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.