Security issues in Straits of Malacca

The Straits Times, Asia News Network, Singapore

Deterring terrorist strikes in the Straits of Malacca was the issue given the most useful airing at the Asian security conference here. Not, it should be prefaced, because agreement on a form of military presence and searches of suspicious craft is anywhere close, as the passageway's three littoral states and a host of nations with merchant navies using it are interested parties.

Each of them will frame the issue in its own contextual interests, as noted fairly by Admiral Walter Doran, commander of the United States Pacific Fleet. These could be piracy, drug and gun-running, people trafficking and support for insurgencies, aside from the common factors of the oil and merchandise trade. Now, there is borderless terrorism to galvanize them.

Whatever the nuances of the U.S. congressional testimony on the waterway's security given by Admiral Thomas Fargo, commander of U.S forces in the Pacific, it has now been made clear by his boss, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, that a U.S. military deployment to monitor shipping is getting ahead of the probabilities.

Rumsfeld said certain aspects of the testimony had been "misreported" and widely accepted as fact in South-east Asia. Admiral Fargo had suggested U.S. naval forces could provide protection. He added that Singapore favored an effective maritime security plan to deter terrorism, as indeed the Republic does as a broad principle and has consistently advocated, well before he spoke.

Malaysia and Indonesia, the two states most concerned about sovereignty infringements, are entitled to wonder whether Rumsfeld's remarks were clarification or spin, to take note of their objections to U.S. military intervention. But he was categoric when he spoke these words: "Any implication that it (the maritime security proposal) would impinge in any way on the sovereign territorial waters of some countries would be inaccurate. It just wouldn't."

He noted that the U.S. would consult its friends, the plan was in its infant stages, and nothing could be assumed. By logical deduction, this must mean nothing could be foreclosed either -- including the use of U.S. forces. If it came to that, it must be consistent with international law and have the unqualified concurrence of all three littoral states. Anything short can be hazardous to regional relations.

Rumsfeld's move arguably has defused untoward tension over an anti-terrorist deterrent that no country in the region could possibly reject. His intervention had the virtue of making maritime security a universal undertaking which Malaysia and Indonesia, in particular, would want to be part of as a matter of self-interest.

Malaysian Deputy Premier and Defense Minister Najib Razak did well to amplify for conference delegates the reason for his country's objection to the Fargo formulation. Foreign troops patrolling the straits would "set us back in our ideological battle against extremism and militancy", he noted.

Mindful of how the stationing of U.S. forces in Saudi Arabia, Islam's hallowed ground, prior to the first Gulf War was turned into "Osama bin Laden's principal recruiting device" (U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz's words), Malaysia's reservations possibly are more than about sovereignty.

Najib says he is open to suggestions on how the U.S. could help in the region.There is a sense momentum is building up to some form of cooperation. It has to be a substantive plan to be of use in prevailing against efficient killers.