SINGAPORE: Singapore's Minister for Foreign Affairs K Shanmugam has said the Republic does not come out "to confirm or deny" any reports on intelligence matters.
He also said Indonesia and Malaysia know that Singapore would not do anything to harm their interests.
His comments are the first by a Singapore leader on allegations that the Republic was helping Western nations spy on its neighbours.
Mr Shanmugam was speaking on Friday at the Global Outlook Forum organised by the Straits Times.
He said the allegations, which appeared in an Australian newspaper earlier this week, were a re-hash of a similar article that had appeared in August.
This time, he said, the writer took a leave of licence and liberty in mentioning Singapore in rather tenuous circumstances.
"Timing is interesting. Just as relationships between Indonesia and Australia got to an interesting stage, then this article gets printed and now gratuitously Singapore gets mentioned," he said.
He added that Singapore's position is not to comment on intelligence matters.
"Even when the allegations are untrue, we never come out to deny them because you cannot, on intelligence matters, come out and say this is true, or this is untrue, or this is five per cent true, that is 95 per cent false," said Mr Shanmugam.
He does not expect relations with Indonesia and Malaysia to be affected by the latest incident.
Mr Shanmugam said: "The point is -- the Indonesians and Malaysians know we won't do anything to harm their interests and our position is: you talk about intelligence, we don't come out to confirm or deny it.
"I think that's the best approach one can take because what we do, what Malaysia does, what Indonesia does is known to all of us.
“Nevertheless there is such a thing as domestic politics in all three countries, a little bit more in Malaysia and Indonesia compared to Singapore, I think, on this issue and in domestic politics.
"You have people of various persuasions, different parties, and sometimes looking at someone outside and attacking that party can be politically profitable, or to pressure the government into saying you are not taking serious enough steps -- these are all normal copybook, it's been repeated many times.
“It's not new to this region and that can then colour to some extent public perceptions. It's not a situation we would have wished, but we just have to deal with it."
A large part of the dialogue was also devoted to the current dispute over the East China Sea. Mr Shanmugam described it as a worrying development and called for some "degree of wisdom to prevail" even as countries are fuelled by nationalism.
The region has seen its share of territorial disputes.
Mr Shanmugam said: "These trends obviously are not helpful. I am not talking about the specific acts of one country or declaration of zones, I'm not referring to that. I'm referring to the entire suite of developments.”
"Our interests are very clear. We are a major air hub in Southeast Asia; we are a major sea-port -- one of the world's great sea-ports. The ability, freedom of navigation, freedom of air rights -- these are fundamental to us and our interests," he added.
China has sent warplanes into disputed airspace over the East China Sea after Japanese and South Korean military aircraft flew through the area, without informing Beijing.
The Chinese government has said that its newly-declared air defence zone does not expand its territory and maintains that the zone is merely to safeguard the country's "territorial airspace".
Moving forward, Mr Shanmugam said the US needs to engage China in a constructive way while Japan needs to move beyond nationalistic considerations.
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