Foreign troops 'not option' for Malacca Strait

Foreign troops 'not option' for Malacca Strait

Patrick Chalmers, Reuters/ Kuala Lumpur

Foreign troops are not part of any plan to boost security in the Strait of Malacca, a vital sea lane carrying a third of world trade, Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said on Friday.

Washington and staunch local ally Singapore have voiced alarm over the risk of pirates linked to terror groups attacking tankers or other vessels in the busy strait, calling for beefed up security measures.

But Malaysia and Indonesia, on either side of the strait, have bridled at suggestions foreign forces might be used to help protect the waterway, its shipping and the countries along it.

"I don't think on the coast of the Strait anybody's looking at foreign forces being stationed there or new bases being established. I think the age of foreign bases being established is passing," Downer told Reuters in an interview.

He was sketchy on exact plans to protect the area, a 805-km channel through which about 50,000 commercial vessels pass each year, including ships ferrying 80 percent of Japan's oil needs.

Downer, speaking at the end of a two-day visit to Malaysia, said any security plan should not make regional countries feel as though their own security efforts were inadequate.

The United States is expected soon to start talks with Asian nations on a Regional Maritime Security Initiative, an as yet ill-defined plan whose focus will be to boost cooperation.

Singapore has repeatedly warned of the potential link between pirates and militant networks such as Jamaah Islamiyah, blamed for the deadly 2002 bomb blasts on the Indonesian island of Bali and widely linked to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda.

Malaysian Defense Minister Najib Razak announced plans this week for anti-hijack and surveillance maritime exercises within the Five Powers Defense Arrangements, its decades-old alliance with Australia, Britain and New Zealand and Singapore.

Downer said Australia, Malaysia and Singapore would soon hold more talks on security for the Strait of Malacca but gave little detail.

"We are in the process of talking about that, what could we do at the military level that we're not already doing," he said.

"Our ships pass through Southeast Asia, our aircraft pass through Southeast Asia, it's not as though we have no involvement at all at this stage," he added.

Absent from the group is Indonesia -- Singapore and Malaysia's giant neighbor -- which security experts see as a breeding ground for militants. But Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim majority state, launched a campaign against terrorism and arrested the persons involved in the Bali Bombings and brought them to the court.

Indonesia's Bali bomb blasts killed 202 people, most of them foreign tourists and including 88 Australians.

Asked about counter-terror efforts in Southeast Asia, Downer backed education, more policing and intelligence sharing.

Australia is a staunch U.S. ally and sent troops to Iraq last year. But Canberra's close ties with Washington has angered some countries in Southeast Asia and led to accusations of being the United States' "deputy sheriff" in the region.