Asian nations are moving towards a consensus on how to protect the pirate-infested Malacca Strait, Singapore Defence Minister Teo Chee Hean said yesterday after meeting with his regional counterparts.
Teo said the improving atmosphere for co-operation could even open the door for eventual joint patrols between Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia, which border the narrow waterway that many fear could be the site of a terror attack.
“There seems to be a consensus forming around three general principles on how we can deal with maritime security in the Malacca Strait,” Teo told reporters on the sidelines of the Asia Security Conference.
SINGAPORE: Asian nations are moving towards a consensus on how to protect the pirate-infested Malacca Strait, Singapore Defence Minister Teo Chee Hean said yesterday after meeting with his regional counterparts.
Teo said the improving atmosphere for co-operation could even open the door for eventual joint patrols between Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia, which border the narrow waterway that many fear could be the site of a terror attack.
“There seems to be a consensus forming around three general principles on how we can deal with maritime security in the Malacca Strait,” Teo told reporters on the sidelines of the Asia Security Conference.
He said one principle was that the primary responsibility for security in the strait rested with the three littoral states.
Another was that the international community and user states also had a role to play, while the third principle was that any security measures ought to respect international law and the sovereignty of the states skirting the strait.
“Within these parameters, with these three guidelines, it gives us quite a lot of room in order to devise useful, practical, creative solutions to see how we can improve security in the straits,” he said.
Asked if this meant Malaysia and Indonesia could reverse their long-standing resistance to allowing joint patrols between the three states bordering the waterway, Teo said this was a possibility.
“I would not rule them out but it is a matter which has to be discussed between the littoral states,” he said.
Teo emphasised that progress had already been made over the past year with the three nations beginning jointly co-ordinated patrols, in which their security forces helped each other but remained in their own waters.
The issue of maritime security was high on the agenda at the weekend conference, which was attended by the defence ministers and military chiefs of more than 20 mostly Asia Pacific nations. Teo made his comments to reporters after the defence ministers discussed Malacca Strait security at a lunch.
Japan’s Minister of State for Defence, Yoshinori Ohno, also reiterated to the delegates his nation’s strong desire for the international community to work more closely in protecting the Malacca Strait.
“We fully recognise that littoral states have primary responsibility, and that activities for securing maritime transportation should be conducted within relevant domestic and international laws,” Ohno said in a speech.
“Yet we believe that it is necessary for the countries in the region to exchange views towards possible future co-operation.”
Japan is one of the nation’s most economically dependant on the strait, through which 30 percent of the world’s trade and 50 percent of its oil passes, and some Japanese ships in the waterway have recently been attacked by pirates.
In a speech to open the conference on Friday night, Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong warned that ships passing through the Malacca Strait faced a high risk of being attacked by terrorists.
“The threat is real and urgent,” Lee said.
“We know that terrorists have been studying maritime targets across the region. The recent spate of violent pirate attacks in the Malacca Straits shows up our vulnerabilities only too clearly.”
When asked about specific terrorist groups who intended to conduct attacks in the region’s waters, Teo accused the Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) organisation that was behind the deadly 2002 bombings on the Indonesian resort island of Bali.
The group had “cased a number of targets several years ago” around Singapore, he said.-AFP
