THE response to the threat of militant group ISIS cannot be purely military, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said yesterday at a meeting of the East Asia Summit (EAS), where he joined other leaders in noting that the situation in Iraq and Syria was complex and there were no simple solutions.

It was still necessary to fight, contain and weaken ISIS, but countries also had to tackle the ideological roots of extremism – the reason why ISIS has been able to attract foreign fighters from faraway regions, including South- east Asia, he added.

…”We have a little bit of experience on this because we have been working on detainees who we picked up after Sept 11, 2001, who were connected to Al-Qaeda and who were planning several terrorist attacks in Singapore,” he said.

Dr Rohan Gunaratna, a professor at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, told The Straits Times that the conference, to be called the EAS Symposium on Religious Rehabilitation and Social Reintegration, would be held next April.