community-based activism that is backed by a growing global solidarity movement.

The May events of last year – the mass protests throughout occupied Palestine and the subsequent Israeli war on Gaza – highlighted the role of Palestine’s youth who, through elaborate coordination, incessant campaigning and utilizing of social media platforms, managed to present the Palestinian struggle in a new light – bereft of the archaic language of the PA and its aging leaders. It also surpassed, in its collective thinking, the stifling and self-defeating emphasis on factions and self-serving ideologies.

And the world responded in kind. Despite a powerful Israeli propaganda machine, expensive hasbara campaigns and near-total support for Israel by the western government and mainstream media alike, sympathy for Palestinians has reached an all-time high. For example, a major public opinion poll published by Gallup on May 28, 2021, revealed that “… the percentages of Americans viewing (Palestine) favorably and saying they sympathize more with the Palestinians than the Israelis in the conflict inched up to all-time highs this year.”

Moreover, major international human rights organizations, including Israelis, began to finally recognize what their Palestinian colleagues have argued for decades:

“The Israeli regime implements laws, practices and state violence designed to cement the supremacy of one group – Jews – over another – Palestinians,” said B’tselem in January 2021.

“Laws, policies and statements by leading Israeli officials make plain that the objective of maintaining Jewish Israeli control over demographics, political power and land has long guided government policy,” said Human Rights Watch in April 2021.

“This system of apartheid has been built and maintained over decades by successive Israeli governments across all territories they have controlled, regardless of the political party in power at the time,” said Amnesty International on February 1, 2022.

Now that the human rights and legal foundation of recognizing Israeli apartheid is finally falling into place, it is a matter of time before a critical mass of popular support for Palestine’s own anti-apartheid movement follows, pushing politicians everywhere, but especially in the West, to pressure Israel into ending its system of racial discrimination.

However, this is where the South Africa and Palestine models begin to differ. Though western colonialism has plagued South Africa as early as the 17th century, apartheid in that country only became official in 1948, the very year that Israel was established on the ruins of historic Palestine.

While South African resistance to colonialism and apartheid has gone through numerous and overwhelming challenges, there was an element of unity that made it nearly impossible for the apartheid regime to conquer all political forces in that country, even after the banning, in 1960, of the African National Congress (ANC) and the subsequent imprisonment of Mandela in 1962. While South Africans continued to rally behind the ANC, another front of popular resistance, the United Democratic Front, emerged, in the early 1980s to fulfill several important roles, amongst them the building of international solidarity around the country’s anti-apartheid struggle.

The blood of 176 protesters at the Soweto township and thousands more was the fuel that made freedom, the dismantling of apartheid and the freedom of Mandela and his comrades possible.

For Palestinians, however, the reality is quite different. While Palestinians are embarking on a new stage of their anti-apartheid struggle, it must be said that the PA, which has openly collaborated with Israel, cannot possibly be a vehicle for liberation. Palestinians, especially the youth, who have not been corrupted by the decades-long system of nepotism and favoritism enshrined by the PA, must know this well.

Rationally, Palestinians cannot stage a sustained anti-apartheid campaign when the PA is allowed to serve the role of being Palestine’s representative, while still benefiting from the perks and financial rewards associated with the Israeli occupation.

Meanwhile, it is also not possible for Palestinians to mount a popular movement in complete independence from the PA, Palestine’s largest employer, whose US-trained security forces keep watch on every street corner that falls within the PA-administered areas in the West Bank.

As they move forward, Palestinians must truly study the South African experience, not merely in terms of historical parallels and symbolism, but to deeply probe its successes, shortcomings and fault lines. Most importantly, Palestinians must also reflect on the unavoidable truth – that those who have normalized and profited from the Israeli occupation and apartheid cannot possibly be the ones who will bring freedom and justice to Palestine.

Did We Provoke Putin’s War in Ukraine?

 

by Patrick J. Buchanan Posted onFebruary 25, 2022

When Russia’s Vladimir Putin demanded that the U.S. rule out Ukraine as a future member of the NATO alliance, the US archly replied: NATO has an open-door policy. Any nation, including Ukraine, may apply for membership and be admitted. We’re not changing that.

In the Bucharest declaration of 2008, NATO had put Ukraine and Georgia, ever farther east in the Caucasus, on a path to membership in NATO and coverage under Article 5 of the treaty, which declares that an attack on any one member is an attack on all.

Unable to get a satisfactory answer to his demand, Putin invaded and settled the issue. Neither Ukraine nor Georgia will become members of NATO. To prevent that, Russia will go to war, as Russia did last night.

Putin did exactly what he had warned us he would do.

Whatever the character of the Russian president, now being hotly debated here in the USA, he has established his credibility.

When Putin warns that he will do something, he does it.

