KL utges SIngapore to sign antiterror pact

KL utges SIngapore to sign antiterror pact

Agence France-Presse, Kuala Lumpur

Malaysia on Thursday pressed neighboring Singapore to participate
in a regional security pact to fight terrorism.

Deputy Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said at present
Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines and Thailand have
signed an agreement to share intelligence and establish effective
communications procedures.

"The (Malaysian) foreign ministry should remind Singapore of
the need to sign the agreement," Abdullah was quoted as saying by
Bernama news agency in the northern state of Kedah.

Abdullah, who is also the interior minister, said he hoped
Singapore would not wait too long to sign the agreement with the
five Southeast Asian countries.

Singapore said on Wednesday it is not yet ready to join a
Southeast Asian anti-terrorism agreement now linking five
countries in the region.

"Our ministry of home affairs feels it is necessary for us to
study the agreement quite carefully to see that we comply with
all the legal requirements," Singapore's Deputy Prime Minister
Tony Tan told AFP at the end of his three-day visit to the
Philippines.

"I think it will require a bit of time to study it," he said,
when pressed for a time frame.

Thailand was the latest among members of the Association of
Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to accede to the "Agreement on
Information Exchange and Establishment of Communication
Procedures" to fight terrorism and other transnational crime.

After Thailand signed the pact at the ASEAN leaders meeting in
Cambodia in November, Brunei said it would also come aboard by
the end of the year to expand it into a six-member pact.

Indonesia, the Philippines and Malaysia first forged the pact
in May -- focused on sharing intelligence, resources and
personnel to fight terrorism -- before Cambodia acceded to the
agreement two months later.

Despite calls by other ASEAN members to join the pact,
Singapore had said in the past that it would rely on bilateral
security arrangements to combat terrorism, the region's current
number one enemy after a blast in the Indonesian tourist paradise
of Bali left more than 190 dead.

The Bali carnage was the worst global terrorist attack since
the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States.

Tan said that the agreement was a "plus" to combat terrorism
in the context of strengthening international cooperation.

Pending Singapore's accession to the pact, Tan said there were
other avenues for cooperation in the fight against terrorism by
ASEAN countries "and we should pursue this as well.

Malaysia has arrested more than 70 alleged Islamic militants
since mid-2001 under a tough security act.

Many of the alleged religious militants detained were members
of the Jamaah Islamiyah group (JI), a militant organization which
authorities say is allied to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda and is
suspected of mounting the Bali blast, which killed more than 190
people.

Singapore has detained 31 JI members who are said to have
trained at al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan.

Their bombing targets are said to have included vital water
supply pipelines from Malaysia, Changi airport, Jurong Island
where Singapore's oil refineries and petrochemical plants are
based, and the ministry of defense headquarters.

It was to be the first step toward JI's ultimate goal of
creating an Islamic state covering Malaysia, Indonesia,
Singapore, the southern Philippines island of Mindanao and
Brunei.