Queen Elizabeth welcomed to Singapore (Roundup)

Mar 17, 2006, 9:26 GMT

Singapore - Britain's Queen Elizabeth II was welcomed Friday by Singapore's top leaders and cheering children excited over her first trip to the city-state in nearly two decades.

She was accompanied by her husband Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, on the visit to the former British colony, where reminders of imperial glory are still evident in the high-tech mecca.

From the stately Raffles Hotel, where the couple spent the night after arriving late Thursday from Australia, they went to Istana Palace, the Government House during Singapore's colonial years.

The queen inspected a military guard of honour and bands played the national anthems on both countries.

An Australian animal rights activist protesting the use of bearskin to make the hats of the Buckingham Palace guards showed up in a bear suit at the Istana. Jodi Buckley, 33, from Sydney, was carrying a sign saying, 'God Save the Bears.'

Two police officers whisked her away, and she was released without charges later in the day along with the suit.

She appeared before the queen's arrival. Prince Philip later opened a new Singapore office for the environmental group WWF International. He is president emeritus.

Wearing a green silk dress, coat and hat, the queen met with President S.R. Nathan and then had lunch with Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong. Queen Elizabeth turns 80 next month, and Nathan is also an octogenarian.

Other royal engagements included a stop at a memorial commemorating World Wars I and II, a visit to the National Library hosting a Commonwealth Photographers Competition exhibition, a tour of the Toa Payoh housing estate and a state banquet.

Hundreds of school children waving British and Singaporean flags greeted the queen at the library.

The queen winds up her visit Saturday at the Singapore Turf Club, where she will present the Queen Elizabeth II Cup for a race named in her honour during her first visit.

Singaporean Thomas Pung was particularly excited about another meeting with the queen, 34 years after she visited the one-room flat he shared with his mother in the Toa Payoh housing estate.

Pung, now a 66-year-old retiree married for more than 30 years, was selected to greet her again in his family's flat in the government development, which has undergone massive expansion and modernization.

'This type of opportunity you cannot get,' Pung said. 'Even with money, you cannot buy.'

Singapore, Southeast Asia's most developed country, extensively restored the colonial quarter. A statue of Sir Stamford Raffles, who established Singapore as a British trading post in 1819, occupies a prominent place, and his name was bestowed on a variety of institutions.

Singapore was viewed as an impregnable fortress of the British Empire before it fell to the Japanese on February 15, 1942.

Prime Minister Winston Churchill described the fall as 'the worst disaster and largest capitulation in history.' Nearly 80,000 Australian, British and Indian troops were captured.

The city-state became a republic in 1965.

Britain and Singapore still enjoy strong diplomatic, economic, military and cultural ties.

Total bilateral trade exceeded 10 billion dollars in 2005.