Thirty-six hours into this Russia-Ukraine war, potentially the worst in Europe since 1945, two questions need to be answered:

How did we get here? And where do we go from here?

How did we get to where Russia – believing its back is against a wall and the United States, by moving NATO ever closer, put it there – reached a point where it chose war with Ukraine rather than accepting the fate and future it believes the West has in store for Mother Russia?

Consider. Between 1989 and 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev let the Berlin Wall be pulled down, Germany be reunited and all the "captive nations" of Eastern Europe go free.

Having collapsed the Soviet empire, Gorbachev allowed the Soviet Union to dissolve itself into 15 independent nations. Communism was allowed to expire as the ruling ideology of Russia, the land where Leninism and Bolshevism first took root in 1917.

Gorbachev called off the Cold War in Europe by removing all of the causes on Moscow’s side of the historic divide.

Putin, a former KGB colonel, came to power in 1999 after the disastrous decade-long rule of Boris Yeltsin, who ran Russia into the ground.

In that year, 1999, Putin watched as America conducted a 78-day bombing campaign on Serbia, the Balkan nation that had historically been a protectorate of Mother Russia.

That year, also, three former Warsaw Pact nations, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland, were brought into NATO.

Against whom were these countries to be protected by US arms and the NATO alliance, the question was fairly asked.

The question seemed to be answered fully in 2004, when Slovenia, Slovakia, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Romania and Bulgaria were admitted into NATO, a grouping that included three former republics of the USSR itself, as well as three more former Warsaw Pact nations.

Then, in 2008, came the Bucharest declaration that put Georgia and Ukraine, both bordering on Russia, on a path to NATO membership.

Georgia, the same year, attacked its seceded province of South Ossetia, where Russian troops were acting as peacekeepers, killing some.

This triggered a Putin counterattack through the Roki Tunnel in North Ossetia that liberated South Ossetia and moved into Georgia all the way to Gori, the birthplace of Stalin. George W. Bush, who had pledged "to end tyranny in our world," did nothing. After briefly occupying part of Georgia, the Russians departed but stayed as protectors of the South Ossetians.

The US establishment has declared this to have been a Russian war of aggression, but an EU investigation blamed Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili for starting the war.

In 2014, a democratically elected pro-Russian president of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, was overthrown in Kyiv and replaced by a pro-Western regime. Rather than lose Sevastopol, Russia’s historic naval base in Crimea, Putin seized the peninsula and declared it Russian territory.

Teddy Roosevelt stole Panama with similar remorse.

Which brings us to today.

Whatever we may think of Putin, he is no Stalin. He has not murdered millions or created a gulag archipelago.

Nor is he "irrational," as some pundits rail. He does not want a war with us, which would be worse than ruinous to us both.

Putin is a Russian nationalist, patriot, traditionalist and a cold and ruthless realist looking out to preserve Russia as the great and respected power it once was and he believes it can be again.

But it cannot be that if NATO expansion does not stop or if its sister state of Ukraine becomes part of a military alliance whose proudest boast is that it won the Cold War against the nation Putin has served all his life.

President Joe Biden almost hourly promises, "We are not going to war in Ukraine." Why would he then not readily rule out NATO membership for Ukraine, which would require us to do something Biden himself says we Americans, for our own survival, should never do: go to war with Russia?

India objects to Singapore PM's remarks about 'criminal' MPs

 NEW DELHI, Feb 18 (Reuters) - India has complained to Singapore about a remark its prime minister made on the number of Indian parliamentarians facing criminal charges, an Indian official said on Friday, in a rare instance of friction between the Asian allies.

Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong made the remark in Singapore's parliament on Wednesday during a debate about accusations of lying levelled at a member of Singapore's opposition.

Lee, referring to parliamentary standards, mentioned India, suggesting a decline there since its first prime minister after independence from Britain in 1947, Jawaharlal Nehru, was in charge.

"Nehru’s India has become one where ... almost half the MPs in the Lok Sabha have criminal charges pending against them, including charges of rape and murder," Lee said, referring to India's lower house of parliament.

He did add, however, that many of the charges were politically motivated.

Indian media reported that Singapore's ambassador had been summoned to the foreign ministry to explain.

The Indian ministry declined to comment but an official there criticised what the Singapore leader said.

"The remarks by the prime minister of Singapore were uncalled for," said the official, who declined to be identified.

"We have taken up the matter with the Singaporean side."

Lee's office said it had nothing to add.

India and Singapore are both former British colonies and have been close allies for decades.

India's main opposition Congress party, led by Nehru's great-grandson, Rahul Gandhi, took the opportunity to extol its old leader and have a dig at its rivals.

"Nehru's magnanimity continues to inspire world leaders even today," Congress said in a statement on Twitter.

"Pity the ones here at home who fail to have the vision to understand the exceptional leader he was."